Eleven Eleven

More Than A Feeling Pt. 2

I don't think I'd ever experienced as tense of a car ride as I did on our way back to the hotel. There was this giant elephant prancing around the room, and though everyone felt it, nobody commented on it. What had been an attempt to jog some of Xander's memories had been successful, but it'd brought with it a whole lot of confusion and tension that couldn't be severed with even the sharpest of knives.

The boys and my father hadn't heard what had left Xander's mouth over an hour ago, but they must have some silent understanding that it'd been big as they hadn't tried to get it out of anyone. For the first time since I'd agreed to join the boys a couple weeks ago, I willingly threw myself into the passenger seat and kept my eyes trained out the window. The couple times I glanced back, I felt a pang of guilt swell in my chest seeing Xander's expression.

Mason and Ryan were lounged back in the recliners, their eyes trained on some old Western playing on the TV over Xander's head. Ashton and Haiden had headed for the beds at the back of the RV and must have fallen asleep as I hadn't heard a peep out of either of them in over forty-five minutes. Xander, sitting in the booth, had his phone on the table in front of him, but every time I looked back he had his eyes trained out the window and into the dark night, lost deep in thought.

We had so desperately wanted him to make progress, but this wasn't what we'd wanted-and frankly far from what I'd expected.

As if he could feel my eyes on him now, he turned it just a fraction and his eyes caught mine. The tormented look of pain was enough for me to quickly look back out the windshield and squeeze my eyes shut before my emotions couldn't completely overwhelm me.

*

"We need to talk." I said into the empty room, nodding in the security guard perched in the kitchen. He took that as a silent voicing of him to vacate the premise-or at least the suite and step outside the door. Once the door had clicked shut behind him, I looked to Xander leaning out over the railing on the balcony. "You can't avoid me forever, Alex."

"I can try." he responded as I edged closer. As soon as I'd fell into place beside him, I crossed my arms over the railing and looked out over Vegas, so beautifully lit by all the casinos it looked like an entirely different city than it had this afternoon.

We stayed like that for a while, side by side, silent as we listened to the uproar of the city thirty stories down. Finally, Xander lifted his head and stared at the crescent moon nearly covered by the overcast sky, and whispered, "I thought I'd be happy to remember something. That once it happened they'd all come flooding back at once. But it's like. . . like freak slip, like a fragment of a dream I can barely remember. It's so exhausting. I'm so tired, Willow. So exhausted. I just want to go home."

My lips parted as if I'd already had a speech ready to sit and comfort him with, but I quickly pressed them shut again. Though I couldn't say it right now, I felt as though he knew somewhere in his subconscious that there was no home to go back too.

"The doctors said it'd be like this. That they'd come back in short intervals." I replied. "They explained that it wouldn't be like the end of some cheesy Hallmark movie, Alex. It's not all going to come back at once. It's progress."

He snickered, eyes flickering from the sky to me at his side. "It's false hope, Willow. For me, for you, for everyone that pretends to give a shit about me and my wellbeing. If anyone truly gave a shit about how I really felt, they would of asked me if I wanted to do all this. If I wanted to be dragged along like some little child while I watch everyone else have a blast, a confused, disoriented mess."