Just a Dare

Chapter Twenty-Two

Author's Note: I recommend listening to the song below while reading a good bit of this. It came on while I was writing it and I had to stop for a bit because I started crying. It's a good mood-setter.

--

Well, time has a way of throwing it all in your face
The past, she is haunted, the future is laced
Heartbreak, ya know, drives a big black car
I swear I was in the back seat,
just minding my own

"Big Black Car" by: Gregory Alan Isakov

--

I wordlessly stared at the ceiling for a long time, Mel's grief-stricken face haunting me. Drawing up the image of those big, beautiful emerald eyes welling up with tears, droplets of water clinging to her thick lashes and then falling like rain in a thunderstorm was my own kind of punishment.

Of all the bad things I had done-putting my father in the hospital (Mel's voice softly whispered in my head, "It's not your fault, Trey," but I couldn't bear to listen to her), refusing to allow my little sister to be a part of my life no matter how hard she tried, trying to fill a dark void in my soul with alcohol and sex that never really helped anything at all, not being there for Rob when he needed me-

Tears swam in my vision and I stared as hard as I could at the light bulb until they were seared away.

Of all the mistakes I had made, this was the worst.

"First kiss?" I asked, nudging her. We were sitting on a bench on the roof after she had gone on another watering-spree (I joked with her multiple times that if she kept it up, her precious plants would die from too much water). A comfortable spring breeze blew around us.

She blushed and looked down, but I could see her eyes twinkling. "Trey..."

A smile made its way to my lips as the realization hit me. "It was me, wasn't it?"

Her blush deepened and my smile turned into a full-out ear-to-ear grin. "Why did you ask if you knew the answer?"

In a moment of boldness, I leaned over to her and whispered in her ear, "I wanted to make sure I was the only one."

She laughed, and my heart did a strange thing in response to the sound. "You are."

I shook my head, closing my eyes tightly as if that would make the memories disappear.

I broke a person.

But she wasn't just a person.

She was Mel.

I felt the anger surging through my body-the self-hatred for taking away one of the last things that I loved-and I couldn't control myself as I jumped to my feet and pivoted, rearing my left leg back and kicking the bed post as hard as I could. Sharp bursts of pain shot up my leg as my bare foot came in contact with the unforgiving wood again and again. Tears began to make the world swirl into a mixture of colors and it just made me even more infuriated with myself.

I kept kicking and kicking, even when I felt the skin breaking and blood beginning to trickle out. I kicked and kicked until my foot was numb and I was nearly one hundred percent sure I had broken it again. My eyes wandered over to my abandoned crutches in the corner as I placed weight on my foot to see if any sort of feeling registered.

The numbness was fleeting and I could feel it swelling, my toes throbbing, the blood pulsing painfully through the slight surface wound I had created, and the pressure made it feel like I was walking on jagged pieces of glass.

She was mine.

The tears threatened to fall and I did everything I could to hold them in.

Was. Was. Was, I had to remind myself. Was, as in the past tense of is, because she is not mine anymore.