Breathe Again

24: We're Walking Towards Our Problems This Time

It is two weeks later, and today is the day that Isaac is leaving the nest, the day he leaves this small town goodbye and says hello to the small city. He wants to be excited, he kind of is excited, but there's still that ache in his heart and the small feeling of regret, of something left unsaid.

He has held out hope somehow that Liam might appear out of nowhere and try to tell him whatever it is that he's been trying to say all this time. Isaac figures that it's ironic that now that Isaac is finally ready to listen, Liam is nowhere to be seen. He's aware it's his own stupid fault, that he should have been listening all this time.

The truth is that Isaac was so blindsided by what he had to lose that he didn't stop to see he what he could gain. He knows he's not unique in this, knows that plenty of experiments have shown that humans avoid loss more than they try to gain, that people prefer to stick to the status quo as long as they don't risk losing what they already have, even if there's a chance something better might be waiting. It doesn't make the feeling any better though, Isaac still feels like an idiot, his heart still feels broken, and Liam is still nowhere to be seen.

The bags are all packed, taking up so much space in the front room that the twins have taken to treating it like their own personal fort and sometimes it takes him a good few minutes to find them hidden among the mass of everything.

It feels exciting, sort of. His entire world feels kind of wonky, pushed off its axis, tilting at an angle it's not meant to tilt. Because he's excited, he really is, university feels like a whole new adventure and after this summer ISaac feels prepared for those. But every moment he feels excited, Isaac also feels this small niggling feeling at the back of his brain, the feeling that everything is not quite how it is meant to be, there are people who should have been by his side that aren't, and there are words left unspoken that keep catching in his throat and threatening to make him choke.

So Isaac is excited. But he's also kind of sad.

Daniel seems to know the whole story, Isaac can only assume that Liam told Jonah, who of course told Daniel, and so there two lives are still inextricably linked and Isaac doesn't quite see a way of stopping that. It's clear that Daniel and Jonah think he's an idiot, and Isaac is inclined to agree. It's clear they think the two of them just need to talk, and despite the fact that he does not want to, Isaac knows they're probably right.

He considers himself an expert at avoiding conversations, he wants to say it's because of the way he grew up, how Gideon's name was only ever said as a silent whisper. And that's maybe true, but it's not the entire story. The entire story is that Isaac is scared, he's scared that he'll lose a friend, he's scared that he'll lose a lover, he's scared that he'll lose Liam.

Sometimes fear is a far stronger drug than anyone can imagine.

So Isaac has continued to wallow, has continued to wonder what exactly Liam might have said if Isaac had allowed him to voice his thoughts. He thinks he can piece most of it together, you don't just kiss someone for no reason after all. And from the way Daniel keeps prodding him, as if Isaac is going to spill a story about some great big romantic adventure, he can see that while he's not convinced Liam has told them the whole story, he's told them enough of it, and what he's told them is what Isaac feels like he's always wanted to hear.

Isaac reckons that most people probably grow up dreaming of princes and princesses. Of wanting to someone to fall in love with you, with the way you talk, the way you laugh, the way you dream. Isaac used to want someone to love him so much that they'd share stories about him, that his name would constantly be on the tip of their tongue. He wanted the stort of love that feels like a fairytale, some epic story of falling in love with all the trappings of a popular novel or a hallmark movie. Isaac just wanted someone to love him so much that they feel like they had to share it with the world.