Grace - Chapter 12
Title: Grace - Chapter 12 (part 2)
Rating: M
Fandom: P!atd (Brendon/Ryan)
Tick! goes the clock.
Eternity must pass by sometime in here. Forever must whir on in some sort of fascinating slowness.
Tick! goes the clock.
A thousand nurses have stolen Catherine from me, stolen my white rabbit and left me sitting here with her broken clock. Tick! it goes, and it’s too slow, too desperate and strained in its timing, the second hand is moving in hours. Thing about hospital waiting rooms is that they involve waiting and patience and tears, none of which I’ll ever be any good at.
“Brendon,” Ryan says, and he’s looking at me, all eyes and hair and lips. “Brendon, it’ll be all right.”
I shrug, tighten each fist where they rest at my knees.
“It’ll be okay,” he says, and he’s desperately seeking an eye contact I can’t give him. He wants a lot of things I can’t give him. He wants a lot of things that people have never even expected of me.
“Not many people would do this, y’know,” I say, and I’m still not looking at him properly, not at his face. I can see two bony knees, almost poking through the pinstriped pants.
“What?”
“Not many people I know would sit here with me, wait for my idiot sister to come out of emergency, intensive care, where ever the fuck she is.” Take a deep breath, let my eyelids flutter shut, open. “Not many people I know would do this.”
“Then,” Ryan pauses, inhales deeply too, and it’s nice to know it’s not just me who needs to remember to breathe tonight, “then, I don’t think many of the people you know are very good people.”
“Thank you,” I say, and it slips from my lips before I can think.
I don’t see him move, don’t hear it, but suddenly he’s kneeling in front of me, fingers pulled tight on the plastic armrests. “You’re welcome,” he whispers, looks at me imploringly, and maybe he gives up on eye-contact, and instead wraps his arms around my neck, around my shoulders, kisses me on the cheek. “These things have a way of working themselves out.”
Ryan’s warm and he’s beautiful here, but for once I don’t care.
I just want my sister.
*
“Miss Urie,” the doctor starts, “Miss Urie is in a stable condition.”
Catherine has never been stable, so if she is, then it’s probably a first.
“She has a severe concussion, three broken ribs, and some pretty nasty lacerations to her arms, legs, back, chest and face. She had heroin in her system.”
Catherine’s heart is too broken now, her blood too thin. Her body runs on liquid addictives now, none of that organic bodily fluid bullshit. She runs on heroin, cocaine and vodka.
“Mr. Urie,” the doctor starts, “Mr. Urie, the rape-test has come back positive.”
Tick! goes the clock.
The doctor’s eyes aren’t as big as Ryan’s, and I try to see through the concrete wall to where I know he is waiting outside the office. No such luck, so I pool my breathing, in and out, try to stop the violent clench of my fingers.
“Mr. Urie, the rape-test-“
“I heard you,” I say, dig my gnawed down nails into my thighs.
“Right,” she says. “Would you like some pamphlets or, well, I can give you-“
“When can I take her home?”
The doctor takes off her glasses, rubs at her eyes with blunt, sterile fingers, “Without any hindrances? Two days.”
“Thank you,” I say, and I hold out my hand for her to shake. “I presume I can visit her now?”
“Uh, well, yes.” The doctor sighs, gives me a hesitant smile. “She’s in room 218. Take the elevator up a floor and it should be directly on your left.”
“Thanks,” I say again, and my legs must be made of rotting wood, of ancient stone, because they feel old and stiff and just, just not working. It takes me years to get to the door of the office, to find Ryan on the other side, sitting on a hard, plastic chair that looks too big for him.
“Yeah?” he says, and he stands up quickly, gracelessly.
“Catherine is…” I start.
Catherine is a lot of things. Catherine is slutty and an addict and just, she’s dumb. Catherine doesn’t think things through, Catherine doesn’t understand, Catherine hates herself, Catherine wants to die, right up until the point that hell’s doors are staring at her.
