The Colors of Us

thirty-three

        "Let's finally talk about Giovanni." Giselle crossed her right leg over her left. "Tell me more about you two growing up together."

Per usual, I sat with the yellow pillow in my lap for comfort. But since this was our third session I'd grown more comfortable and had my legs folded on the sofa.

"Like I told you before, I was the quiet kid and he bothered me until I opened up to him and it took no time for us to be joined at the hip. I had a crush on him the whole time but I never had the courage to tell him so I watched him go from girl to girl. It used to bother the hell out of me but he was my bestfriend so I never said anything to him about it. I should've because he used to write the most heartwarming poems for me but I thought that he was being the average boy and sweet-talking just because he knew how.

"As you know, I've always been depressed and he knew about it. Especially after I had my first attempt in ninth grade with a bottle of Benadryl. No one knew or knows about it aside from him and now you. From then on he became super protective but I knew that I'd messed him up because he started to have nightmares about me ending my life. A month or two later, his father was arrested for manslaughter and his home life went downhill. His mom wound up running away and leaving him in the care of his aunt who had a lot of anger.

"It wasn't a good environment for him so I would let him come over to my house and talk until he was tired. And one night, I prompted him to spend the night because he was fed up. He told me that he was thinking about moving with his uncle on his dad's side in Houston. That same night we had sex and I never saw him again. What he forgot to tell me was that it was definite that he was moving. He got on the plane and didn't look back."

"And when was this?"

"The summer going into our sophomore year. 2009."

"The year before your brother was murdered."

I nodded, "Yes. Um, after Giovanni moved away I was in the dumps. I felt like I was given a chance at love with someone I was already in love with and it was snatched from me. I was so sad but my sadness slowly turned to anger. I hated him for a long time and I let it be known that I was angry — I mean months after trying to tell my brothers that I was super sad and I wasn't happy. But no one liked seeing me angry so instead of sitting down and talking to me, they'd fan me off, call me dramatic or ignored me altogether. It only fueled me....and that's what got Courtland murdered."