The Birds & The Bees | S.R.

Ch. 22 | Three Bruises

I should've been listening. I should've heard it immediately, but it was already too late for me to stop the sounds of tears from being broadcast and burned directly into my brain.

"... Is everything alright, Spencer?" I asked, expecting the lie but hoping for the truth, anyway.

"It's fine. Promise."

I should've known it was a fruitless endeavor. But giving up seemed so much easier than fighting a monster I didn't know in a world so far away.

What kind of person would that make me? To force him to open up, knowing that I wouldn't be there to comfort him?

My mind was transported back to a day that felt like a dream; the first time that I'd seen him give in to the temptation to be honest. With his head in his hands and dripping with rain that he'd cast himself into in the hope of washing off the scent of the prison.

'Do you want to talk about it?'

'About what?' he'd asked.

'Wherever you just went. The 'somewhere else?''

And the way he'd first answered, 'No,' just to clarify seconds later, 'Best not.'

Trying to swallow the sound of yet another lie, I focused on the hopefully imminent reunion. I thought only about how he would feel safe again soon and tried to let my own voice drown out the sounds of him begging that were playing on loop in my brain.

'I want to hear your voice. I want you to tell me more nice things. Because I think I really need to hear nice things, and I... I really don't want to be alone... Please... Help me.'

"Okay... when are you all headed back?" I said just a little too loud.

He cleared his throat, too, and I tried to pretend like he hadn't turned into someone else entirely as he replied, "Tomorrow afternoon."

It didn't work. No matter the number he had given, it wouldn't have been soon enough for me to stifle that burning desire to make it all better for him.

"If something is wrong..."

But the way he answered, "It's not" with such finality told me I had already lost.

I hated losing things like this.

"Please, just tell me," I begged.

Spencer did not give in. I could practically hear how he'd bit down on his tongue until it bled, holding it for a few seconds longer out of fear that the words he'd wanted to say might flow through with the iron.

"I can't wait to see you again," he croaked instead.

"Me either," I replied with an equivalent hoarseness.

I forced myself not to take it as a failure. I reminded myself that he wasn't struggling because of me, but because he was too far for me to matter like that. Because as soon as I hung up the phone, he would be alone again. Stranded and stripped bare.

Even in such a state, he managed to remind me, "Take care of yourself. I'll be home soon."

"You take care of yourself, too," I tried.

When I was only met with silence, however, I gave him the chance to end the conversation with as few tears as possible.

"Goodnight, Professor," I said.

And exactly as I knew he would, he whispered, "Goodnight, Bunny."

Neither of us hung up the phone. We sat and soaked in the staticky silence.