Catherine was raped about seven hours ago.
I saw her there, with her head cracked open on the concrete, and it was awful, because out of the fracture spilt red wine and straight-vodka and martinis, her nose was running, all snot and cocaine and heroin.
And not yet, but later on, the doctor will tell me that her rapist had been dumb enough to leave the condom still inside her, covered in semen and blood and blood and blood.
“…Catherine is fine,” I finish, but she isn’t, she never was, and she never will be. Some people are just fucked up.
“Room 218,” I say, and it takes us four minutes and thirty-two seconds to get there.
Tick! goes the clock.
*
“Hi,” Catherine says, and her pupils are dilated, skin so pale that it scarcely contrasts with the bone-coloured sheets.
I haven’t said anything, can’t say anything, so Ryan takes the lead, wanders a little closer to her bedside. “Hello.”
“I don’t think I know you,” Catherine says, and her head tilts and she looks like she’s twelve years old again, twelve years old and teaching me how to blow bubbles in soda.
“I’m Ryan.”
“I’m Catherine,” she says, and she furrows her brow, her fingers play with the edge of the sheet. “At least I think so, I can’t quite remember right now.”
“I think you’re Catherine too,” Ryan says, and he pulls the stool over from beside the window, pushes it close to her bedside. “You’re Brendon’s sister.”
“I am,” she says, “famous by association.” She fucking winks at Ryan at this point, and she has bandages over her arms and her chest and around her head, she’s all broken and fucked up, and she’s fucking joking around, like nothing’s wrong, like she’s raped everyday.
“What the fuck, Catherine?” I say, and it’s half-whispered, half-yelled, and they’re both staring now, a soap-opera on pause. Both of them, with their big eyes and pretty faces and broken hearts.
“What the fuck?” I say, and it’s louder this time. I’m moving over to her before I can stop myself, over to her bedside, only I don’t kneel or pull up a stool, I loom over her, and I hope I’m fucking threatening.
“You are so fucking stupid,” I state, and it’s hard with the way my jaw’s clenched, with the way my teeth grind together. “I hate you so fucking much right now, Catherine, what the fuck are you doing?”
Storm clouds are gathering under her eyelids, thunder erupting in her throat. “Fuck off, Bren,” she chokes out, first hint of rain just visible beneath the black-eye-storm-cloud.
“No, I won’t fuck off. I don’t know what the hell you’re playing at, but-“
“Fuck off, Brendon.” The sound is ripped from her throat, raw and pained and just, just Catherine. “Fuck off,” she whispers, and for once, just today, I’m gonna oblige her.
“Fine,” I say, “I hope you keel over and fucking die.”
I want her to say something. I want her to scream at me and yell at me, and tell me what a fucking jackass I am, but she doesn’t, and she won’t, because right now, her heart is too fucking broken, and maybe mine is too.
Maybe that’s why I can’t get out of that room fast enough.
I practically tear the door off its hinges, slam it behind me, and breathe, because right then, in those thirty seconds, breathing is all I can think about. In and out and in and in and in, swallow the wind and the air and the whole fucking sterile scent that’s too common in hospitals, that reek that falls somewhere between death and medication and old men soiling themselves.
I chance a look back through the looking glass of room 218.
Ryan’s sitting on the bed with her, with Catherine, and the bandages around her head are drenched red with blood. Ryan’s sitting there, with this bleeding, crying Catherine and he’s holding her and he’s whispering to her and he’s doing all these things that I never could.
Ryan’s pulled her clock from his pocket, and I hadn’t even realised I’d lost it, he’s pulled out her clock and it’s still not fixed, but maybe it’s a little shinier, a little cleaner. Tickticktick, and Catherine slips it into the invisible pocket of her paper-nightgown.
Tick! goes the clock.
*
Dong! it goes, and it’s nine o’clock the morning after my film premiered, nine o’clock and Ryan and I are checking into this crappy little motel off the Vegas strip, five minutes from the hospital.
