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Watching himself destroy himself hurts even more.
It’s unbearable.
So unbearable, that every time I try to muster the courage to text him or go over and talk to him—to try and stop this, fix this…
I freeze up.
I panic.
I end up curled up on the floor, screaming into my knees.
I don’t know what to fucking do. And it guts me, so much so that I’m utterly useless.
I either feel everything or I feel nothing. No in between. And both paralyze me.
Waylon, on the other hand…
He hasn’t given up.
He’s stronger than me, or maybe just better at taking emotional hits than me. Maybe he welcomes it, like I welcome the rush that comes with driving recklessly, speeding down back roads.
Maybe it’s easier for him to focus on Mason, than himself.
I don’t fucking know.
But unlike me, he still goes over and checks on him. Keeps an eye on him if Sherry’s pulling a shift at the hospital, and Gavin can’t step away from the bar.
No one leaves Phoebe alone with Mason, not now, not when he can’t even be trusted to take care of himself.
“When Izzy comes back, I’ll stop.”
That's Mason’s reasoning, apparently, according to Waylon when he tried to level with him—explain to him how worried we all were.
Even if by some miracle, Izzy showed up tomorrow…
What?
Everything’s peachy again?
He’s cured?
And we just go on like these last two years didn’t happen?
He’s fucking delusional if he thinks anything will ever be the same again, or that he can just quit, just like that. He can’t see how gone he is, but the rest of us can. He’s well past the point of just coping.
We all are.
We’re broken.
Shattered.
Pieces scattered across a frozen alien landscape.
We’ll never be the same.
How the fuck did we get here?
Eventually a small, familiar grassy clearing comes up on my right, and I ease my car to a crawl just as one song fades into the next. The opening guitar chords of “Drift” by Forty Foot Echo fill the car, and I tap my fingers on the steering wheel. Smoke curling up from the charred end of my joint.
