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My heart.
My soul.
Yeah, she had all of me and that wasn’t an exaggeration.
I knew that gate-crashing her room wasn’t fair to either of us—I wasn’t stupid—but it was a habit I’d formed after my father died, and I just wasn’t ready to kick it. She was the nicotine I couldn’t walk away from. The crutch I hadn’t learned to walk without.
Get out of her bedroom, asshole.
Get your shit together.
You have no right to lean on her like this.
“They’re getting worse, Gerard.”
It wasn’t a question, but I forced myself to answer her anyway. “Yeah.”
“More violent.”
Again, it wasn’t a question, but I responded with a shaky “yeah.”
My nightmares had always been horrendous. Usually, I was good at hiding them from her, which was impressive considering I’d slept in her bed almost every night since I was seven.
When the night terrors were bad, like they had been this past summer, I tried to make myself scarce and made the conscious effort to sleep at my own house. It never seemed to make a difference, though, because even in sleep I found my way back to her.
“Why?” Concern filled her voice. “What’s been happening to you?”
Nothing.
Nothing was happening to me, which was why I felt so goddamn frustrated. I’d been plagued by night terrors since the accident. Sure, they got progressively worse a few years back when I was dealing with shit, but I was fine now.
Being happy was a decision I made for myself and, miraculously, it helped. It wasn’t real, I didn’t truly feel that way, but I was a firm believer in faking it until you made it. After all, I would be dead without the sentiment.
It was like anything I had ever manifested for my life. Even if it didn’t necessarily come true right away, I acted like it had until it did. For example, I wanted to be normal, therefore I was. I wanted to be talented like Johnny, to be smart like Hugh, to be creative like Patrick, therefore I did and was all those things.
Sure, I might not be any of those things naturally, but if I pretended like I was long enough, then there was a good chance it might happen.
Maybe Lizzie was right, and I was a thick fucker. I certainly wasn’t getting into any universities after Tommen. But I always had my sense of humor to fall back on.
Bluffing my way through life had worked like a charm so far. Bonus points because I wasn’t hurting anyone. Unlike Lizzie, I had found a way to cope, and grieve, and protect myself without tearing strips out of others.
Why be fucked-up Gerard when I could be Gibsie the fuckup? It couldn’t hurt when I was Gibsie, because Gibsie was my armor, and humor was my sword.
I didn’t think too much about the words that came out of my mouth. I usually said whatever was on my mind at the time, and that formed the person I had become in the minds of my friends. I was naturally self-deprecating, never purposefully cruel, and my attitude made people laugh. My mouth spurted shit at the expense of my own character, like a cloak of self-sabotaging protection.
Nothing I said was for venomous or boasting purposes. It was for sheer protection. It was my safety net. Because I had an acute need to protect myself and I didn’t know how else to do that in a world where everyone aside from me seemed to have their shit together.
There was only one person in my life that still saw me as, well, me.
Only one person who refused to let go of the version of me from the past.
The girl with her arms around me.
My girl.
“Then it has to be what happened to you on the camping trip,” she declared in a passionate tone of voice. “When Lizzie pushed you into the river, she must have triggered something inside of you—a memory of that day.”
“Maybe,” I replied, my breathing still uneven and ragged. “Whatever.” Sitting forward, I pressed my face into my hands and tried to get a handle on myself. “Doesn’t matter.”
