Ashes Of Another Life - 4. Chapter 4

I hadn’t spoken to him in three months.

He’d tried so hard to be there. He even used to come with me to visit Justin, but he’d gotten tired of it—of me. I really couldn’t blame him. Whenever he came with me to the hospital, I just wanted him gone so I could be alone with Justin. Whenever he came to visit me at my house, I did my best to get rid of him as quickly as possible.

I’d gotten particularly good at hammering him into the ground whenever he tried to make me talk about it. I didn’t need to talk to him, thanks. I had Justin.

Only I didn’t. Not really.

There was this one time—just once, it never happened again—that I wished Justin had died. It wasn’t on purpose, and I didn’t mean it. The thought had come unbidden over the summer after I’d seen all my friends out at a park I sometimes ran past, and they were all laughing and having a good time, and I missed them. I missed who I was when I was friends with them, and I missed Justin. And for just one moment, I wished that he’d died the night of the accident.

And then I got sick all over the pavement in front of all of my old friends. None of them laughed. None of them even really noticed, except Tyler, and I ran away from the park before he could take more than three steps in my direction.

Justin was gone but he wasn’t. He was alive, but he wasn’t really there. He had me every minute of every day, but I didn’t have him, and for one second I just…wished he’d let me go. If he’d died, it would have hurt, so bad, but maybe I could have gotten past it.

I couldn’t get past this. I couldn’t leave him.

I wouldn’t leave him.

*

I never would have guessed that Austin could ever be someone I looked forward to seeing. I genuinely thought he was annoying from day one, but it was refreshing to be around him. He knew that I went to see Justin everyday, even after six months, and he didn’t think I was a freak. He didn’t know me before, back when I was normal, so he didn’t expect me to start trying to be.

He let me relax. I still never talked to Justin around him, had yet to say another word about Justin since I’d first unloaded on him, but I’d walked in on him talking to my boyfriend more than once. Austin just never stopped talking. He went on and on if there was another warm body in the room, even if that body wasn’t actually conscious.

Austin never made me talk though. He always listened when I did, but he never pushed me to actually say anything, never pressured me into a heart to heart, not even after my meltdown. If he asked me a question, and I didn’t answer, he’d just go right on talking like my answer wasn’t really necessary for him to make his point. He let me be quiet when I felt like it, and he kept up a nice hum of background noise that kept everything comfortable and relaxed. Easy. I was actually going to miss him when he left.

“I think the suicide rates of daytime soap writers must be high,” I told him on his last day in the hospital as I ate lunch in the room. “I mean seriously? This shit is depressing.”

“Yeah,” Austin agreed, solemn. “I’d totally off myself if my baby daddy was actually my uncle and slept with my best friend’s sister-in-law while my mother had cancer.”

I almost snorted bad jello through my nose. “Your ‘baby daddy’?” I asked, with a smirk in Austin’s direction.

He turned his nose up at me and crossed his arms. “If lovin’ him is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.”

I cracked up laughing. Serious laughter that had my stomach cramping and my cheeks aching.

“You are such a freak,” I said, throwing my spork at him.

“Well, yeah, obviously,” he said, completely straight faced. “I mean, there’s the uncle thing. That’s kind of freaky. But I don’t have time to think about that because my mom has cancer, and speaking of, that probably means it’s a bad time to tell her how I found out about her long lost brother.” He paused, frowning as he thought that over in his head. “Yeah, dude, I think I should change the channel.”

I snorted into my Styrofoam cup of apple juice and nodded. “No shit.”

“Family Feud it is,” he said, rubbing his hands together, bad attempt at an evil smirk on his face. “Bet I can kick your ass.”

I rolled my eyes. “Probably.”

“Come on,” he challenged. “You’ve been here way longer than me. You totally have the advantage.”

“Actually, I’ve never used the TV before,” I responded, still laughing.

“Yeah fucking right,” Austin replied. “What do you do, then? If you have a PSP that you haven’t been sharing, I’m going to use the bed pan, just so I can throw it at you.”

I frowned, instantly flashing to my first day in economics. I’m Conner and I run.

I’m Conner, and I run, and talk to nearly brain dead people on a daily basis. And by ‘people’, I mean person. As in, one person. And I like hanging out with my four year old sister because she still thinks I’m cool because I have spiky hair and I bring her cookies.

