The sun was peeking through the curtains in a way I was unfamiliar with. I rubbed my closed eyes tiredly before grabbing the blankets from where they had fallen down to my waist and pulled them up to my chin, turning to the side and yawning. I moved a little trying to get comfortable before I rolled back the way I was and felt the spot beside me. My heart jolted as I realized it was cold as if no one had slept next to me at all. My eyes opened in confusion at the same time I called out softly for Sarah, who was usually still asleep at this time. Then, it hit me.
Sarah had cheated on me. Sarah was pregnant with a baby that wasn't mine as much as it was hers. She had made the next step in our lives without including me at all. A heavy weight settled in my chest, making it hard to breathe. I started hyperventilating without much success or air getting into the right places long enough. I reached over for a cup of water that someone had been kind enough to leave on the nightstand beside the bed and took a sip, before needing to stand up before the comforter and sun combination suffocated me in heat. The sunlight coming through the opened curtains of my brother and Frank's guest room seemed to mock me with happier days and happier situations.
I quickly stepped out of bed, my shoulders slumped and my head almost as heavy as my heart. My eyes felt swollen as if I'd been crying in my sleep and rubbing them only made it worse. I moved slower than I was used to, but I wasn't sure if I had the strength to walk faster.
By the time I reached the curtains, which would've been an easy feat on any other day in any other situation, seemed like the hardest, most draining action I'd done in months. I closed them tightly, enshrouding the room in darkness and felt tired even though I had just woken up. I dragged my feet back into the bed, making no plans on moving past this room. I tucked myself in a ball underneath the covers and shivered even though I wasn't cold; I felt empty, frozen inside of my own head.
What killed me was that I'd lived through this feeling before. I had experienced it and overcome it many times as an adolescent and even as an adult. It was soul crushing to know that it was back and caused by the one person who had helped me fight it so many times. I refused to put a name to the behavior and emotions that were surging through me and sticking into my mind, and curled up tighter in the blankets, hugging my knees close to my chest.
I closed my eyes in attempt to try and go back to sleep, but I could hear noises coming from downstairs and the rooms beside me. There was faint laughter coming from down the stairs and the clanking of dishes coming from the kitchen. The sink was on and water running through the pipes could be heard coming from inside the walls. I could hear soft and low toned voices talking down the stairs and even a TV coming from one of the kid's rooms playing a movie I'd heard before but couldn't put a name to.
The noise was welcoming and helped me focus on something else rather than the thoughts that were trying to fill my head, pulling me deeper into the unnamed emotion from earlier. I sighed and tried not to think about how sad it sounded, how hopeless and desperate. I wanted to get out of bed again, to find a reason to sit up and join my family that was just downstairs, probably wondering whether or not it was okay to disturb me. I wanted to scream, to yell, to get their attention, so they'd come and get me out of my mind, to get the sadness to disappear until I was alone again.
Then, it was like my thoughts were finally answered. I could hear someone moving clumsily up the stairs and then the smell of something familiar, almost like home. I could tell it was one of the kids because of how light the footsteps were and the way the steps were almost like the soft padding of slippers, which I couldn't really judge gender by because Frank sometimes wore bunny slippers--I'd seen them a couple of times lying around the house and Gerard always claimed they weren't his.
My heart stopped thumping so heavily in my chest as a light knock sounded at the door. I found my will to uncurl and sit up in my bed, calling out a small, "Come in."
