Miles Away

Chapter 18 - Blatant Reminders

It made me want to escape.

As I thought about the pleasures of escaping the painfully simple room, the warmth encased in my hand was enough to pull me back from the scenarios playing in my head. I looked down at his peaceful face. His dark, thick eyelashes lay softly against his cheekbones. He was too pale, the veins in his arms and neck almost visible in the bright light. His once soft lips were now chapped, the lines in his lips matching the scars on his skin. There were the bright red scars with dried blood still lined around the center, the ones that never seemed to heal no matter long he was here. Then there were the baby pink scars lining his arms, where the surgeon had carefully stitched up the open tearing of skin. And finally, there were the bruises, which were present on both him and me. They were scattered all over…his legs, his face, underneath his lips, his hands.

I could feel my heart ripping up at the seams again, the painful reminders of the event a few days before always staring me in the face. In the past, I used to never be able to take my eyes off of his beautiful face. Now…it took all of it in me to stare at him for longer than a moment or two. It wasn’t that he was too ugly to lay eyes on.

It was that it hurt too much to look at those imperfections lined up, then scattered throughout his entire body. The boy lying on this bed wasn’t supposed to be here. He wasn’t supposed to be hurting his bad. Jagger wasn’t supposed to be induced to a coma to suppress his injuries. I wasn’t supposed to be left feeling this hopeless right now. If he just stayed home with me that night…if I could just get him to talk it out instead of letting him go with the bottle.

The god damn, wretched bottle.

I squeezed his limp, cold hand as the memories from the days before came running back. The way the bottle just lied there in the street, almost taunting me for what it had done. That sole reason for his position in this bed. It all made me want to take a baseball bat to all of the liquor distributors’ stores throughout the county. It made me want to punch the salesperson who sold him that bottle that night.

But most of all, it made me wish I’d only found him sooner.

I’d left the house twenty minutes after he had left. I almost thought he would come back instead of heading to get a drink. A small part of me was convinced that he was smart enough to make the better choice, to come back to me and talk about whatever was going on with him. Another small part was hoping that Cooper had somehow gotten to him again, hoping he would save the day once again when Jagger just couldn’t.

I roamed he neighborhood for two hours, wrapping my jacket tighter against my body when the wind picked up. It was almost half past nine and I hadn’t found him anywhere. I remembered calling his name everywhere I looked. I checked all of the distributors in the area, asking if they seen a boy with the same description I’d given them. When most shrugged their shoulders or shook their heads in protests, I almost gave up. I almost left him in the hands of Wyatt or Cooper, hoping they found him when I couldn’t. It wasn’t until I reached the park on the walk home when I finally decided to search one last place.

I called throughout the grassy expansions, crossing my fingers silently that he would be somewhere in the green. Maybe I would see him clumsily lying against a tree, or maybe even without the disgusting stench of liquor on his clothes while he sat on a bench. I walked almost every inch of the park, not finding a single sign of him. When I finally decided to take a seat after roaming the neighborhood for hours, my heart lurched in my chest.

It was his phone.

It was lying there on the bench beside me, contrasting brightly against the dark wood. I picked it up with shaky hands, trying to convince myself that he was okay. He was a grown man after all, and he could certainly find his way home. That was probably why I couldn’t find him, because he didn’t have his phone and he couldn’t call without it if he reached the apartment on his own.