TW: Mentions of suicide and E.D.
Valerie was sat on my sofa, in front of the TV, again. She was starting to become a part of the apartment and I was worried that it might start to feel strange if she wasn't there.
"Do you want something to eat? A drink?" I asked from the kitchen.
"Oh, I'm okay. You're already doing so much for me and I-"
"Tea it is, then. With a cookie." I said, putting on the kettle.
I heard her sigh from the sofa but she didn't complain.
After grabbing a t-shirt and pyjama shorts from my room, I came back into the living room and handed them to her.
"What's this?" She asked, looking at the clothes in confusion.
"I told you I would give you some of my clothes, didn't I?"
"I mean yes but I didn't expect-"
"The bathroom is that way." I said, nodding my head in the direction. "There's a lock on the door."
Valerie muttered a quick "Thank you." before getting to her feet and making her way to the bathroom.
I was carrying the teas and food into the living room when she came back in. In my clothes.
I stared blankly at her, just blinking.
She shifted on her feet. "What?" She said nervously.
"Nothing just..." Just that I really liked how she looked in my clothes. I cleared my throat. "We should um..." I gestured to the sofa and she sat down.
"Are you feeling okay?" She asked, furrowing her brows at my reaction.
"Yeah, I'm fine. So," I said, "what should we watch?"
"Last time we watched my favourite movie so we should probably watch yours." She said, leaning into the couch.
"Okay, we'll watch Superbad then."
"Superbad?"
"You've never seen it?" I asked, sitting down on the sofa. I sat right next to her so our thighs were touching. I knew exactly what I was doing.
"No." She said, a little flustered. I grinned into my own cup of tea.
It was fifteen minutes before she properly leaned into the sofa, half an hour before I felt her body relax against mine and an hour and a half before I noticed her eyes start to drift shut. She had drunk all of her tea but only taken one bite out of her cookie. Maybe she didn't like them and was too polite to say so. I wouldn't put it past her, what with her always being so worried that she's selfish. I made a mental note to find out what her favourite snack was so I could get it for her in the future.
After the movie had ended and I had turned the TV off, she sat up again. "I definitely did not fall asleep." She said, her eyes slightly glassy.
"Sure." I said, grinning at her slightly dazed look.
"I'm sorry it's your favourite movie and I should have-"
"Stop saying sorry." I said, laughing slightly. "It's fine."
"Okay." She said quietly. "I'll stop."
"If you're tired, we should probably go to bed." I said, even as it took every fibre of my being to not keep her there, right beside me. "You can have my room." I said, getting up. It didn't even cross my mind. Of course she could have my room.
"What? No, don't you have a spare room in this fancy apartment?" She said, getting flustered.
"Yes-"
"Great, then I'll take that." She said, standing up.
"You can't. It isn't furnished. There's no bed or anything." I said.
"What- okay, then I'll take the couch." She said, moving to sit down.
"No, I'll take the couch." I said, lying down on it and stretching out.
"Thomas no-"
"Just take my room, Valerie. I'm insisting. It's no big deal."
"But this is your apartment and that's your room, I can't take that." She said, getting annoyed.
"Yes you can."
"No I can't-"
"You really can."
"Thomas Verner-" I loved it when she said my name.
"Valerie Fawkes."
"You said that this was my apartment, correct?" I said, putting my arms behind my head.
"Yes." She said, giving me a confused and exasperated look.
"Then as the owner of this property, I am telling you, my guest, to take my room. You'll get a much better sleep there."
She stared at me, biting her lip, and then looked behind her, where my room was.
"Fine." She huffed, trudging away.
"Goodnight." I called after her.
She just flipped me off, causing me to chuckle before disappearing behind the door to my bedroom.
I fell asleep to thoughts of brown eyes, glossy hair and a girl with a cute accent, wearing my clothes.
---
"Thomas." I heard my mother's soft voice in my dream. "Thomas, wake up." My shoulder started to shake. That was weird. "Thomas Verner, wake up."
This wasn't a dream. This was my mother. She was waking me up.
I peeled open my eyes and saw my mother crouching by my bed, her hair still perfectly styled, her makeup barely smudged, from the night before.
"Thomas, I need you to come with me." She said, her lips pursed.
"Why, what's wrong?" I asked, my brows furrowed in confusion.
"Come with me."
I grabbed my glasses from my nightstand and walked past the big bookshelf my father had bought me for my eleventh birthday.
My mother did not hold out her hand. She never did. I supposed at thirteen, I was too old for that anyway.
"Mom!" I heard my older brother, Henry, shout from outside my bedroom door.
We both came out to see my fourteen year old sister and sixteen year old brother standing just outside. Except they weren't the only people here. My father's close friend, and lawyer, Larry was here. Two policemen were at the penthouse's front door. The board of my father's company was here. But my father wasn't.
