Till Next Time | completed | currently under re-edit

33

33
At some point in the night, I had crawled up on the floor against the door and fallen asleep.
I wake up, my sleeve wet from the puddle of my own drool and with stiff and painful joints.

The tranquil moments of sleepy distortion very soon cave and last night's events surface over the confusion.
A deep sense of embarrassment fills me.
I sat in front of this woman. I talked to her. Our eyes met. I go to the same institution she works at.
My mother had met her. She probably even negotiated my suspension.

I move away from the door and into the center of the room. It suddenly feels so foreign. I feel so unrelated.
I had grown up within these walls, with the principles that run riot inside me, screaming and begging.
For the first time, I hate being in this space. I hate the gray walls. I hate the ceiling. I hate the well-settled desk across the room.
I hate the blood that runs through my veins. I hate my last name.
I want to jump out of the window and run.

For the first time, I feel like I deserve better.

I hear the door slide open against the carpet.

I speak first, the wait only making it harder to breathe.
"How long?"
"How long what?"
"You know what."

My mother sighs. "Two years."

"How long have you known?"
"A year. Almost."

Great. Two years of my father being with another woman. Two years of us looking like clowns to him.

"I told him not to bring her home, " she says.
"And I suppose that makes everything better?" I growl at her. "What kind of an idiot are you?"
"You don't talk to your mother like that," she says, with a hint of a looming threat.

"Yes. Of course. I come from the line of men that just cheat on their wives and children, right?"
She frowns. "You are crossing the line."
"I am not, " I say. "I'm drawing one. I should have done this a while back."

She stares back at me with a questioning disdain.

"Because I was terrified of being alone." I turn to face her. "I clung onto people because I thought I didn't know how to be alone. Turns out I was alone all this time."

"I can't do this anymore," I say. "I can't be a part of this."

"What do you mean?" she asks.

It just rolls off the tongue.
"I won't live here anymore. I'm done."
The look of horror on her face makes me bite down on my tongue.

"I feel humiliated. I walk around the house like a ghost who regularly owes something to someone. I can't live as a debt anymore."

She stares back at me, anger crossing over to bewilderment.

"Do you even know what you are talking about!" she screams at me. This is the loudest I have ever heard her speak. It throws me off-guard
"What are you going to do? Where are you going to stay? Have you thought of anything!"

"Yes," I say, calmly. The tables have turned.

"You are your father's heir! If you leave and move out, you won't get anything! You know your father!"

A similar disgust rises up inside like an overdue inferno.

"Say it!" I feel my shoulders slowly getting lighter. "Say it. Say that I won't get the money. That he will exclude me from his will and I will be poor. That's what you mean, right?"

She slaps her forehead with her palm, looking off in the distance.

"Don't we have a lot of money now? Look at what it did to us!" I shout, my vision is blurry with tears.
"My father brought home a woman twice in your absence. I go to school with that woman and she sits on the other side of the desk, smiling at me."
I point at her accusingly. "You know Dad's cheating on you and yet here you are, justifying him."

"Brooklyn, he's my husband!" She's crying now. "I love him!"
"You can't!" I want to rip my hair out in fists. "You just can't! He doesn't feel the same! He's humiliating you and you are letting him! That's not loving."

"I can't leave him, Brook."

I watch my mother slowly cracking and scattering into a mess of broken pieces and incoherent speech.
I don't want to do this. I will regret this.

"Are you prepared to stay?" I ask, "Are you prepared to show up at those fancy parties and have the people whisper about you? About his affair? Are you ready to be humiliated, stripped to just a label, an obligation? Tell me."
She shakes her head, mascara running down her face. "It isn't that easy."

I want to reach out and tell her it is, that she can do it. That she has done nothing wrong to deserve this.
Instead, I tell her, "You have to make a choice. I will wait until the summer ends. If you stay with Dad, I'll have to cut you off."

She stops abruptly. "What?"

"It's either me or Dad. Make your choice. I am afraid there is no other way. I am done."

Her arms slump down to her sides. "Please don't do this," she says and I hate myself.

"Please don't leave me too."

"Then come with me." I want to reach for her hand. I want to beg for her forgiveness and tell her I did not mean for all of this shit to happen.
"You don't have to stay here. You don't have to stay with him."

Light fades bit by bit from her eyes, compensated by a look of helplessness. "I can't leave, Brook."
Her whisper is the loudest.
She turns around and starts walking towards her room, muttering again and again, "I can't leave."

I step back to accept that someday, this morning will come back to bite me.
You do not just get away from causing pain like this.

*

My phone wakes me in the middle of the night.
"Hello." I pick up, clearing my throat just enough to sound reasonably awake.
"It's Steve," the man says on the other end, his voice breaking.

"Mr. Collins?"

And I know something is wrong. Nothing good ever happens under the cover of dark nights. It just can't and all I can think of then is why.
Why today?
Why me?

"Mr. Collins. What is wrong?"

He breaks into sobs on the other end. I grasp the phone tighter in my hands. It was slipping out from within my numb fingers.

"Mr. Collins?"
"She-", he breathes in sharply, "She said she was having chest pains. I thought it was just discomfort until she just couldn't take it anymore."
He stops as a violent round of cough racks him.

"Mr. Collins, what's wrong?"

"Cardiac arrest. They are moving her to a hospital."

The call disconnects.
I spring out from under the covers, impulse guiding me.
I have to go. But then I realize he didn't tell me which hospital they are taking her to.
I fall back on my bed, thoroughly drained.
I must be what losing looks like.

As a kid, oftentimes I would hold my breath in, just to see how long I could. How long until my lungs started to burn and how long until I was on the verge of a blackout.
But I would always gasp after a few seconds, gulping the air in greedily as tears streamed down my face.
I wonder if I close my eyes and hold it in now, that will make me feel a little better, if I may find relief through the pain.
But it is easier when your own hand is at your neck, you know when you stop.

I let misery consume me, feel my muscles slacken and my head sink further back into the mattress.

I tell myself. Pain finds a way, it always does.

A/N: Only one chapter this week. My optic-health hasn't been the greatest tbh.

Also fun (weird) fact, I streamed the song attached for two weeks straight (including nights because I couldn't sleep a wink; literally) when I got my heart broken for the first time.