The Older We Get

Chapter 76

                "You're not going to cut this out? Call her?" Dad rests on my bed, sitting as I stay under the mattress, completely silent for what's been hours and hours, a full night gone, and I haven't slept one moment.

My eyes are just one minimal show of how much my inner self resembles a rotting carcass.

It's as if I'm losing my strength, how something's squeezing it out of me.

Haha. Both dead and alive in one? You're incredible Chandler.

Really. Bravo.

Geez, I never knew it could hurt to cry, but low and behold, it stings like ice.

"Chandler. I'm telling you this in hopes you'll get it, even if it hurts. I've been so scared to hurt you any more than you've been already. You're my son, you're strong. But you don't need to be strong right now." Dad's words fall on my ears like a floating piece of cloth. "You didn't kill your cousin, and you didn't kill your mother. If you'd done things differently, they would've lived, but things happened. Sh1t happens. You're not a boy anymore." He speaks steadily before I swallow. "I know you think it's true, this plague you have, but you're growing up, changing into a man. You can do that, I'll let you do this, but curses don't follow once you've grown up."

...What?

"When you're a boy, you let things like, fear hold you back. That's why Sage can't be yours right now, because love is real, and it's reserved for the fearless. Not for children, but for the man you will become when you're ready. For her."

In one world, I'm a boy, living with a curse.

In the other, that I haven't gotten to yet, I'll be a young man, fighting for a woman.

That's what he's saying?

After everything, according to him, me letting this fear take priority just shows that yes.

I really am...ill equipped.

"If you let her go, even when you're ready to try again, you'll lose one of the best things known to human kind. Love is something I had, and sh1t happened." Dad curses again, something he doesn't really do much of. "I choose to stay with that love. And you're not ready in the end to be with her, so when you are, when you're ready to forgive yourself for your past," Something that seems impossible for me. "Come back to her a better person."

I don't get this.

I'm too hurt to understand even though it makes total sense.

"You've grown together. I guess it's time for you to grow while being apart now." I see my father's home shoes move away to leave the room, all that he said somewhat sticking, but in truth, not really to the point that it matters.

Nothing matters.

I'm still not going to be able to move from this spot, or eat, or sleep.

I can only think.

And what's worse than that, I can only feel.

There's only one emotion in me right now.

It's not leaving room for anything else.

_______________

-Sage's P.O.V.-