My Revenge Obsession

Chapter Eight- Interlude [Part Two]

After a while there was a knock on my door and mum came in with tea for all three of us. She sat on my bed and I watched as her eyes moved over the collage; this wasn’t the first time I’d done something like this. Usually the images were more disturbing, however… She reached up and straightened out the bent corner on a picture of Matt and me. I smiled.

 “So,” mum asked me. “where’re you gonna start?”

 There was no hesitation before I replied. “With Jake.”

 I owed the kid so much. And I could think for hours and hours about all the things he meant to me and why they meant so much, but really I just needed to talk to him. In the flesh. No bullshit. He deserved that from me. He deserved everything.

 Bex and my mother were still chatting when I decided to leave. After all, Jake had already said he wanted to speak to me and it wouldn’t be fair to keep him waiting. Then as I walked my mind started racing, filling up with every conceivable statement Jake could want to say to me. Maybe he had wanted to make sure I was going back to his house so I could be ordered to leave forever, maybe he was going to say that everything was okay and I had nothing to fear. Maybe he wouldn’t even say anything; maybe we could just be.

 Everything would be so much simpler if I could just be.

 God, when did I become so miserable? Not depressed, that was different. I’d always been depressed. During therapy sessions at Restoration I’d occasionally feel this weird relief. That was when I noticed there had been a weight in my chest, like something was pinning down my heart and trapping it. But because it had always been there, I’d never really known about it. It was only when I spoke about the feeling to Elena and she explained it that I realised I’d been screwed up for a long time.

 Nowadays I was a different kind of sad. The kind of sad you feel sorry for when you see it in other people, but you don’t get scared about it. It was the kind of sad that you might see on the pained face of a teenage boy and roll your eyes because what the hell would a kid know about misery? Sometimes I could hardly breathe because I just felt so pathetic… There was no excuse for me to feel like that. I just did. And for some reason that wasn’t okay.

 I let myself in the front door with the spare key under the mat, as usual, and then I paused for a moment. Before I could move, before I could see Jake, I really needed to figure out what I was going to say…

 “James? Is that you?” Jake called from upstairs.

 No time to think, then. “Yeah!”

 He didn’t reply. I took a deep breath and tried not to feel annoyed about that, because I absolutely hated it when someone calls me and then I call back and they don’t reply. My mother did this quite frequently and I swear to all manner of divine beings that it drove me fucking loopy. How hard was it to respond?

 I headed upstairs and poked my head into a few rooms- which were empty- before he appeared from the bathroom, carrying all my bed things. I cocked my head to one side, confused.

 “What’re you doing?”

 “You’re moving.” he stated blankly. My heart stopped.

 “What?”

 “You can’t sleep in a bath, idiot, now c’mon…” He stepped around me and for a moment I thought he was going to head down the stairs and my life was going to be over- again- but he didn’t. Instead he simply ushered me further down the hall, right the way along to the end door.

 “I don’t understand.” I said, even more confused now. “This is your parents room.”

 “It’s our room now.” he replied with a sad smile, reaching down to rootle around in his jean pockets before he pulled out a key.