I try not to stab the receptionist with my ballpoint pen, when she asks for my autograph, when she asks for a photo, when she asks for a kiss.
“Room, room four,” she says, and she smiles up with crooked teeth and a smile that will get her nowhere in LA. Ryan grabs the key, smiles back with his own, a glimmering straight and narrow look at the perfection that LA regurgitates.
“Just for two days,” I mumble to Ryan. “Just till Catherine can get out. You don’t have to stay.”
“It’s fine,” Ryan says, runs his fingers against the wall as we walk by. “Great way to meet people, meet characters and scenarios. Good for writers.”
“Yeah,” I say, even if I have no idea what he just said. The night was too long and too dark and too frigid in every sense of the word. I’m just tired right now, just want to embrace the familiar, embrace sleep.
We get to the room, and it’s tiny, two single beds, a miniature television and a broken lamp in the corner. The curtains match the quilts on the bed match the wallpaper. Floral everything. I’m in a paddock, a greenhouse, a garden. Just, a really ugly one.
I crumple onto the bed, and my internal organs collapse in on themselves. Fuck you, Brendon Urie, fuck you for making us work this hard tonight, last night, whatever.
Ryan falls onto the other bed, the one maybe a meter away from mine, his eyes quiver shut and his fingers rub at the bridge of his nose. “Brendon.”
“Yeah?”
“Catherine’s gonna be fine.”
“I know,” I say, and I close my eyes too, sleep isn’t close enough.
“Brendon,” Ryan sighs, long and deep. “Brendon, it probably isn’t my place to say-“
“Then don’t say it,” I state, coz I know what’s happening, I know what’s coming, and something’s bubbling in my intestines that I can’t quite push down.
“Brendon, she was raped and obviously beaten up, and you stormed in there, and you were…” He’s looking for the right word, my eyes are open and I can see his body shudder, his eyelids flicker. “You were mean.”
Bubbling is getting higher, in my stomach now, rearing at the walls, fighting off the acids and enzymes that work there. “I said what I felt.”
“You were awful, Brendon. She called you. There were probably dozens of other people she could’ve called that were closer and easier and more convenient, but she called you. What does that say?”
It says that the people Catherine surrounds herself with are even less reliable than the people I surround myself with. “It says fuck all, Ryan.”
“It says a lot more than that.”
“What the fuck do you know anyway?” I’m sitting up now, I’m too awake, but I’m too tired, and Ryan has rolled over on the bed, left his back to me. “You come into the LA scene with some fucking concept for some indie-film, and suddenly you know everything about everyone. You know me, for what, a month, and suddenly you can criticize me and how I act. You know my sister for a night and suddenly you can defend her honour and hold her and be there for her.”
Ryan rolls over again, sits up too quickly, and stares at me with unblinking eyes. He’s too still here, too silent, his lips part though, a creaky window. “She needed you,” he whispers.
“And I came.”
“Physically,” Ryan says, and he meets my eyes for maybe the first time that night, that day, half-hidden though, beneath hair and fringe and skin. “Not all needs are physical, not all tangible.”
And I’ve just had too much of this today, too much of Ryan and Catherine and just, all of it. “Fuck off, Ryan.”
“Jesus,” he says, “is this how the Urie’s deal with everything?”
“Just, fuck off, Ryan, seriously,” I say, fingers clench at my sides, and I’m standing up, have this desperate, urgent need to loom today, to be bigger and stronger and more aggressive.
“No,” he says, and he’s standing up too, “no, you need to talk to her, but you won’t, you won’t because you’re an asshole, Brendon. You’re an asshole and you’re afraid and you’re-“
And this is what I’ve been waiting for, this is what I’ve needed, this is my excuse. My fingers clench, and my fist draws back, and before I can even think to stop myself, my fingers collide with his cheekbone. Smash.
