Three Simple Words

Chapter 24

The wind bit at Thomas's face as he ran to the old willow tree. How could he have been so stupid? He had made mistakes with Jess before but this, what the hell was he going to do? It wasn't some childish crush he had admitted to, he told Jess he loved him.

If that wasn't bad enough, he admitted that he loved him while he was dating Ariel. What kind of fucked up bastard does that? It was more than him being stupid, he was delusional.

He perpetually ruined everything that he had his hands on and this was no exception. He had had a place to stay, people who cared about him, safety and he ruined that for what? To tell his ex's brother that he was in love with him. This wasn't something that he could take back either.

Jess knew and there was no way that he could deny what he already said. Even though he was terrified of the consequences, he couldn't deny the fact that those three simple words bore as much truth as he had within him.

Three simple words had ruined his life but three other words had given him hope. How could two three-word phrases hold so much meaning for him, so much power over him? He had been stupid, ignorant, in love.

The willow tree blocked him from the wind but it did nothing to block him from the storm inside him. Those three words held so much longing and expectation in them and Thomas knew he couldn't live up to them.

Even if Jess had felt a morsel of what Thomas felt for him, he could never give Jess the life he deserved. As much as Thomas wished and prayed that he could be different, he was still the broken boy he had been years before. He still couldn't accept himself let alone let someone else in, the scars down his arms were reminder enough of that and it took all of his will power to not slice down to his bone. It would be so easy.

There are so many ways to die and all he had to do was pick one. It wasn't that he wanted to die, it was that he wanted to surrender, he wanted the sweet oblivion that death offered him.

He wanted the numbing finality of it. He wanted the pain to be gone, to live without fear and hurt, to feel human again. The tears pulled once again in his eyes giving him comfort in the commonplace act.

At least if he cried, he knew he wasn't entirely unfeeling. Some part of him longed to feel something again but the other part couldn't wait for him to let go of this superficial grasp he has on life.

The razor blade's weight was almost like an anchor to his emotions and the scar only a small price to pay for the sweet relief it offered. For a second all he would feel was nothing, a peaceful bliss of sorts right before his blood would start to pull.

By the time the blade stilled in his hand, he had made at least twenty gashes in his arms each getting deeper as he went up. The blood mixed with his tears and it seemed to cover him head to toe. He was being buried alive by his emotions but he couldn't bring himself to care enough to get some semblance of control back.

Somewhere buried deep down he wished Jess would find him, would hold him until he fell into whatever came next, maybe heaven maybe hell. But the rest of him wished he could leave this world, the way he came into it, little more than a blip in this universe.

The next gash seemed to seal his fate one way or another. His eyelids flickered and the sweet oblivion started to coil around him and he let it. He has been fighting all of his life to keep this dark, ambiguous thing away but truly what was he avoiding.

He had found unrequited love, lost his family, suffered physical, mental, emotion trauma, what more could this life offer him? He knew that the ill-conceived concept of right and wrong would tell him to fight, that his life wasn't over yet but wasn't it.

What if he didn't want to see what else was in store for him because the first eighteen years of his life, he had been living his own version of hell?

So, he let himself get taken under the flood of darkness, he let God decide what was next and maybe that was good enough for him. For once he had made his own choice and, in a way, he was free from everything.