Most of what happened next is hard to remember.
I stayed next to Scarlett when they took her uncle’s body into the ambulance. I sat by her next to the stretcher as she held onto his hand, whispering prayers, and begging him to stay with her. I stayed with her when we waited outside the operating room. She paced the hallway and ignored me when I asked her to sit down. I think halfway through she realised that he wasn’t coming out of the operating room alive. I stayed with her when the doctors came out and told us they were sorry for our loss.
She didn’t cry. She didn’t run into the room like I expected, demanding they do more. She just stood there, staring at the doctor until I clasped my hand around her elbow and led her to a seat. When the doctors changed our clothes, giving us scrubs that weren’t covered in blood, a nurse had to dress her because she didn’t want to move. Even when her mom and brothers came, she sat there, staring at the blank wall, the smell of chlorine and chemicals invading our senses. They didn’t know what to do or say, so they left me with her, and I promised them I’d get her home safe.
I sat with her for hours. I brought food to her, but she didn’t eat. She didn’t speak. She didn’t even look at me. I tried to comfort her. I never left her side. I couldn’t. And I didn’t want to. I need to be close to her, at all times and even with her in a state of grief, I still want to be with her.
Now, I’m driving her back home in her car and she’s still silent. It’s stopped raining, but her body temperature keeps fluctuating. At the moment, her face looks pale, but she feels warm. I can tell she’s going to fall asleep. She’s still in shock and her head keeps lolling forward. I slow down the car so I can use my right hand to lift her head up. Her head is so hot it almost scalds me.
“Hey, Scar?” I ask, tilting her head to lift back on the headrest. I glance at her, trying my best to keep my eyes on the road at the same time. Her dark hair is covering most of her face.
“Hm?” she mumbles. It’s the most I’ve heard her speak in the last six hours, so I hold onto the moment and urge her not to fall asleep.
“Stay with me, okay?” I let go of my hand for a second, seeing if she’ll keep her head up, but she can’t do it on her own. Maybe we shouldn’t have left the hospital. “I’ve got you.”
“I’m literally fine,” she groans. Of course, she has the energy to give me sass right now.
“You’re not,” I say, still holding her head up. She turns her head into my hand, gently nuzzling her cheek into my palm like a kitten. I lower my hand, so it rests in my lap, and she sets her head in it. I continue driving with one hand, stroking her hair out of her face with the other.
“I’m trying,” she groans, and it sounds like she’s crying again. Her voice sounds so filled with pain that it tears my heart in two. “I’m just so tired…so tired of everything. Everything hurts so badly.”
“What hurts, Angel?” I ask, moving my hand from her face down her spine, running my fingers up and down. She relaxes into me for a second and I can tell she’s forcing herself to breathe calmly. I don’t want her to sleep yet. Not when she hasn’t eaten all day.
“Everything hurts,” she says again. “My head. My back. My heart. My chest. My hands. I feel like I can’t breathe anymore, Ev.”
“I’ve got you, Scar. What do you need?”
“I don’t know,” she groans, pressing her hand to her temples.
“Can I take you back to the hospital?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No. No hospitals.”
“Okay, then what can I do for you, Scarlett? I need to help you,” I say quietly, still running my finger up and down her back.
“Just take me home. Please,” she whispers. She turns in my lap so she’s looking up at me. Her face is paler than usual, but her cheeks are a little red. She grabs my hand, pressing it to her heart. “I feel like my chest is on fire.”
“I know, sweetheart, I know,” I whisper back to her, massaging the top of her chest gently and she lets me. She lets me be there for her.
Have you ever had that feeling after you’ve felt things so intensely, where you feel it right to your core, it sits in your stomach, it stays there and then it’s just…gone?
I get that feeling after being so high on energy at a concert and I have to go back home, where I have to pretend, I didn’t have the best time of my life. I got that feeling after I finished high school. Everyone was sad about leaving their friends and moving away, but what stuck with me was that I was leaving a place and it felt like losing a person. It felt like losing a part of myself since it was somewhere I spent so many years creating memories with my best friends.
That’s what it felt like when the doctors told me my uncle had died. I already knew from the moment in the alley that he wouldn’t make it, but the doctors made it official.
He was just gone. There was nothing left of him. That’s the hardest part about someone dying is knowing that it’s just…it. Their memories cease to exist. Their thoughts, their feelings, everything that made them them doesn’t even mean anything anymore. You don’t get to ever speak to them again. You won’t ever know what they would have thought about something new happening. You’d never know if their voice would change with age or if it would stay the same. Their mind, their soul, their body…everything is just gone.
