Best I Ever Had - Chapter Three
Chapter 3: Leaves Me Down and Lonely
'So you stole my world
Now I'm just a phony
Remembering the girl
Leaves me down and lonely
Send it in a letter
Make yourself feel better'
A day earlier - Pittsburgh
Justin has just put away the last book on the shelf before ending his shift, went to the cash register and prepared to leave.
As something involuntary, his legs guided him home. Not to his mother's house, not for the apartment that was supposed to share with Daphne, but for the loft.
Two months passed and Justin continued to refuse to leave. Although Brian had stolen the world he knew and loved, when communications ceased and he disappeared, Justin continued to live as if Brian would come back to him. Not that anyone could call what Justin did, living. Surviving would be a more appropriate term. Eating, breathing and sleeping by instinct, go to school and work to keep busy. Brian was as guilty as Daphne.
After the most intense dance that St. James ever saw, Chris Hobbs was thinking that a sissy shouldn't have the right to go to the prom, much less on a straight date. So he took Justin by the elbow and dragged him to the parking lot. Nobody followed them, not even the chaperones. But Daphne knew something was wrong, and seeing that no one was moving, decided to get her hands dirty and headed for the parking lot.
What should have started with bumps and insults, quickly came to punches and kicks. Daphne did the only thing she could: hit Chris with her purse while screaming.
Didn't hurt him but surprised him, and that was more than enough for Justin to find an open. Giving him a punch well calculated, Justin threw Chris on the ground.
The two best friends moved away as quickly as they could to warn someone, not realizing that Hobbs had entered his car.
Justin could not see what happened next. Still half dazed didn't hear the car, unlike Daphne, who pushed him. The last thing he saw was Daphne being rammed.
Justin doesn't remember having found the phone, not even to have called 911, but he remembers to have Daphne in his arms fading in blood as he whispered to her not to leave him behind too.
She had not heard, or if she heard, she didn't care. So at the end of a week of agony in the hospital's corridors, Daphne Chanders was declared death . Mr and Mrs Chanders didn't blamed Justin, after all the boy had called as soon as he could to the ambulance and hadn't abandoned their daughter. And it was not as if Justin was gay by choice or walked sticking his lifestyle right under the nose of others. And certainly it wasn't him who was driving that ill-fated car.
Justin sank even more into the pit that he was already when Brian abandoned him. Without Brian nor Daphne, Justin knew what was the solution. Unfortunately or fortunately, he was too chicken to resort to suicide, so apathy was his defense mechanism.
The only emotion he showed was when he wrote to Brian. Not that Brian was ever going to read the letters if it depended on him, but it was something routine. Once a week, Justin sat at the desk and wrote to Brian about what had happened to him. And how grateful he was that Brian hadn't turn off any utilities, promising to pay him. Actually, Justin had already started to take off some money of his paycheck and put on the first drawer, together with the letters, on Brian's side.
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