Henry went straight for my mother while I moved to Rose. "Hey, Thomas." She said, wrapping her arms around me.
"What's going on?" I asked, looking at all the different faces.
"Tommy, come here." Henry said.
"Don't call me that." I said.
"Come on, Henry, you know he doesn't like nicknames." Rose said from beside me.
"Does that really matter right now?!" He fired back.
"Your brother is right." My mother said. "Both of you, come here."
Rose and I padded over to where my mother and older brother stood. "There is no nice way to put this. Your father is dead." She said, pursing her lips. "I won't sugar-coat it. It is a fact. You do not cry. You do not whine. It has happened and there is nothing you or I can do about it. He was a selfish, selfish man."
I looked at my sister, before looking back at my heartless mother. But my sister just looked angry. "How can you call him selfish, you know he-"
"Enough!" My mother shouted. She never shouted. "I do not want to hear another word about it. You will be asked questions tomorrow and you will be presentable." She straightened her dress. "You may go back to bed, the both of you."
"What about Henry? He gets to stay here? If he's lucky, he may even be allowed to grieve." My sister sneered, her voice cracking.
"Do as you are told, Rose. You too, Thomas. This is final. His death is final. You do not moan or cry or whine. Go back to bed." She turned away from us, in dismissal.
"How did he... pass?" I managed the words out.
"He had an illness, Thomas. He's better now." Rose said. How did that make any sense? Maybe Mom was right and he was selfish. How could he be better away from us? Away from me?
Rose took my arm and walked me to my room. "Separate rooms, Rose Verner." I heard my mother say.
He's dead. Was all I could think about. The only two words on my mind. I thought about it so much that the words started to spill out of my mouth. It was better than tears spilling out of my eyes.
"Thomas." I heard my sister say. Her hands gripped both my arms, locking me in place, grounding me, bringing me back to the family I had left. "Listen to me." She whispered. "You go into your room. You sit down on your bed, and you think. You think about what has happened. You think about our father and you cry. You cry as hard as you can."
"But mom-" I started.
"You cry until you can't cry anymore. You need to feel, Thomas. You hear me?" She said, giving me a stern look.
"Yes." The word came out as barely a whisper.
"What are you going to do?" She asked.
"Cry." I whispered.
"And?"
"Feel."
"That's right. It's important that you do."
"Are you going to cry?" I asked.
"You worry about you and I'll worry about me." She said, avoiding eye contact. "I love you."
"I love you too."
I went into my room, sat down on my bed and felt nothing. How could I? I hated everyone. I hated my family, Larry, my mother, my brother, my father's business, and I hated him too. I hated my dad most of all.
I hated people.
"Thomas?" I heard a soft feminine voice say. I sat bolt upright, looking around. "Thomas, it's me, Valerie."
As soon as I saw her face, my heartbeat slowed back to a normal pace but then picked back up when I noticed she wasn't wearing the shorts I had given her. She was wearing my t-shirt. Just my t-shirt.
"I'm sorry to wake you but I couldn't sleep and-"
"It's fine." I said. "Sit here." I patted the space next to me and she sat down carefully. "What's wrong?" I asked.
"I just couldn't get to sleep because I felt so bad for everything that you've done for me when I definitely haven't deserved it. Oh my God, I'm keeping you up which is even more selfish-"
"You're not being selfish. I want you here." I said, which was the complete and utter truth.
This seemed to flip a switch and she instantly relaxed.
"What's on your mind?" I asked her.
"Well, I started to think about Mable which made me think about ballet and I realised something." She said quietly.
"What?" I asked, surprised that she was even giving me the chance to understand her mind.
"She stopped asking." She said in a voice so small and timid, I wasn't sure I heard her right.
"Stopped asking what?" I asked, patiently waiting for an answer.
"She stopped asking me to go to ballet with her. Which means that she has accepted it. The one person who has never doubted me has started to doubt me. I have... no one." She finished.
My brows knitted in confusion, I had no idea what she was talking about so I said, "But you don't do ballet anymore."
"You're right, I don't." She sunk further into the cushions.
"Why?"
She turned her head and looked at me. With those gorgeous brown eyes. "You won't look at me the same once you know. Not like you're looking at me right now."
I knew deep down, that nothing could change the way I saw Valerie. "Try me." I said.
She took a deep breath and looked away, as if she couldn't bare looking into my eyes as she talked to me.
"My mother contracted bowel cancer around five years ago." I stayed silent, waiting for her to continue, ignoring the tear that was ripping open for her. "It felt unfair and it wasn't right but neither was life so I accepted it. Like I knew I had to. So I carried on. I carried on with my life as it had been before. I still did ballet, I still went to Mable's every Wednesday after school. The only difference was that I knew my mother was in the chemo department of some cold, dank hospital."