I’m still trying to process it when Evan takes me back to my apartment. The girls’ cars aren’t in the driveway, and I don’t know when or if I’ll tell them. I’m not planning on talking to anyone right now. I don’t want to wallow and sit in silence, but I don’t want to talk either. I just want to stop feeling. To stop the noise in my head that keeps replaying the same thoughts over and over.
When I open the door, I switch on the lights and Evan follows behind me. I know this is the last thing he wants to do right now. I’ve shown too much to him recently. I’ve basically laid my soul bare in front of this man more than once. But he never makes me feel like I shouldn’t. He just lets me feel things.
I tell him I’m going to take a shower and he nods. I leave him in the kitchen, needing a minute. I’ve had hours to get my shit together. I’ve had too long to stop acting like my life has ended. It hasn’t. I know it hasn’t. But for some reason my whole body feels like it’s being weighed down, like somebody is standing on my chest, telling me not to get up. But I need to. I need to push that demon off me and get my act together.
I take a long shower, needing the space and the time. I end up staring at the white tiles of the bathroom for half an hour, naked, the hot water pummelling on my back that I don’t even end up using any soap until almost an hour goes by. I always take hot showers, but right now, I need it to scold me. I need it to make me feel more than this heavy, numb feeling that I can’t escape.
I hate feeling like this. It’s not that I’m sad. I mean, that’s what I’m supposed to feel, right? Pure and utter sadness? So, I probably am deep down. But on the surface, I can’t even put it into words how it feels. It’s like trying to remember the last time you saw someone who you don’t talk to anymore. Where you try so hard it just hurts at the thought of it.
There’s just nothing other than a dark nothingness that rests on my chest. I can’t even conjure in my head most of what happened on that street.
I try my best to feel as normal as I can when I get ready, so I can go into my room and wait until my body decides to fall asleep. I shove on a pair of pyjama shorts and a tank top, throwing a sweater on top. When I wander back into the kitchen, Evan is still here.
I think it’s the first time I’ve really looked at him since we got into the ambulance. He had to change his clothes into a pair of scrubs, the same as I did and he’s still wearing them. His hair is a lot messier than usual, and his face just looks worn out. It’s way into the morning now, probably around two or three. I haven’t checked my phone, but Evan must have if he’s sorting out takeout food onto a plate.
I inch further into the kitchen and his head shoots up, his eyes softening on me. I still don’t know what’s going on with us. Part of me wants to see what happens, let it spiral out of control, but the other part of me needs to know what’s going to happen. Now is not the time for that. All I know as of right now is that I want to be close to him and I don’t want to be alone for once.
“You should have gone home. It’s late,” I whisper, making my way to the kitchen counter.
“I didn’t want to,” he explains, closing the lids to the plastic containers. “You need to eat.”
I’m not hungry, but I don’t tell him that. I take the plate of Chinese takeout and make my way over into the living room, settling between the soft plush blankets we often leave lying around. Evan follows me, sitting beside me with a sigh, manspreading like always. The TV is in front of us but neither of us make a move to turn it on.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” I ask once I’ve eaten a forkful of noodles. The food makes me feel sick, but it was a nice gesture, so I force myself to eat some of it. I push the plate aside, pulling my knees up to my chest as I lean my head on them.
“Because I want to,” he says quietly. I don’t look at him. I don’t know if I want to. I just keep my head buried in my knees.
“Scar,” he murmurs. I feel the soft brush of his fingers on my shoulder, and I flinch. “Scarlett, sweetheart, look at me, please.”
I slowly move my head, turning towards him, still resting on my knees. He looks so tired and sad. I feel terrible that he’s had to lose out on sleep because of me. I don’t know how bad Gio looked before I saw him in Evan’s lap but I’m sure it scarred him. His eyes usually have this ocean-like glow in them, but now, they just seem dim – almost like the deep nothingness that lurks at the bottom of the ocean. Completely empty.
“We’re not doing that, okay? I know things are hard right now, but I’m going to be nice to you and you’re going to let me. Deal?”
I nod. He keeps his hand on my shoulder, gently rubbing it. I don’t tell him to stop. I don’t think I want him to. “Are you not going to eat?”
“I already did when you were in the shower,” he says. I nod again. He sighs as if he’s been holding his breath and I think at that moment, we both realise the severity of today. He watched somebody die. My uncle died. In my arms. He’s gone forever. I feel the dryness at the back of my throat, and I start blinking rapidly.
Evan doesn’t say anything other than, “Come here.”
