Mad Ember

13: Connection

"Duh Matty, we will always be friends." Matt's smile grew.

"Friends."

I wake up to Dog barking incessantly at the end of my bed. I roll my eyes and slowly get out of bed, the cold morning hits me hard, and goosebumps along my arms and legs quickly start to appear. I hastily pull on one of the sweatshirts that Corban had left at the Quarry for me.

My mind drifts to two nights ago when Corban and I actually saw each other. My stomach twists just thinking about it. Admittedly, after I saw him, I left intending to never see him again. I figured that now that annoying voice in my head actually got what it wanted, it would shut up and not bother me again.

I was wrong.

If anything, the pull towards Corban has gotten even worse. God he was so infuriating. He had said that this would happen, that nothing has to happen from us, but if I wanted moments of actually being able to think, we would have to see each other. It was terrifying.

I can't imagine being that tied to a person. But as of late, I knew that Corban was right. Pretending that he didn't exist and attempting to work this myself wasn't going to work. And a part of me knew that it wasn't fair for him.

Part of Corban actually reminded me a lot about Matty. They both tried to be what the other person needed. They thought through everything, down to the second. I try not to think about Matty too much anymore because I find that even though I loved him, he was surrounded by a whole lot of bad.

After my mom passed away, and the radiation started to get worse, my dad found out about the crush I had on him. I remember him laughing about it throughout the day. I was a great source of entertainment for him.

"I bet you think he'll save you" He laughed with a shake of his head then taking a quick swig of his whiskey.

"You poor little girl, still waiting for a happy ending that you don't even deserve..."

I internally cringe at the memory and attempt to clear my head, clenching my fists. I try to remind myself that he can't terrorize me anymore. A small part of me actually believes that I deserved everything he did to me. My mom's death ruined him. She was his everything.

My mom was diagnosed with Breast Cancer shortly after I was born. Apparently, after having a child, women have a higher risk of Breast Cancer, the odds are so small, but my mother never was good with beating them. She fought hard for a long time. Everyone thought that she had beat it. The chemo was proving effective, everything was going great. It never fully went away though. What we weren't ready for was, for it to get worse in what seemed to be overnight. She passed away when I was five.

The first thing that my dad said to me after mom died foreshadowed what I would live with until it was his own time to go;

"This will ruin us."

He stuck to his promise.

I hate to say that I am still letting the fear of my dad control my life, but I am. It's a shitty excuse to use on Corban, but it's true. Whenever people tried to get close to me after my mom's death, my dad made sure they didn't stick around for long. In perspective, my mom died five years before the radiation finally did its job. In those five years, I never had one person who I didn't know before, attempt to even talk to me. The first was Collet. And when she tried to introduce me to certain members of her coven, they inched away as well. It's a pattern that I am used to and expect. Patterns are safe. They're math, I know math; You can't argue with it.

Corban is a problem that I don't know the solution to. There are a lot of different ways that things can go, a whole lot of variables... So I decided to make a pact with myself. I was going to work through the problem. I am going to figure him out, and exactly what he wants. He is just another problem that has to be solved. And solving problems is something that I am good at.