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Our gazes meet across the cab.
He searches my eyes. “It might feel like life’s on pause for you right now, and that’s okay.” He nods, and something in me relaxes at his words. “But what you do during this pause? There’s no erasing it. When life starts up again, I don’t want you to have burned it all to the ground. You get me?”
I suck in my cheeks, and nod.
“You’re like a son to me, you know that, right?”
Nose and eyes burning, I nod. “Y-yeah.”
Sniffing, he leans over and clasps the back of my head, gripping me tight. “You’re not alone, Segar. And we love you. We’re here for you, please don’t forget that.”
I open my mouth, close it, fumbling over the words trying to force their way out.
“I know,” I finally say. Nodding rapidly, I say, “I just…I’m just tired.”
His eyes crease, and his mouth disappears inside his beard.
“I keep expecting to wake up, and-and…” Sniffing, I turn and wipe my face on my bicep. “I don’t care if it’s a year or ten from now, I can’t…I c-can’t.” My breaths begin to quicken, and the hand around my skull lowers, squeezing my nape.
“One breath in, one breath out. That’s all you need to focus on for now. Okay?”
Eyes falling shut, I nod.
“And no more fights.”
Grimacing, I nod…but the second I do, I feel it for the lie it is.
I can’t promise that, any more than I can promise I’ll wake up tomorrow and suddenly not feel like I’m dying inside. I just…I don’t know. It comes in waves—pummeling me, dragging me down before I even realize what’s happening.
This…this darkness inside me that consumes me.
One second, I’m okay. Things are…shitty, but bearable.
And the next, they’re not. They’re not bearable.
And it happens so fast, that shift—quicker than it takes me to hold my breath and count to five and talk myself down.
I’ll be standing on solid ground, and then I’m drowning, caught up in a riptide I didn’t see coming, not until it was too late.
There’s no breaking free when this happens. All I can do is let go and see where it takes me, knowing that when all is said and done, and things finally calm down enough for me to get my bearings…
I’ll just be worse off than I was before.
“I’ll try,” I whisper, meeting Gavin’s pinched gaze. I shrug. “I’ll try.”
His eyes fall shut, and he nods, knowing that’s all I’m capable of right now.
Day by day.
Breath by breath.
That’s all I have.
Later that night—or rather, what feels like night—I wake up to a thudding against my door.
Bleariness clings to me from the painkillers I was prescribed, so it takes me a second longer than it should to orient myself to my surroundings. Shadows bathe my room, making it feel a lot later than the 6:35 blaring red at me from my digital alarm clock on the nightstand.
Another thud-thud against the door, and I realize I didn’t imagine someone knocking.
