where can we go? anywhere from here | RICHPEZ

chapter two - angst angst angst angst angst

What happened after that is a huge blur to me. I remember Brian calling out, louder than I had, the pain in his voice making me want to scream as Meredith lay there still and silent in a room full of shouts and chaos and noise and - I can still feel the way the guilt washed over me. It was choking me, drowning me, a thousand apologies on my lips because I was the one who started it and I was the one who encouraged her and because no matter which way you looked at it, it was all my fault.

I can recall that it was complete chaos, that everyone was shouting different things I refused to hear, the exact position in which the chair lay discarded on the floor. I can remember how they pushed me off her when I tried to help so that I was left there standing useless. I felt selfish. Instead of worrying for Meredith, the thing that ran the clearest through my mind was guilt guilt guilt because I had done this to her.

In the world of disarray the room had become, I remember most of all the one constant that stayed with me. Joey's arms, wrapped tight around me from behind, relaxed and grounding as he leant down and murmured in my ear about how it was okay, it was okay, it wasn't my fault. I knew it wasn't anywhere near okay and that it almost definitely was my fault, but I still turned around and buried my face in his chest, feeling the vibrations of his voice as he reached one hand up to stroke my hair and rested his chin on my head.

For a brief few moments, I let myself live in the bubble he'd created, and believed every single lie he whispered into my hair was true.

~~~

My eyes snapped open, taking in the ceiling above. Reaching out with one groping hand, I smacked my alarm to silence it and rolled over to check the date on the screen. The display illuminated my face in neon green, and flashed at me impatiently. July 25th.

Dragging myself into a semi-upright position - a slouch - I grasped my notebook from the table and clicked on my light, too tired to actually get up and open the curtains. July 25th, I wrote, 15 days since the accident. She is stable, but asleep. No news from Joey.

Variations of the same message were written on the previous few pages, slowly becoming more concise as each day passed. I didn't really know why I felt the need to write the information down, but it was habitual, and reminded me that the past two weeks had actually happened. Time had seemed to stop the moment Meredith fell to the floor.

When I wrote 'no news from Joey', I meant it. None of us had heard more than radio silence from him for two weeks - not that I'd actually tried to contact any of the others. I'd only visited Meredith once, a guilt-ridden, mostly silent trip that had lasted as long as I could bear it. She was a huge, person-shaped reminder of what I'd done, and the deadened faces of her relatives that sat quietly round her in their chairs had seemed to look at me like they knew. Maybe they did. Brian probably told them, I could see it in my head, the way their faces had sank in disappointment when he informed them of what Meredith's good friend Lauren had done to her.

Despite the lack of communication, I still knew of Joey's disappearance because it seemed that a silence from me did not mean a silence from everybody else. They had messaged me frequently, some more than others, sympathetic at first as they assumed he was staying over at my apartment (why?) and growing steadily more worried as first one, then two weeks passed by with apparently no contact from either of us. I wanted to reply, I wanted to help them look for him, but I couldn't because -

because it's your fault, said a voice in my head, because he knows it's your fault and he -

No.

(he doesn't want you anymore)

because I knew he probably just needed some (he doesn't want you) space. Which I understood. I needed space too, a lifetime of it, to keep myself away from people I'd hurt. Again.