I hate this day, I hate it with a passion. Each year as the date nears I dread it.
Yes, the pain of losing someone you love lessens overtime and maybe when you look back a the times you've shared the happiness and nostalgia can outweigh the grief but the grief is always there.
Grief comes in all forms, all shapes and sizes. It shows up in even the happiest times when you realise that the person you love can't be there to see them. When you think about all the things they'll never get to see. All the milestones you thought were a given. Gone, just like that.
It hurts to think about what they could've accomplished if only given the chance.
Four years ago today I got a call, the call.
My life hasn't been the same ever since. It's been clouded in grief that I just can't seem to shake.
Most people take their siblings for granted, something I too am guilty of. I regret it everyday. Although I told him I loved him as he said goodnight to me every single night, he'll never know just how much. How much I adored him, looked up to him.
Four years ago today my brother Sidney died.
It hurts every single day but today is the most torturous of all. It's a reminder of everything that he lost. Everything that I lost.
I don't want to leave my bed. I don't want to do anything today but I feel as though I should do something to honor him....somehow.
I don't really want to talk about it. My natural response is to keep things bottled up. On the other hand, maybe it would do me some good to finally tell someone. To feel as though I'm keeping his memory alive.
In the end, I decide to talk about it, I just need a bit more alone time first.
I leave the house alone and walk to the cemetery where my brother is buried. I've only been here a handful of times and each time I've sobbed my heart out. I don't want anyone to be around. I want to be able to speak to the air in the hopes that he'll hear without feeling stupid because someone's watching me. I need to cry and I just can't hold it in out of fear of what people may think.
I spend a good few hours talking, my words being carried off into the wind. I have a raging headache from relentlessly sobbing.
"I don't know if you can hear me." I say placing my hand on his tombstone that's marked with his name, Sidney Marshall. "But if you can, you should know that I love you."
As I walk home it begins raining heavily without warning. I'd normally run for shelter but I'm just so exhausted I can't find it in myself to care.
I let the rain come pouring down, let it wash over me, ground me to the present. The rain feels like a metaphor of me drowning, in grief, in self loathing. For some strange reason it makes me feel seen. All the negative feelings are still there but it feels like I can finally breathe.
I take the walk back to compose myself.
When I get back I go straight back to my room. I plan on talking to Vincent but I feel the need to procrastinate some more first.
When I get to my room I peel off my wet coat and toss it beside me on the floor.
"Where the hell have you been?" I hear an angry, yet calm voice say from inside my room.
I look up and am met with Blaine a few inches from me.
I should've paid more attention to my surroundings, I didn't even notice him in here.
"What the fuck are you doing in here?" I ask.
"Answer the question, Cassandra." He states.
"We're not doing this now." I say, averting my gaze from his.
I try to walk past him but he stops me. "Yes we are. Don't make me repeat myself."
I look back to his hard gaze. He's not going to let this go.
"I just wanted some alone time." I say vaguely.
He lets out a dark, breathy chuckle
"Alone time?" He says with venom in his tone. He raises his eyebrows as if to question if I'm serious. "I made it clear you are not to leave this house without Vincent."
"It won't happen again." I say, an edge to my tone.
"You're right, it won't." He says. "I expected better from you. Don't make me have to position a guard outside your door to watch you 24/7."
"Fuck you." I seethe, breaking free of his hold. "If you can't even allow me some alone time to visit my brothers grave you really are heartless."
He averts his gaze from my intense one.
He looks up to the sky as if to ask whatever higher power is out there to give him the strength to deal with me. He takes a deep breath, seemingly trying to word his reply.
He looks back at me. "You having alone time isn't the problem. The problem is no one knowing where the fuck you are. You need someone nearby at all times." He says. "This isn't a game, Cassandra. The reality is if you go out there alone and vulnerable that's when they'll attack. They won't care if your in a graveyard or a fucking zoo. I don't know who the mole is, for all we know you could've made an enemy out of them. Don't give them the opportunity to kill you. You're smarter than that." He says and then promptly leaves.