I don’t climb into his lap, so much as he pulls me into him. I allow myself to release all the resentment I held towards him, and I let myself wrap my arms around his neck as he snakes his hands around my shoulders, holding me tightly just the way I need. I’m hugging him and I’m letting him anchor me because I need it. And I think he needs it too. I don’t care about that one thing he said to me years ago. I don’t care about the stupid games we’ve been playing since then.
I just want him to hold me, and he does.
“You know that I’ve got you, Scar, don’t you?” he asks thickly. I nod into his neck, inhaling him. “I’d never let anything happen to you. Ever.”
“I know,” I choke out. He’s not a monster. He’s not evil. He’s just Evan Branson who cares about me. He cares about me enough to sit with me in silence when I can’t find the words. He cares about me enough to buy me food and make sure I eat it. He cares about me enough to sit with me in front of a blank TV and hold me when he knows I need it. When he tells me he’s got me, I believe him.
Even when I slip out of his lap, settling beside him, he keeps his arm around me as I rest my head on his shoulder. I pull my knees up and he grabs one of the blankets, laying it over our legs. After he’s smoothed it out, he slips his hand under the covers and his hand finds mine. And I hold it.
Evan
She’s doing it again. Well, I think she is. She’s doing that thing where she does something without realising that she’s doing them. She’s stroking her thumb against my hand, and I want to crawl up into her lap even though she’s the one that’s hurting.
I wish she could be like this all the time. As much as I love her screaming at me, I like the quiet moments too. The moments where we share a blanket in her living room, not talking and staring at the blank TV. We don’t say anything to each other, but we don’t need to because each stroke of her thumb against my hand is telling me enough.
Thank you for taking care of me.
I don’t even realise that we fell asleep until the sun starts to peek through the blinds of the living room and the front door opens. Neither of us have spoken to the rest of the group since we left suddenly. They must have heard about it from the morning news and came straight here.
We fell asleep sitting up, so when the girls came rushing into the room, I gently pushed apart from her making my way to the pillar between the open living room and kitchen. No matter how upset she is, I want her to tell her friends whatever is going on between us on her terms. I don’t want them to assume anything that she’s not comfortable with.
“Scarlett,” Kennedy coos quietly, climbing onto the couch next to a sleepy Scarlett. She smiles weakly before she wraps her in a hug. “We heard. We’re so sorry.”
I watch as Kennedy fusses over her that I don’t realise Wren’s hand on my back. I turn to her and she’s a lot shorter than me, so she blinks up at me, her green eyes filled with concern.
“Is she okay?” she asks me quietly. I shrug, nodding gently.
“She will be. I think she’s still in shock,” I explain. Wren pulls her bottom lip between her teeth in worry as she turns back to Kennedy and Scarlett.
“Thank you. You know, for taking care of her. She’s our girl and she pretends to be tough, but sometimes she needs someone to look after her. We try when we can, but she’s not easy to deal with, but you calm her. I think you make her feel safe and she needs that.”
What me and Scarlett have done up until now has been anything but calm. I’ve always wanted that peace that we once had when we were kids, but I thought it never came back. Unless things look differently to her, I wouldn’t know what Wren’s talking about.
“Yeah. She would never admit it, but I’ve seen you guys sneaking around and I assume you’re enabling her compulsions for finding out what happened to her dad. If she was doing this on her own, she’d be freaking out. But she hasn’t been. I think you’re good for her. In whatever way you want to take that,” she says, turning to look up at me. “You should get some sleep too. You look exhausted.”
I smile at her and when she walks over to fuss over Scarlett on the couch, I turn around and slip out of the door, finally sighing a breath of relief. Today has been one long fucking day and I can’t wait to get back into my bed.
I make it about five steps out of the building before I hear Scarlett running and shouting after me. I turn around and there she is, a blanket wrapped around her shoulder, her hair a mess, her face still tired, but she smiles at me weakly.
“You were going to leave without saying bye?” she pants, tilting her head to the side.
“Well, your friends came back, and it seemed like you needed some time alone,” I explain, instantly moving my hand to the back of my neck nervously. She studies me for a few seconds, not sure what to say. I just stand there until she jumps into my arms, her arms around the blanket wrapping around me, covering us both in the warmth.
She tightens her arms around my neck, and I feel every single part of me come alive. I wrap my arms around her small waist, pulling her as close to me as I can. I should not be getting hard right now. Especially after everything that has happened in the last few hours, but she just smells so fucking good all the time.
“Thank you, Evan,” she whispers, her mouth and her hot breath against the rapid pulse on my neck. I finally believe I can breathe again. “For everything.”
