CHAPTER FOUR
AUBREY
SOMETIMES, I wondered if I was living in a dream. That maybe I hadn’t attended my mother’s funeral just the day before. After a week of living in the Stonewood’s home, I wondered if I would ever wake up.
At first, no one bothered me other than Jay and Katie.
Katie’s demons influenced her reaction to my hell. A few days ago, she’d pushed the door open without knocking, and without saying a word, crawled under the blankets with me. When I didn’t move away or closer to her, she wrapped her thin arms around me and whispered, “It doesn’t really get better for a while.”
My throat constricted and my eyes watered a little.
She smoothed my hair and followed up with, “It doesn’t really get worse, either.”
I gasped, laughed, and then cried.
She held me until I calmed down and mumbled, “Don’t hole up too much longer. Call me when you’re ready.”
She flew out of the room as quickly as she’d come in. I didn’t see her after for a long time, but I knew she’d done that to give me the space she would have wanted.
Jay, on the other hand, came to my door every day and tried to get me out of their guest room.
One day, he stood in the doorway, leaning on the frame and looking at me with such pain in his eyes that I almost comforted him. My body wouldn’t move though. It seemed every part of me had been drained of energy. I just stared back at him as I lay on my side, trying to will myself to look less depressed than I felt.
“How are you?” he asked and then winced. “Shit, don’t answer that.”
I just kept staring at him, despite his discomfort. It wasn’t the first time I’d witnessed how my best friend wore his emotions on his sleeve for everyone to see. He was so easy to read, so open and transparent. So normal.
“Why don’t you come downstairs with me and I’ll make you something to eat?”
He had to know that his mother placed food on the nightstand for me every couple of hours, she came in to buzz about and talk even though I only nodded along as I ate.
I didn’t taste any of the meals she brought to my room. I went through the motions. I thanked her, listened to a story, and chewed the food. She asked how the room was, I answered that it was great. She asked how I felt, I said tired. My responses were automatic. Controlled. Control was, like my mother had always said, my best friend.
I shook my head at Jay and mustered up the strength to at least answer him today. “I just can’t, Jay.”
He rushed to the bed, needing just the inch I’d given him to take a mile. “You have to, Brey. You’re going to go insane in here.”
I stared ahead.
He sat down on the bed and squeezed my hip. “You’re losing weight and you barely move. That means you aren’t eating enough or the paint in here is such a shitty shade that it’s eating you alive.”
His attempt at a joke for some reason brought tears to my eyes. This terrible dream had me featured in it as the unstable, crazy girl. Nothing made sense. Not my emotions, not my thoughts, not my life.
“Shit, Brey. Don’t cry. That was supposed to be funny.” He ran a hand through his hair, uncomfortable. “I’m saying all the wrong things today.”
I wanted to comfort him, tell him he was my best friend and that it wasn’t his fault. But it felt like everyone’s fault. No one understood.
Everyone was normal.
And normalcy was suffocating me.
I jumped when I heard another voice in the doorway. “You’re saying all the right things, Jay. She’s just acting like a child, and you’re treating her like one.”
Jay whipped around to look at Jax. His body went rigid and his hand squeezed my hip again. I couldn’t see how Jay looked at his older brother, but I knew what his expression would be. “Come on, Jax.” His voice came out strained and mixed with a plea.
Jax’s family had no idea how to act around him. Or me, for that matter. We were an enigma to everyone who hadn’t been through our trauma.
Jax handled what he went through differently from me though. He didn’t flinch when someone mentioned the fire like I did. He didn’t shy away from confrontation. When the police asked us to come to the station to give our statements, I imagine he’d handled the interrogation as if he were giving an interview, showing every single expression everyone expected to see.