She took a deep breath, I still said nothing, knowing that sometimes that was what was best in these situations. "It felt like I was abandoning her. That I was allowing this beautiful woman that I loved- love, to become a shell of what she once was. My father worried, of course, but my mother encouraged my brothers and I, especially me, to carry on as usual. I knew how the story went. There was no point in stressing about it. My Aunt Cathy had breast cancer and she did chemo, had a mastectomy, and moved on with her life. That was what was supposed to happen to Mum."
She sighed, "Except my mother wasn't Aunt Cathy. Her condition worsened and as she got worse, I got better. I became top of my class in ballet. I landed a solo in my company's performance at the Royal Albert Hall. My mother was so proud once I told her. Because I just couldn't help myself, could I? I had to tell her about it. Because I am selfish, at my core, that is who I am."
She shook her head, and wiped a tear that had fallen down her cheek. "By then, my mother was in hospital full-time. Her side of the bed at home was cold and empty, a permanent dip in the mattress of where she once was. Her mugs, dusty and unused. Her slippers by the door, waiting for her to come home. But she was in no condition to leave the hospital and I knew that. She could barely get out of bed. But she insisted on coming. And I never told her no. She said she could do it. She wanted to do it and I-"
She breathed in, still not looking at me, "I let her. I didn't encourage her but I didn't stop her. And when it came to my performance, and I saw her in the crowd, I could barely contain my excitement. My mother was here. My father was working and my brothers were teenagers, the last thing they wanted to do was go to their little sister's ballet performance. But it didn't matter because she was there. She had made it."
"Half way through my solo, I heard someone shout. Then I heard another and another and another until people started to gather and congest around where my mother had been sitting. My steps faltered and I slowed down, I remember worrying that I would ruin my performance and I wouldn't get another solo ever. How selfish and stupid. Until there were too many people to ignore so I looked over the edge and saw her. Her eyes closed, her body limp and people yelling to call 999. Her face was so pasty and so white. She wasn't smiling that smile my mother had. She wasn't telling me stories while we did the dishes together. And she wasn't breathing. She collapsed because she was too weak and she her body couldn't handle the effort of being there even though her mind thought that she could. She died later that night. And I had to explain to my family what happened. What caused her death. That it was me."
"My mother's death is on me. That is the burden I have to carry for the rest of my life. And I should, knowing what I've done."
She looked down, clearly holding back tears.
"Valerie." I said softly. She looked up at me. "Am I looking at you differently?" I asked. She hesitated but shook her head. "You're right. I'm not. Do you know why that is?" She shook her head again. "It's because it is not your fault. It never was your fault and it never will be your fault."
She was about to interrupt when I said, "Just how my father shooting himself when I was thirteen wasn't my fault. It was his." I felt my own eyes welling up now. I had never cried about my father's death, but seeing how broken and feeble she was in that moment, could bring anyone to tears.
"Thomas-"
"You don't need to say anything. Just like I know you don't want me to say anything about your mother. It happened a long time ago. I'm not thirteen anymore."
"You've moved on then?" She asked quietly. "What does it feel like?" Her eyes were so full of hope that it broke my already broken heart.
"I don't think I ever will move on." I said, thinking both about the mourning I feel for both my father and sister. Both strong, but in different ways.
Valerie hung her head slightly, as if this news could destroy her. Maybe it would.
"Does it get better?" She asked timidly.
"After seven years, not really. It just becomes more... manageable. In a way it wasn't when I was younger." I said, pressing my lips into a line to stop my voice from cracking.
"So three more years then. Until the guilt and grief subsides just a little bit."
"The guilt?"
"That it was my fault." When she saw me move to say something she said, "No, I know what you're going to say. But I don't think it is my fault, I know it is. So do my brothers, even if they never really said it and so does my father, even if he did." I must have looked taken aback by the last comment because she sighed. Her father told her that it was her fault? "There is nothing you can do or say to change my mind. It is a fact, just one of the many truths of the universe."
"Valerie, you may believe that, but I don't. Not for a second."
She looked at me, her eyes still glassy from unshed tears before she nodded.
"I think we both need some sleep." I said.
Before I could think about what I was doing, I pulled her towards me and she lay, her back against my chest, my arms around her. I was sure she could feel how fast my heart was beating but she didn't seem to mind.
This felt right. She felt right, especially in my arms.
And it felt right to talk about my father and what happened for the first time in seven years.
---
Bit intense x I wanted to do a longer chapter to apologise for not updating for like a month. I hope you enjoy xx
Word count: 2989