"No. I'm fine."
Avi was lying on his back in the center of my bed with the back of his hand delicately lying across his eyes. It had been a few days since his last random outburst that ended in him standing at my door in complete silence. He began seeing Dr. Jones on a more regular basis. He stopped smiling. I sat on the edge of the bed and placed my hand on the center of his stomach. He moved his hand and looked down at me. He looked like he'd just returned from a 6-month tour due to the large bags under his eyes and the ragged shape his beard was in. He was a shimmer of himself. He'd missed 5 Pentatonix rehearsals.
"Honey. Please talk to me."
"About what?"
"Anything. I feel like I haven't talked to you in years."
He took a deep breath and sat up. He pressed his lips against mine, but the lips I felt didn't feel like the soft gentle lips of my wonderful bass man. They were rough and unloving. I felt this sudden, yet deep-rooted, despondency waft over my body like the waves of a drunken ocean. I couldn't fight the unearthly displacement of my emotions. I could almost physically feel the ocean pulling me deeper into its valley of depression. Something about this felt familiar. I wasn't feeling my emotions. I looked into the broken and void eyes of the man I once called my lover and melted into a mess of tears against his shoulder. How could he feel all this pain and not stain his face from the thousands of tears? How could he even function?
"Are you feeling my emotions again? I told you to stop that!" Avi grabbed my shoulders and pushed me back so we were an arm's length away. He looked so angry. He hugged himself, pulling his knees against him again. "I..." He moved his hands to the top of his head and shook it lightly. "I'm sorry. I just... No one should have to feel this..."
"Sing with me."
"I don't want to sing."
"What?"
"I just... I don't want to. Okay?"
"Who are you?"