Bullet

Chapter 23 - Underneath It All

Chapter 23
Underneath It All

A/N - Sorry I was MIA these past few days, guys. I went to see We The Kings this weekend and I'm dealing with the odds and ends I need to patch up before college starts next week! But WTK was absolutely amazing and if you like that type of music, I suggest you catch them on the remaining dates of their Summerfest tour if they're coming to your city! I even got the chance to meet Travis, the lead singer, and he wrote out lyrics to their song 'Just Keep Breathing' for me to get done as a tattoo. He was the sweetest! ANYWAY, enough of my babble :P I hope you all like the newest chapter and be prepared because this is the chapter right before the last, and possibly an epilogue, which I'm still thinking about. & thank you to treachery for making me the cute banner/cover off to the side! Thank you all so much for the support! :)

The next few weeks in the Tollson household were intentionally quiet and almost disturbing. I was so used to my parents cuddling on the sofa on Friday nights, watching movies on Netflix and talking about their hectic weeks. My mom would be cooking up something different every night while my dad stayed tied up in his office, planning out new schematics for his mechanic’s shop. Everything was at peace, with nothing but love and admiration in the house.

Since the shooting, the peaceful nights and nightly dinners came to a short halt. My mom was a bit quieter than normal and my parents didn’t seem too touchy-feely the days following the arrest of their son. I didn’t blame them for not wanting to just act normal around one another. This whole situation in itself was so life-altering that it still didn’t make sense, even four months later.

But after the night of the confession from my mom, my dad wasn’t around much at all. He was staying late after work to ‘finish up on some labor’ and bring in more money. My mom was keeping time at the hospital, where the girls at work were still giving her the stink eye and making her out to be like she was the odd one out, even though she had been apart of that hospital team for almost twelve years. It was mostly just me roaming around the house by myself, with just my incessant thoughts and no one else to talk to.

My dad’s reaction was nothing short of what I expected. The fact that the woman we both trusted with our lives was so judgmental and out of character that day was a major shock to the both of us. Neither one of us understood why she thought that being gay was such a problem. His label that was brought onto him by the kids at school wasn’t something she should have been worried about. She should have been worried about his mental state and the fact that he actually warned somebody that he was planning on killing someone someday soon.

Whenever she came home from work and was catching me slipping into the kitchen for a midnight snack or a drink of water, she just looked at me like she was scared to come near me. She stopped in her tracks and gently placed her stuff down on the dining table, giving me an uneasy look and then just deciding to shake her head and flee from the room.

It felt like none of us had spoken a word to each other for months, even if it had only been weeks.

Now I was finding myself missing Grayson more than I’d like to admit. It wasn’t just because I felt like I couldn’t hold all of this on my own, because I was becoming more sure of myself in the past few weeks than ever before. Although all of this was hard to wrap my brain around, being without Grayson for a while gave me a chance to breathe and realize that I needed to handle this on my own. Just like he said, I needed to deal with all of this with my family and on my own terms. But I still wished I had him to run to so I could throw all of this out of my head and hand it off to someone else just for a little bit.

The scary part was, he was waiting for me to make the first move. I was used to him being there when I fell, picking up the pieces and putting me back together to move onto the next agenda on the list. Normally, it was him knowing exactly what I wanted to say and how I was feeling. It scared me more than I was willing to admit that I actually had to put my feelings out there and make it known that I needed him more than ever.