“Uhm,” I said, trying and failing not to look in Justin’s direction. “You know, I…”

“Write in your little diary?” he suggested with a teasing grin. No sign of pity, even though I knew he understood what my twitch toward Justin had meant.

“It’s not a diary, dickwad,” I said, puffing out my chest.

“Diary, journal, whatever,” he said with a wave. “Hey, you’ve totally got poems about me somewhere, don’t you? I bet you do. I’m awesome. I have eyelashes and everything.”

“Totally,” I deadpanned. “And your scrawny elbows are such a turn on.”

“I know you want me,” Austin said, turning back to the TV. “Bitch.”

I laughed, settling back into my chair. “Freak.”

He didn’t respond, just went back to staring at the television. He made comments every so often, wondering out loud whether the people that thought up the topics on the game show smoked weed or ate mushrooms, but other than that he left me alone. That was my favorite part about Austin. He was company that didn’t pressure me to entertain him. He could do that all on his own.

Visiting hours came to an end without another word exchanged between the two of us. I stood up, grabbed Justin’s hand to squeeze it in silent apology for the lack of conversation lately, and nodded at Austin as I walked to the door.

“Hey Conner,” he called just as I stepped into the hallway.

I turned back, leaning my head back through the door. “Yeah?”

“Chicks totally dig my elbows.”

*

Austin wasn’t there when I came to visit Justin the next day, and I didn’t even try and lie to myself and pretend I wasn’t disappointed.

“He was kind of entertaining in his way, right?” I asked Justin, staring over at Austin’s empty bed.

Obviously Justin didn’t answer, but I smiled, anyway, turning back to face him.

“I missed you,” I said. I didn’t feel silly about it. It felt good to say, felt even better that I could say it, without feeling angry with him for not being there. For not waking up to say it back.

I don’t think I was ever really mad at Justin. I loved Justin. I knew that, at least. But I got so fucked up, so twisted up in being there for him, and I was bitter. I never let Justin be alone, but he had no problem letting me.

I knew it wasn’t fair, but I couldn’t really help it. I don’t know how it got like that, but sitting there that day, it felt different somehow. I felt different.

The last couple of days I’d spent there hadn’t been lonely. I actually had good things to tell Justin about while I talked to him, and I could almost pretend that even if he wasn’t there in the bed next to me, he could hear me anyway. Wherever he was.

Because he wasn’t dead. He wasn’t, so he had to be somewhere, right?

I talked to Justin more that day than I had in months. I told him everything. I talked to him about my mom, and Kylie, and even Austin. It didn’t matter that Justin had been in the room for every second I’d spent with the guy, I wanted to tell him anyway. I wanted to tell him what I thought.

And it was good. I spent so much time trying to will Justin into reacting, into waking up. I was always talking to him, trying to make sure that just in case he could hear, he was hearing my voice so he’d know I was waiting. I’d never just talked to him before without any expectation.

I’d taken to making up responses for Justin. Maybe because part of me was hoping he’d wake up and contradict me, or maybe I just didn’t want to think about what he’d really say if he could see me now. When I first realized he really wasn’t waking up, not anytime soon, I’d tried to predict what he’d say back to me as I talked to him, but after awhile, I knew I wouldn’t like the answers he’d really give me. So I made them up. And I wasn’t really talking to Justin anymore, I was talking to myself.

I didn’t do that when I went in that day, though. I just talked. I was honest, and I knew he’d be happy. He wasn’t there in the bed, possibly wasn’t even anywhere near the room, but that didn’t matter. I knew he’d be happy that I was talking to someone. That I stopped being such a loner, at least for a moment. I didn’t have to guess; I knew he’d be glad. There was no way Justin would ever have a problem with me feeling better.

He was always more concerned about the way I felt than anything else. He could be pissed at me, so angry he was close to actually throwing a fist, but all I ever had to do was get him to look at me, and he was all over trying to make me feel better.

I’d never really listened to my mom when she told me Justin would want me to be happy, or to move on, or any of the rest of the bullshit she tried to make me swallow. I already knew most of it was true. I knew Justin wouldn’t want me to be alone, but I also knew he’d want to be the one there with me. I knew he wouldn’t want me fucking up my life, but I was pretty sure he wouldn’t want to miss out on it either.

