I'd Rather Be in Love than Dead

Chapter Nine

Garrett's Perspective:

Dammit, John!

I slapped my head where I felt the familiar hand begin trying to smooth my dark hair and he jumped back.

“Dude, don’t touch the mop. Just don’t,” I warned him as he sat beside me, glaring as I ruffled the hair that he’d just tried to fix.

“I was doing you a favor,” He argued as I watched Jared flip through the channels on my television. Though at this point people realized that my concussion was long gone, but they continued to hang around my house like it was nothing, making themselves completely home in the large two-story my brother and I shared.

“Sure you were. Because it totally helps to ruin my signature look. Plus, we both know that even all the gel in the world wouldn’t fix that,” I pointed to the dark tangle of hair on my head. He shrugged.

“A boy can dream.” He yawned and rubbed his eyes which bore the signs of sleep deprivation (bags and deep purple circles) and then stroked the hair of a tired, but relieved looking Chasity, who had come to sit on the armrest next to him.

“Morning,” She said to me and I raised a nervous hand in response (her outburst had scarred me for all eternity).

I sat in thought for a long time, and, before I realized it was happening, everyone was up, it was lunchtime, and they’d apparently ordered a pizza, as they’d forced me to get off the couch and answer the door where I paid the pizza guy and then shut the door before reentering the living room. I laid the pizza boxes on the floor in front of the TV and watched as everyone dug in (except for John and Chasity, who, only after a few moments of watching the others eat, sleepily got up to get some).  

I watched everyone converse and over their meal as I sat there (now on the floor as Kenney had stolen my seat while I got the pizza), not even bothering to try and eat, since I wasn’t hungry anyway. I wrapped my jacket more tightly around myself as I allowed my mind to wander, only returning anytime I heard a snippet of an odd conversation (or that’s what I took from the one or two words I actually heard).

“I like guitars,” I said to myself after tuning into somebody’s discussion of the stringed instrument. They ignored me (as I’d hoped they would) and went on talking. I didn’t know why I bothered talking if no one listened (probably because I don’t usually talk). “My pillow doesn’t have a pillowcase,” I said about five minutes later after coming back to earth in the middle of some debate about pillows. I continued to do this (for assorted subjects) for about a couple hours, until finally, I heard something that truly interested me.

“I want a pet dolphin!” I said in response to something (I couldn’t remember for the life of me what the conversation was before that) about some sort of aquatic animal. Does it truly matter if it was a dolphin or not?

“Where would you keep it?” Alayna asked me. It took me a moment to realize that I’d actually been listened to.

“My bathtub,” I said, though I wasn’t sure where the words came from.

“Good luck with that, Garrett,” John said and everyone went back to their previous discussions.

Finally bored with my own wild imagination, I lay down on the floor and rubbed my eyes. I didn’t know what time it was, but I did know for a fact that I was tired, and when you’re tired, you sleep. I stretched, feeling a little lightheaded with exhaustion, and looked towards the darkening window.

My body felt very weak as I lay there, watching it turn from afternoon to evening, and pretty soon, I felt my heavy eyelids close, temporarily shutting out the world around me as I slept in the middle of my living room floor.