Well, now I feel kinda bad.
I lay down on my bed and Frinkles hops on and into my arms.
I procrastinate for a while longer until I finally find myself knocking on Vincent's bedroom door. It takes him some time to answer but I hear shuffling through the door, meaning he's in there and so I wait.
He opens the door, his usual cheery exterior gone.
"Now's not a good time." He says quickly, avoiding eye contact.
"Oh." I reply, not expecting that reaction. "Ok then." I try to conceal the hurt in my voice and so it comes out as a whisper.
I turn away, walking in the opposite direction feeling deeply rejected. I can barely keep the new set of tears, ready to spill, at bay.
"Cassie, wait." Vincent says softly. "Come back."
I stop. "I don't want to intrude."
"You're not." He replies.
I looking at the floor, I turn around and head back towards him and into the room.
I sit at his small, circular table in the corner of his room while he sits on the edge of his bed.
I eye the bottle of alcohol on the table, I could really use a glass of that right about now. I pick up the bottle, ready to inspect what type of alcohol it is but as soon as it touches my fingers realisation hits me.
He told me he was an alcoholic.
"Wait, why do you have this?" I ask concerned. "Did you-" I'm about to ask him if he drank any of it when he cuts me off.
"No." He says. "But I want to."
"How long have you been sober?" I ask.
"Three and a half years." I nod in reply.
"I could tell you not to do it but in the end it's not going to make a difference what I say. I could take this, drain it down the sink but if your adamant about drinking it's not going to stop you. It has to be a choice you make yourself."
"Finally, someone who gets it."
"You made a choice to be sober three and a half years ago. Are you really going to throw all of your progress away?" I ask. "You know how this goes. One drink becomes two becomes ten and suddenly you can't stop. You have to fight to simply exist and it's a different kind of pain. It's unbearable. Is a temporary relief really worth it in the long run? Is one bad day really worth the full recovery stage? No. At the end of the day it's your choice and whichever road you go down I'll be by your side but trust me the path of least resistance is a whole lot easier."
He let's my words sit with him for a second before he makes a choice. He stands up from his seat on his bed and walks over to the table beside me.
He picks up the bottle and just looks at it for a second, his mind fighting a battle against itself. He unscrews the lid and I watch closely. Just as I think he's going to ignore my words and drink it he walks off with it into the bathroom.
The sound of the alcohol going down the drain fills the room and I let out a breath of relief.
He walks back in the room and places the empty bottle on the table before slumping down on the chair opposite me.
"The way you spoke was as though you'd lived through it. Have you had an alcohol addiction too?" He asks.
"Not alcohol." I state.
"Then what?" He asks gently.
"I don't want to talk about it, not today."
"I get the feeling today's something of significance to you. You seem to have something on your mind."
"My brother, Sidney."
"I didn't know you have a brother." He says.
"He died four years ago today."
"Oh." He replies. "Do you want to tell me about him?" He asks and I nod.
I take a deep breath. I breathe in, breath through, breathe deep, breath out.
"I don't even know where to start." I say. "He was the best big brother I could've ever asked for. Even though at times we fought, he was always there for me. He'd always protect me, shelter me as much as he could. He was always the first to say how proud he was of me. I didn't realise just how much I had until it was gone. I just wish I could tell him how much he means to me."
"I'm sure he already knew. By the sound of things you two were close and he loved you just as much as you loved him." He says. "Do you have any pictures you want to show me?" He asks and a smile makes it's way onto my face. I nod enthusiastically and he pulls his chair next to mine.
I show him some baby photos of me and Sidney and he comments on how cute we were.
I pull up a few photos from the day he graduated high school. My favourite is the one of him in his blue cap and gown, his blonde hair peeking out of the front. His arm is tossed over my shoulder and his hand is in a rock symbol. He's pulling a funny face and I'm side eying him with a grin on my face, trying not to laugh at his childish behaviour.