Bone slides against my knuckles like ill-fitting jigsaw pieces. It doesn’t fit and it’s forceful, and the edges of both fray a little, cardboard isn’t that tough. Ryan doesn’t fall back, so maybe he’s stronger than I give him credit for, maybe he’s not as breakable, but that look on his face, the wide eyes and the bruising cheek is enough to make my breathing heavier, less pleased than I should be.
“Right,” Ryan says, and his fingers graze across his cheekbone. “Right,” he says.
“Ryan…”
“Don’t worry about it, Brendon, don’t worry.”
“I-“
“I’ll fuck off, Brendon, don’t worry.”
“Wait.” His back’s turned to me again, he’s grabbing his car keys off the bed.
“Wait.” And I grab his arm, grab his wrist. “Wait.”
“No, Brendon,”
“Please, just-“
“No, Brendon.” And he’s looking at me again, his eyes are glasses of water, plastic rain catchers. “Please don’t make me stay, don’t make me think less of you.”
“What?”
“Brendon,” he says, “Brendon, I don’t want to think of you like everyone else.”
My eyes flicker across his arm, it’s recoiling, twisting away from me, his eyes won’t meet mine again, and teeth catch his lip. “Just let me leave, Brendon.”
“Okay,” I say, and I let go of his arm, his wrist, and he picks up his keys, his wallet, and he packs himself away, folds up whatever pieces of him I’d been privy too, and this, this feels like the morning after we never had.
Ryan packs up his things, dresses his eyes, his lungs and his heart, covers it all up, takes it all away from where I’d maybe fucked it. He has everything he needs, and he runs his fingers through his hair, evens it out, smooths it all down; out of his pocket he pulls a pair of scissors, and every string I had seen the week before is clean cut, snipped and broken.
“G’bye,” he mumbles, and he leaves, strings draping off his back and his arms and his legs, collecting dust and insects and grime from the floor.
“Bye,” I say, and I finger the strings that fall off me. It’s probably awful, that all my mind dwells on, all I can think is that, hey, I don’t remember Alice hurting this bad.
Tick! goes the clock, the one that drapes from the floral wallpaper.
Rating: M
Fandom: P!atd (Brendon/Ryan)
Tick! goes the clock.
Eternity must pass by sometime in here. Forever must whir on in some sort of fascinating slowness.
Tick! goes the clock.
A thousand nurses have stolen Catherine from me, stolen my white rabbit and left me sitting here with her broken clock. Tick! it goes, and it’s too slow, too desperate and strained in its timing, the second hand is moving in hours. Thing about hospital waiting rooms is that they involve waiting and patience and tears, none of which I’ll ever be any good at.
“Brendon,” Ryan says, and he’s looking at me, all eyes and hair and lips. “Brendon, it’ll be all right.”
I shrug, tighten each fist where they rest at my knees.
“It’ll be okay,” he says, and he’s desperately seeking an eye contact I can’t give him. He wants a lot of things I can’t give him. He wants a lot of things that people have never even expected of me.
“Not many people would do this, y’know,” I say, and I’m still not looking at him properly, not at his face. I can see two bony knees, almost poking through the pinstriped pants.
“What?”
“Not many people I know would sit here with me, wait for my idiot sister to come out of emergency, intensive care, where ever the fuck she is.” Take a deep breath, let my eyelids flutter shut, open. “Not many people I know would do this.”
“Then,” Ryan pauses, inhales deeply too, and it’s nice to know it’s not just me who needs to remember to breathe tonight, “then, I don’t think many of the people you know are very good people.”
“Thank you,” I say, and it slips from my lips before I can think.
I don’t see him move, don’t hear it, but suddenly he’s kneeling in front of me, fingers pulled tight on the plastic armrests. “You’re welcome,” he whispers, looks at me imploringly, and maybe he gives up on eye-contact, and instead wraps his arms around my neck, around my shoulders, kisses me on the cheek. “These things have a way of working themselves out.”
Ryan’s warm and he’s beautiful here, but for once I don’t care.
I just want my sister.