It felt good, though, going to see him and being able to tell him I’d done something I knew he’d like. I made up answers for him when I didn’t like the ones I knew he’d give me. I didn’t tell him about the hoards of people I avoided talking to every day because I didn’t want to have to think about him being disappointed or whatever.

Everything with Justin was always so confusing. I hated and loved him in equal parts. I needed him, and I wanted to be free of it at the same time. I didn’t know which way was up.

But for that day, it was easy to just sit and talk, and pretend he was listening.

It was nice. I still missed him in an aching place deep in my chest, but I could handle it. It had been there so long it almost felt like part of who I was.

I’d never been stupid. I was well aware that I was to blame for most of the things I was bitter with Justin for. If I was alone all the time, it was because I pushed everyone away. All on my own, it’s not like Justin had woken up to tell me to do it. But I did because I was afraid that if I had friends, if I had other people, I’d forget about Justin just like everyone else had.

I’d sworn I wouldn’t. I promised him so many times. I wasn’t leaving him alone. Ever.

I promised him again as I was leaving. I stood up to go, hours before I would have been kicked out, willingly for the first time since I’d started coming.

“I’ll be back,” I promised. “I’m going to go home and have dinner with Mom. I think I should try and…I don’t know. I think I should just try.”

I leaned over him and kissed his forehead. “I don’t hate you,” I told him, unnecessarily since I never said I did hate him. I was mostly talking to myself, though. And I needed the reminder.

*

“Guess who?” I yelled out through our apartment once I got home, big smile on my face, because I knew my mom would be thrilled to have me home early.

Or…I thought she would be.

I’d probably been the biggest dick to my mom. Not on purpose, but she was the only one that never gave up trying to get me better. She let me spend countless hours at the hospital, she knew I wouldn’t budge on that, but she’d made it a rule that I had to come home at night. She wouldn’t let me lock myself in my room alone for too long so she’d started making me bring Kylie with me. Which was cool, but still…she was always on me about everything when I was home, she’d even threatened me with a shrink more than once, so yeah, I was probably harder on my mom than I should have been.

I hadn’t realized how bad I’d been, though, not really. Not until I came home three hours early and made my mom cry.

“What’s for dinner?” I said, storming into the apartment, chucking my book bag in a corner. My mom stood in the kitchen, staring at me, cutting knife still in hand.

I walked through the living room and into the kitchen to take it from her. “Need some help?” I asked, looking down at the vegetables on the counter.

Yeah, she was going to have to direct me because as far as I could tell, we were having some exotic kind of salad.

“You’re gonna eat with Mommy and me?” Kylie asked, tiny hands balled into fists as she kicked her legs, almost falling off the counter with excitement. I really loved my sister.

“Yup,” I told her, catching her before she went tumbling over the edge. I set the knife down, safely on the counter and pulled Kylie up onto my shoulders. “So, Mom? You talk, I’ll stir…something?”

I smiled at her, but Mom wasn’t smiling back. She just stood there, so frozen in place that I wasn’t even sure she was breathing. I decided probably not when her face went red, and my smile was all but killed when her shoulders started shaking.

And my mom started to cry. Heavy sobs wracked her body and an endless stream of tears poured from her eyes, and I had no idea what to do. Or what I’d already done to cause this and how I could take it back.

“Mommy,” Kylie said with a sniffle. Kylie’s instant reaction to seeing my mother cry was to start bawling herself. And actually, that reaction was pretty much the same in me.

“I’m sorry,” I said without any knowledge as to what exactly I was apologizing for, but I needed her to stop crying before I stopped being able to swallow past that lump in my throat. “I didn’t mean to…” My voice started to crack, so I decided that sentence was better left unfinished and moved to pull my sister from my shoulders.

My mom grabbed me before I could, using her other hand to unsuccessfully try to wipe the tears from her face.

“No,” she said, voice broken, but strong. Firm. “You stir.”

She let go of me to pick up a wooden spoon from the draining board and handed it to me, trying on a smile, eyes brighter than they had been for a long time even through the tears.