Arms

Epilogue

"Love yourself, so no one has to"

                -Therapy by All Time Low

Lucas' POV:

I sat in the waiting room, jiggling my leg and staring at a poster against the wall. I guess my mom noticed, because she placed her hand on my knee and gave me a reassuring smile. I stared blankly at her, and then turned back to the same poster I'd been looking at.

"Is your child depressed?" It said in red bold-printed letters. There was a small boy in the corner, with his head in his hands, looking like he'd been told that he couldn't have ice cream after dinner. I rolled my eyes at the poster and then looked over at Ava, who had decided to flip through all of the magazines on the coffee table.

She bounded up to me and showed me a toy in one of the magazines. "Look Lucas!" she chirped. She pointed to a child-sized kitchen set. "I want this for my birthday!" she continued looking at the picture longingly. When I didn't reply to her, she looked to my mom and sighed. "Mommy! Why is Lucas not talking to me anymore? Is he mad at me?"

Before my mom could answer, I heard a monotonous voice call out my name. My mom gave me an encouraging pat on the knee before I got up and trudged into an office, that I'd been in many times before in the past few months.

I shut the door behind me, and sat down in a comfy chair, all too familiar with this routine. A woman, who I'd learned to recognize as Dr. Morgan, was sat in her chair, across from mine, as always. Her dark hair was pulled into a ponytail, and her brown glasses were always on the very edge of her nose.

"Hello Lucas." she smiled warmly at me. I gave her a blank stare; the blank stare that I had managed to master in the past few months. Not only had I managed to look uninterested in every conversation ever, but I had managed to keep my mouth shut for five months straight.

Her smile faltered when I didn't respond. She sighed, took her glasses off, and pinched the bridge of her nose with her thumb and index finger. "Look, Lucas. I know this is the last place you'd rather be right now," she started, "but you've got to know that...this keeping quiet thing..." she gestured to me. "...it isn't healthy. And I know that you...you loved this girl. I've seen situations like this dozens of times. But the only way to help, is by talking about it."

I managed to keep my poker face. What did she know? She didn't know what it was like, to meet someone who you thought was more than perfect for you. To meet someone who you thought you'd save, and then have them take their own life. To just have them ripped away from you. To have them not know what they really meant to you.

Because if she did know, she'd know it hurt like Hell.

I took a deep breath as I remembered the night I was told of Macey Owen's death. I was cleaning up the dinner table and trying not to run into Ava, as she chased Goliath around the house. The phone rang and I tripped over one of Ava's tiny flip-flops trying to get over to it.

Maybe it's Macey. I'd thought.

She had snapped at me earlier that day, and I knew I should've gone after her. I knew I should've pulled her into a hug and let her sob into my shirt like I had done many times before. But that day--for some reason--I decided, maybe she just needed her space. Maybe she just needed to think things over. 

"Ava, would you stop leaving your shoes lying around the house." I called out to my little sister, just as I looked at the Caller ID. It had been Macey's phone number, but it wasn't Macey on the other end. The voice was masculine, and it was only after he'd spoken a few sentences that I realized it to be Macey's dad.