Another favourite of mine is from the time we went to Spain. My parents had paid for a professional photoshoot and left us with the photographer while they went and had drinks at the pool. The two of us were only young and bored out of our minds. Sidney and I secretly made a plan to escape and so when the photographer was setting up the camera for his next shot Sidney grabbed me onto his back and started running. I'd convinced him into giving me a piggyback, making the perfect argument that I was a lot smaller than him and would be left behind if he didn't. The photographer took the perfect photo of the two of us. It is such a natural, wholesome photo.
The next photo is a random one I took of him, I have a few of those. I like this one in particular, it's from the time he let me dye the ends of his hair red. At age 13 I'd asked my parents if I could die my hair and they said no. Since Sidney was 19 and technically an adult we went to his dads house dyed his hair instead. It was a semi-permanent dye so it lasted a while and our mom and my dad (his stepdad) were not happy.
I envied that he had a place to escape to, another, kinder parent. A lot of the time he would take me to his dad's with him when he went. My parents would never allow me to stay overnight though, they didn't even know I'd go over to his house. The first time I went my parents completely flipped out so from that moment on I just didn't tell them. David didn't treat me any differently because I was the daughter of his ex-girlfriend and the man she cheated on him with. He even went as far as to buy me presents for my birthdays and I too was always welcome at his house.
My father died and then two years later so did my brother. When Sidney died my mother took off. She abandoned me. When I was 16 David took me in. He too was grieving the loss of his son and yet he went out of his way to make sure I had somewhere to stay.
I moved out after I turned 18 because I was fortunate enough to have my own business courtesy of my good friend Mariana.
David and I still keep in touch from time to time as I'm grateful for all he's done for me.
I tell Vincent the story behind each photo, only leaving out the parts about my bad family life.
When we get to the last photo of the randomly timed album on my phone it's a photo of Sidney and one of his bestfriends.
"Who's that?" Vincent asks pointing to the girl in the photo beside Sidney.
"That's Eva. She was one of Sidney's really good friends. She was a couple years older than him, they met at work. I think he had a crush on her at first but he didn't make a move because she got engaged."
"Engaged?" He says looking at the brunette. "She looks younger than you do."
"Gee thanks." I state. "I believe she'd not long turned 18 on this photo, she'd been engaged a while before."
"How old was your brother there?"
"Um, 16, I think."
"16? With an 18 year old?"
"Like I said, friends from work. His feelings clearly weren't reciprocated and at this point he'd moved on." I state.
"You seem to know an awful lot about your brothers love life." He says.
I shrug. "I know an awful lot about my brother." I state. "And yet I barely know anything about what happened that day. The day he died. There's holes in my memory... I think my brain is blocking it out."
"What pieces are you missing?" He asks and I give him a look as if to say 'are you acctually serious right now?' because if I knew that then they wouldn't be missing. "No, I mean, do you remember like the basics? Is there anything in particular you feel you should know the answer to?"
"Four years ago today I got a phone call from his phone. I remember picking it up, happy that he was calling. When a random guy started talking and asked if I was Cassandra Harper I immediately knew something was wrong. I don't remember much of the conversation but I remember him saying that Sidney was dead." I say, my voice starting to shake. "He had died in a fire at some bar he'd hang around a lot. I was too in shock to remember much else. I don't even know what started the fire... if it was accidental or deliberate. What kind of a sister doesn't ask that?"
"Was- was it a bar named the red raven?" Vincent stutters, his voice barely above a whisper. He looks shaken up, frightened even.
Now that I think about it....
"Yes?"
"Four years ago today....I was in that fire." He says and I feel my heart physically stop beating.
♡♡♡
A/n Cliff hanger ✅
They'll be a lot more where that came from, I'm planning some....interesting things for the future.
I love me some good pathetic fallacy. (If you don't know what that is, it's when the weather or an inanimate object matches the mood of the person.)
Talking about that scene, there's 1 paragraph where there's a lot of italics. It's based on the song clean by taylor swift. "Rain came pouring down when I was drowning, that's when I could finally breathe."
Also I love Cassie & Vincent's friendship.