Weighted Silence (Complete)

Chapter 1: Dion

1Dion

Misty Albright and I had absolutely nothing in common. But I always expected to marry her.

She had long blonde hair that was straight as straw, perfect blue eyes, a dimple in each cheek, and an award-winning smile beaming perfect teeth. She was outgoing, happy, and could make anyone laugh.

I had shaggy brown hair the color of mud, hazel eyes that couldn't decide whether they wanted to be fully green or fully brown, and— what my dad called— an astute Roman nose. Which was a polite way of saying it was a beak with skin. I was introverted, anxious, self-proclaimed King of the Wall Flowers, and completely out of Misty's league.

But... Misty was the town sweetheart. She loved everyone. Including me. In fact, she loved me most.

We were best friends from our diaper days all through middle school, and in the ninth grade, I officially asked her out. High school was much easier when you had someone to spend it with, and Misty was all I needed and more. She helped me through my darkest days, and I held her on a pedestal no one could touch. She and I went to both proms together, and after graduation, planned to go to college together.

I expected us to get our degrees, get married, and live happily ever after. The whole town expected it.

What I didn't expect was for Misty to get accepted into Yale, and for me to not get accepted... anywhere. I didn't test well. I had too much anxiety, and my scores were football fields beneath hers. Maybe I should have expected it.

I also didn't expect, after eighteen years of knowing her, loving her, that I would end up shredded and raw, like a heel in a new pair of shoes. I didn't expect for my whole world to turn upside down, changing the me I thought I knew myself as, and turning me into the me I had become. Stoic. Hollow. Withdrawn... serving coffee at Nina May's Café for five years in my hometown of Misfire, Colorado. Population: fifty-seven.

My losing Misty was the talk of the town for days, and my attempted suicide after had run the gossip train for weeks more. There were no secrets in a town of less than a hundred people and had I anywhere else to go, I'd have been long gone.

But... as it tended to be with small towns, once its talons wrapped around your fleshy bits and dug in, you were stuck, and all the dreams you might have had of seeing the world poured out into floral ceramic coffee cups and got sucked down someone's gullet. These days... I didn't even think about what might have been. Didn't think about much of anything, or anyone. I didn't even speak. Hadn't spoken a word in over seven years...

My parents had taken me to some fancy psychiatrist in Denver when I was nineteen, after several months without getting me to talk. The guy spent ten minutes with me and called my condition a 'severe form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder', put me on a round of anxiety pills and anti-depressants and sent us out the door with a bill higher than our mortgage. One year later, though, I still wasn't speaking, and my parents had tossed the pills and psyche visits for a more... holistic approach.

Church and prayers.

I didn't take too well to either... so they eventually stopped trying to fix me. Made for some awkward Christmas dinners for a while, when they came home from their work overseas, but I had no intention of ever speaking again and leaving myself vulnerable. It was less of a conscious decision on my part these days, and more of just who I had become. I was the guy who didn't talk, and after enough time, the whole town had come to accept that that's just the way it was.

Course, I still got the occasional comment, but for the most part people had finally stopped trying to change me, and that was all I could hope for.

The jingle bells over the cafe door yanked me out of my thoughts, and I looked up to see Rupert Grint— not the Ron Weasley one— come shuffling up to the counter. Wearing a suit that was a size too small, making the buttons on his jacket have to hang on for dear life, he lifted off his hat and offered me a grin while he yanked a hanky from his back pocket and wiped his red, sweaty face. I glanced over his shoulder as he did so. It was negative three degrees outside, and the snow was getting higher by the second. But... Mr. Grint was nothing if not the sweat mascot of Misfire.