*
“Miss Urie,” the doctor starts, “Miss Urie is in a stable condition.”
Catherine has never been stable, so if she is, then it’s probably a first.
“She has a severe concussion, three broken ribs, and some pretty nasty lacerations to her arms, legs, back, chest and face. She had heroin in her system.”
Catherine’s heart is too broken now, her blood too thin. Her body runs on liquid addictives now, none of that organic bodily fluid bullshit. She runs on heroin, cocaine and vodka.
“Mr. Urie,” the doctor starts, “Mr. Urie, the rape-test has come back positive.”
Tick! goes the clock.
The doctor’s eyes aren’t as big as Ryan’s, and I try to see through the concrete wall to where I know he is waiting outside the office. No such luck, so I pool my breathing, in and out, try to stop the violent clench of my fingers.
“Mr. Urie, the rape-test-“
“I heard you,” I say, dig my gnawed down nails into my thighs.
“Right,” she says. “Would you like some pamphlets or, well, I can give you-“
“When can I take her home?”
The doctor takes off her glasses, rubs at her eyes with blunt, sterile fingers, “Without any hindrances? Two days.”
“Thank you,” I say, and I hold out my hand for her to shake. “I presume I can visit her now?”
“Uh, well, yes.” The doctor sighs, gives me a hesitant smile. “She’s in room 218. Take the elevator up a floor and it should be directly on your left.”
“Thanks,” I say again, and my legs must be made of rotting wood, of ancient stone, because they feel old and stiff and just, just not working. It takes me years to get to the door of the office, to find Ryan on the other side, sitting on a hard, plastic chair that looks too big for him.
“Yeah?” he says, and he stands up quickly, gracelessly.
“Catherine is…” I start.
Catherine is a lot of things. Catherine is slutty and an addict and just, she’s dumb. Catherine doesn’t think things through, Catherine doesn’t understand, Catherine hates herself, Catherine wants to die, right up until the point that hell’s doors are staring at her.
Catherine was raped about seven hours ago.
I saw her there, with her head cracked open on the concrete, and it was awful, because out of the fracture spilt red wine and straight-vodka and martinis, her nose was running, all snot and cocaine and heroin.
And not yet, but later on, the doctor will tell me that her rapist had been dumb enough to leave the condom still inside her, covered in semen and blood and blood and blood.
“…Catherine is fine,” I finish, but she isn’t, she never was, and she never will be. Some people are just fucked up.
“Room 218,” I say, and it takes us four minutes and thirty-two seconds to get there.
Tick! goes the clock.
*
“Hi,” Catherine says, and her pupils are dilated, skin so pale that it scarcely contrasts with the bone-coloured sheets.
I haven’t said anything, can’t say anything, so Ryan takes the lead, wanders a little closer to her bedside. “Hello.”
“I don’t think I know you,” Catherine says, and her head tilts and she looks like she’s twelve years old again, twelve years old and teaching me how to blow bubbles in soda.
“I’m Ryan.”
“I’m Catherine,” she says, and she furrows her brow, her fingers play with the edge of the sheet. “At least I think so, I can’t quite remember right now.”
“I think you’re Catherine too,” Ryan says, and he pulls the stool over from beside the window, pushes it close to her bedside. “You’re Brendon’s sister.”
“I am,” she says, “famous by association.” She fucking winks at Ryan at this point, and she has bandages over her arms and her chest and around her head, she’s all broken and fucked up, and she’s fucking joking around, like nothing’s wrong, like she’s raped everyday.
“What the fuck, Catherine?” I say, and it’s half-whispered, half-yelled, and they’re both staring now, a soap-opera on pause. Both of them, with their big eyes and pretty faces and broken hearts.
“What the fuck?” I say, and it’s louder this time. I’m moving over to her before I can stop myself, over to her bedside, only I don’t kneel or pull up a stool, I loom over her, and I hope I’m fucking threatening.
