The Echo of my Shouts

Chapter 1

"No! Just fucking lie to me!" I shout at Timothy as I make my way to the other side of the couch. I can't help seeing the ocean out of the window, feeling the warm blow into the apartment, but there is nothing that can warm the chilling blood in my veins.

"Come'on Elijah, be realistic for a change. You've been living a fantasy and it's time that you see the truth," Timothy answers sitting down on the couch, turning his back to me as if I am not even worth looking at.

"The truth is overrated," I whisper, hoping that in some unrealistic world that might just be colliding with mine the words I utter will become the lie and the lie I want to believe will be the truth.

Timothy turns around in the couch and looks up at me. I try to drink in every single contour his young face has to offer as if it might just be the last time I will be seeing him.

"It might be overrated Elijah, but we can't keep going on like this. You can't keep going on like this. We can't continue this lie any longer. I haven't been happy in a very long time and neither have you," he says. I can see he's holding back the tears, but this is the last thing I needed after two months away from home, my bag still standing unpacked at the door.

"I have been happy," I answer, looking down at my shoes. "I have been fucking ecstatic."

"I know you Elijah. You're depression has been getting worse over the last year. You've been brooding over your first book and the letters you wrote to Blake, and I can't fucking compete with a ghost anymore."

Timothy doesn't look at me when he says this. He looks past me, as if he can see something behind me. Or someone. Maybe he sees Blake's ghost, the one finally after all these years tearing us apart just as it tore my life apart for so many years.

"Blake's dead," I whisper, looking at Timothy, wanting him to look at me as well, but he doesn't. He keeps staring at the wall behind me, refusing to make eye contact.

"Yes Elijah. He's dead. I know it. Lucy knows it." He stakes a deep breath in and out, and then in again before he continues. "But you don't. Not really. Every year you promise me that you are going to leave the past in the past. And every year you write another book, about Blake. And every year you go on tour and the longer you stay away the more depressed you get because you say his name more than what you say your own. And to be honest, I'm done. I don't need this. I can't live in his shadow. I can't compete. Do you hear me Elijah? I can't fucking compete."

"You can keep the house," I say turning my back towards Timothy and walking to the kitchen. There's no point in arguing. We have had this same argument many times before and there is no way I am going to win. I know when a battle is lost.

"And where will you go?" Timothy shouts from behind me, his voice echoing in my ears as if he's trying to remind me that I only have two options. Being with him in a place we built out of love. Or being with Blake, six feet underground, or wherever else I might have to go after death.

I take my phone out and for the first time in years I dial a number, hoping that she will answer a phone call from an unknown number.

"You have reached the fabulous Lucy!" her shrill voice sounds from the other side of the phone after the phone only rings twice.

"Lucy..." I say, my voice cracking. "I'm coming home."

***

My body aches all over. I know my eyes are red and swollen from crying and not sleeping. The lumpy couch didn't help much either. That and the fact that I could hear Timothy crying through the paper thin walls.