After the fight, my void no longer seemed deep enough anymore. I was no longer easily able to slip away inside my head and block out the world around me. With the sudden loss, I was finding it much harder to deal with everyone and everything around me.
I lasted only fifteen minutes into the seventh period before I was forced to gather up my things and dart from the room as the sheer volume of life began to overwhelm me. My feet thankfully still moved on autopilot removing my need to formulate a plan. It took only a few minutes before I found myself standing in the doorway to the nurse's office.
The older woman sitting at the desk took one look at me before ushering me to the other end of the room where a set of beds were hidden behind some curtains. She motioned me towards the free bed which I laid down in thankful that she wasn’t asking any questions though I was curious as to how bad I looked that she deemed this necessary.
Once I was situated in bed she went back to her desk leaving us alone.
Turning my head I locked eyes once again with Liam who was currently occupying the other bed. The blood on his chin had been cleared away and he was laying with his face towards me so that he was able to balance a bag of ice on his swollen cheek.
We laid like that until the bell rang once signaling the end of the seventh period. From my spot in bed, I could still hear the commotion of the hallway as students milled about going from one room to another. I focused on Liam’s eyes until another bell sounded and the hall fell silent once more as the eighth period began. While it wasn’t the same feeling as being inside my void, looking into those deep blue depths calmed me while also keeping the rest of the world from being too overwhelming.
Liam took the bag from his cheek before standing up, grabbing the pillow off of his bed and moving over towards me. He motioned for me to push over, allowing him just enough room to lay down beside me.
With him being so close it seemed like the entire world shrank down leaving only the two of us. I was able to feel every time he inhaled, his chest inflating until we were just barely touching before his warm breath puffed against my cheeks. Liam laid with one arm folded under his head while the other sat on his side until turning at the elbow so that his hand rested on my hip.
“I know you don’t want to talk” he whispered breaking the silence after a couple of minutes. “Do you think it would be okay if I just talked though?”
I nodded once, not sure what he might want to talk about but now that our entire world was just the two of us the thought of someone talking to me didn’t seem to be such a burden.
“Is it okay to talk about Kyle?” Liam asked immediately going to the source of everything that had gone wrong with life.
This was the first time I had heard anyone say his name in almost a month and I still wasn’t prepared for the rush of mixed emotions hearing it brought me. I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to be ready to talk about everything but laying there looking into Liam’s sad gaze told me that he needed this so I nodded once more.
“He sent me a text, asking me to meet him at his house. Kyle told me to use the spare key his parents had under the ceramic frog on the back porch to let myself in. They had taken his sister to go see a movie so I assumed he wanted to .. you know” he said a small smile on his lips as he alluded to the activity we were both very familiar with. “When I got there I could hear the shower running upstairs.
“I locked the door behind me, took off my shoes and walked upstairs calling out for him. He didn’t answer but the bathroom door was open just a crack so I went in and he wa-” Liam’s voice broke as a tear slid from his eye, rolling across the bridge of his nose before disappearing into the other eye.
I moved closer to him, pressing our bodies as close as they could get, my arm closing around him and I pressed my forehead to his. The world shrunk even more than and all that existed to me was Liam’s brilliant blue eyes that were now glistening with unshed tears.
“He wanted me to find him, forced me to be the one,” he said his voice lower then before as the words came out slowly as if he no longer trusted his voice.
Hearing this made my blood run cold and I doubled my efforts to pull Liam as close to me as possible. He was so sad, had been so sad for so long now over someone who had done something so atrocious and vile to him. Kyle had spent his last moments making sure that Liam was the one who found him.
My desire to block out the world and give up on life evaporated as everything inside of me was filled with red hot anger. I thought that I had lost someone precious and dear to me, to us, but if this was how he treated Liam I no longer wanted to give everything up just because he was gone.
Liam’s eyes became too much to focus on and I closed my one letting myself feel the heat from his forehead and his soft rhythmic breath on my face. I wanted to say something to make him feel better but after staying silent for so long the words didn't seem to be within me any longer. Hoping that my presence was enough for him I began rubbing small circles on his back.
We stayed like that through the rest of the period and well into the ninth. At one point it sounded like the nurse had come back to check on us though she hadn’t said anything about us sharing one bed.
It wasn’t until Liam shifted his head slightly that I opened my eyes again. His blue gaze was no longer watery with unshed tears though the drying trails of those that had escaped could still be seen. The sadness had been replaced and now he was looking at me with some new emotion I couldn’t figure out, his eyes searching my own as if trying to find the answer to some unasked questions.
He exhaled and I could feel the warm air pass over my lips. One of us, or maybe both of us together closed the small distance between our lips reuniting them in a slow, gentle kiss. Neither of us looked away and once we broke apart our gazes remained locked.
“I’m sorr-” Liam began before I silenced him once more by pressing my lips to his.
I didn’t want him to be sorry for this, I didn’t want to be sorry for this.
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