“You are so fucking stupid,” I state, and it’s hard with the way my jaw’s clenched, with the way my teeth grind together. “I hate you so fucking much right now, Catherine, what the fuck are you doing?”
Storm clouds are gathering under her eyelids, thunder erupting in her throat. “Fuck off, Bren,” she chokes out, first hint of rain just visible beneath the black-eye-storm-cloud.
“No, I won’t fuck off. I don’t know what the hell you’re playing at, but-“
“Fuck off, Brendon.” The sound is ripped from her throat, raw and pained and just, just Catherine. “Fuck off,” she whispers, and for once, just today, I’m gonna oblige her.
“Fine,” I say, “I hope you keel over and fucking die.”
I want her to say something. I want her to scream at me and yell at me, and tell me what a fucking jackass I am, but she doesn’t, and she won’t, because right now, her heart is too fucking broken, and maybe mine is too.
Maybe that’s why I can’t get out of that room fast enough.
I practically tear the door off its hinges, slam it behind me, and breathe, because right then, in those thirty seconds, breathing is all I can think about. In and out and in and in and in, swallow the wind and the air and the whole fucking sterile scent that’s too common in hospitals, that reek that falls somewhere between death and medication and old men soiling themselves.
I chance a look back through the looking glass of room 218.
Ryan’s sitting on the bed with her, with Catherine, and the bandages around her head are drenched red with blood. Ryan’s sitting there, with this bleeding, crying Catherine and he’s holding her and he’s whispering to her and he’s doing all these things that I never could.
Ryan’s pulled her clock from his pocket, and I hadn’t even realised I’d lost it, he’s pulled out her clock and it’s still not fixed, but maybe it’s a little shinier, a little cleaner. Tickticktick, and Catherine slips it into the invisible pocket of her paper-nightgown.
Tick! goes the clock.
*
Dong! it goes, and it’s nine o’clock the morning after my film premiered, nine o’clock and Ryan and I are checking into this crappy little motel off the Vegas strip, five minutes from the hospital.
I try not to stab the receptionist with my ballpoint pen, when she asks for my autograph, when she asks for a photo, when she asks for a kiss.
“Room, room four,” she says, and she smiles up with crooked teeth and a smile that will get her nowhere in LA. Ryan grabs the key, smiles back with his own, a glimmering straight and narrow look at the perfection that LA regurgitates.
“Just for two days,” I mumble to Ryan. “Just till Catherine can get out. You don’t have to stay.”
“It’s fine,” Ryan says, runs his fingers against the wall as we walk by. “Great way to meet people, meet characters and scenarios. Good for writers.”
“Yeah,” I say, even if I have no idea what he just said. The night was too long and too dark and too frigid in every sense of the word. I’m just tired right now, just want to embrace the familiar, embrace sleep.
We get to the room, and it’s tiny, two single beds, a miniature television and a broken lamp in the corner. The curtains match the quilts on the bed match the wallpaper. Floral everything. I’m in a paddock, a greenhouse, a garden. Just, a really ugly one.
I crumple onto the bed, and my internal organs collapse in on themselves. Fuck you, Brendon Urie, fuck you for making us work this hard tonight, last night, whatever.
Ryan falls onto the other bed, the one maybe a meter away from mine, his eyes quiver shut and his fingers rub at the bridge of his nose. “Brendon.”
“Yeah?”
“Catherine’s gonna be fine.”
“I know,” I say, and I close my eyes too, sleep isn’t close enough.
“Brendon,” Ryan sighs, long and deep. “Brendon, it probably isn’t my place to say-“
“Then don’t say it,” I state, coz I know what’s happening, I know what’s coming, and something’s bubbling in my intestines that I can’t quite push down.
“Brendon, she was raped and obviously beaten up, and you stormed in there, and you were…” He’s looking for the right word, my eyes are open and I can see his body shudder, his eyelids flicker. “You were mean.”
Bubbling is getting higher, in my stomach now, rearing at the walls, fighting off the acids and enzymes that work there. “I said what I felt.”
