Breathe

| chapter one

LOGAN BRADFORD | CHAPTER ONE

I couldn't fucking breathe; my lungs were on fire.

My body sagged on the cushions of my sofa, the television playing another news piece that I couldn't even bear to listen to anymore. That's all they ever did: say one thing (no matter how tragic) and just move on to the next as if it were nothing. Prior to the breaking news they were currently addressing, they had addressed a suicide here in California.

Local Californian resident, Haven Stilts, body found dead by the side of the road. Near her lifeless body, the paramedics found two empty bottles of pain medication. She was, then, rushed to the hospital and announced dead due to suicidal drug overdose.

The voice laced around my brain, painfully stinging my heart. This caused an unsettling case of nausea to erupt in my stomach. I couldn't even begin to contemplate on how her parents were taking such news like this. How could you even manage to go on when the same girl that you kissed to sleep at night, was deceased in the morning?

My eyes were an accumulation of unshed tears. I wasn't ready for news like this.

It's sad when people say, "you never know what you have until it's gone." The sad part about it is that it was true. Being handed things from the day we were brought into the world, we took things for granted. Though, I knew I had Haven, I didn't know how long I would've had her. And now she's gone. Just like that.

I heard the phone ring, and something inside of me snapped in half. Tears sprung, and next thing I knew, I was sitting on the living room floor, bawling my eyes out. I was losing my senses, slowing slipping from the palms of reality. A plethora of thoughts flew their way into my brain, but I couldn't process anything correctly; my mind was fried. Everything felt as if it were tumbling down, my walls caving in, and my heart collapsing.

The slight pounding was overtaking my head, triggered me to cry even more. My hands gripped the ends of my hair as faint pleas for her to come slipped past my lips. I cursed, shouted, cried all in the same breathe for my best friend to come back.

But the sad truth to reality was she wasn't coming back.

I felt as if all the air in my lungs had been ripped out, and I was on fire. It was getting harder and harder to breathe on my own at this point, but at the same time, I felt myself hyperventilating.

The longer I let the grief consume me, the more my mind turned on me. How did I let this happen? How could I have been so stupid, so clueless? What kind of best friend was I to not know that she was feeling suicidal? I was incredibly stupid, this was my fault.

I draped my hands around my legs, rocking to and fro with my head locked between my knees. Other than the faint voices on the TV, I was enclosed by silence. The silence only encouraged my ill thoughts. It was as if I was being terrorized by my own conscious, telling me it was all my fault.

The sound of a door opening indicated that someone was here, and whoever it was, I wasn't ready to face them. My mind romanticized the thought of it being my parents coming home from work to comfort me, but knowing them, I was wrong.

"Logan," a familiar male voice called out, shutting the door. "It's me, Jace." The reverberated steps on the tile floor became more prominent. All too soon, a pair of black Converse appeared in my vision. Pulling my head from my knees, unraveling my arms from my weak knees, I dared to gaze up at the only hope I had left.

What I saw only made me want to cry more. The eyes that used to hold vibrant blue eyes now were dull and weary—I could see the red circling his irises, he was crying, too. An empathetic smile was etched onto his lips, considering he was going through what I was, too. His, what used to be a quiff, was now laid flat and untamed. Like me, I assumed he was pulling at his hair previous to coming to see how I was.

I opened my mouth to utter out a lie, saying that I was fine, but nothing came out. He shook his head, reaching his hand out and clasped onto mine. Jace pulled me up, wrapping his arms around my waist and tucked my head into his shoulder. My hiccupped cries were gradually hushing themselves as he soothingly rubbed my back.

I soon began to feel numb.

On the wall adjacent to us, I saw my reflection. Tugging myself from his grasp, I gasped at what I saw. Tears stained on my puffy, red cheeks. My lips were slightly swollen from me biting down on them too much. I didn't want to even begin on my hair, but overall, I was a mess.

In that moment, something was plunged out of me.

There wasn't much we could comfort each other on, so we stood there, consumed in our own thoughts. We couldn't reassure each other, it was futile because she wasn't coming back. In sad times like this, it was Haven that connected us. And without her being the glue of our friendship, we were two pieces desperately trying to pull ourselves together.

Jace shut off the TV set, leaving us to be surrounded by silence, to my disadvantage. I could feel myself metaphorically choking on the silence, but I couldn't help but relive the moments when she was alive—to when she was breathing.

 

author's note —

i updated, yay. but tell me what you think, comment below and leave some feedback of what you think of the story so far? love you all & have a good day. dedication goes to Maxine bc she's so supportive and just a cutie.