“You were awful, Brendon. She called you. There were probably dozens of other people she could’ve called that were closer and easier and more convenient, but she called you. What does that say?”
It says that the people Catherine surrounds herself with are even less reliable than the people I surround myself with. “It says fuck all, Ryan.”
“It says a lot more than that.”
“What the fuck do you know anyway?” I’m sitting up now, I’m too awake, but I’m too tired, and Ryan has rolled over on the bed, left his back to me. “You come into the LA scene with some fucking concept for some indie-film, and suddenly you know everything about everyone. You know me, for what, a month, and suddenly you can criticize me and how I act. You know my sister for a night and suddenly you can defend her honour and hold her and be there for her.”
Ryan rolls over again, sits up too quickly, and stares at me with unblinking eyes. He’s too still here, too silent, his lips part though, a creaky window. “She needed you,” he whispers.
“And I came.”
“Physically,” Ryan says, and he meets my eyes for maybe the first time that night, that day, half-hidden though, beneath hair and fringe and skin. “Not all needs are physical, not all tangible.”
And I’ve just had too much of this today, too much of Ryan and Catherine and just, all of it. “Fuck off, Ryan.”
“Jesus,” he says, “is this how the Urie’s deal with everything?”
“Just, fuck off, Ryan, seriously,” I say, fingers clench at my sides, and I’m standing up, have this desperate, urgent need to loom today, to be bigger and stronger and more aggressive.
“No,” he says, and he’s standing up too, “no, you need to talk to her, but you won’t, you won’t because you’re an asshole, Brendon. You’re an asshole and you’re afraid and you’re-“
And this is what I’ve been waiting for, this is what I’ve needed, this is my excuse. My fingers clench, and my fist draws back, and before I can even think to stop myself, my fingers collide with his cheekbone. Smash.
Bone slides against my knuckles like ill-fitting jigsaw pieces. It doesn’t fit and it’s forceful, and the edges of both fray a little, cardboard isn’t that tough. Ryan doesn’t fall back, so maybe he’s stronger than I give him credit for, maybe he’s not as breakable, but that look on his face, the wide eyes and the bruising cheek is enough to make my breathing heavier, less pleased than I should be.
“Right,” Ryan says, and his fingers graze across his cheekbone. “Right,” he says.
“Ryan…”
“Don’t worry about it, Brendon, don’t worry.”
“I-“
“I’ll fuck off, Brendon, don’t worry.”
“Wait.” His back’s turned to me again, he’s grabbing his car keys off the bed.
“Wait.” And I grab his arm, grab his wrist. “Wait.”
“No, Brendon,”
“Please, just-“
“No, Brendon.” And he’s looking at me again, his eyes are glasses of water, plastic rain catchers. “Please don’t make me stay, don’t make me think less of you.”
“What?”
“Brendon,” he says, “Brendon, I don’t want to think of you like everyone else.”
My eyes flicker across his arm, it’s recoiling, twisting away from me, his eyes won’t meet mine again, and teeth catch his lip. “Just let me leave, Brendon.”
“Okay,” I say, and I let go of his arm, his wrist, and he picks up his keys, his wallet, and he packs himself away, folds up whatever pieces of him I’d been privy too, and this, this feels like the morning after we never had.
Ryan packs up his things, dresses his eyes, his lungs and his heart, covers it all up, takes it all away from where I’d maybe fucked it. He has everything he needs, and he runs his fingers through his hair, evens it out, smooths it all down; out of his pocket he pulls a pair of scissors, and every string I had seen the week before is clean cut, snipped and broken.
“G’bye,” he mumbles, and he leaves, strings draping off his back and his arms and his legs, collecting dust and insects and grime from the floor.
“Bye,” I say, and I finger the strings that fall off me. It’s probably awful, that all my mind dwells on, all I can think is that, hey, I don’t remember Alice hurting this bad.
Tick! goes the clock, the one that drapes from the floral wallpaper.