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You should be used to the nightmares by now. If you dream at all—which doesn’t happen often anymore, unless you take an extra dose of sleeping meds before bed on a particularly hard night—the visions that your mind comes up with are strange. You’ve been an unintentional fiend in an assisted suicide conspiracy, been chased through forests and oceans by demons and abominations, been trapped in a sprawling empty city, left to drown alone in the sea with your mother’s laugh flowing around you.
Those aren’t the recurring ones, however; you could write novels about some of the sporadic ones, but the dreams that regularly haunt you are rooted in real experiences. Sometimes you’re eight years old again and Cronus is beckoning you closer, pants around his ankles and something hard in his hand. His nightmares are the most common, you believe, because he’s managed to sink is presence into every corner of your mind and make you into something he owns. Those dreams you’re left to deal with alone, because you can’t tell a soul that they sometimes reflect the reality of your childhood. It would horrify Fef. It would break your father’s heart.
But the dreams that star your brother did not choose to visit you tonight. Nor was it one of the vivid visions where you cut too deep and watch yourself bleed to death on the bathroom floor. Tonight, it’s the Fef nightmare.
She often flits in and out of your dreams, which is expected, as she often weaves her way through your waking thoughts like a dancer whirling her way around poised on the tips of her toes. Fef used to dance when she was younger, you remember, but she gave it up when she was around seven so she could pursue competitive swimming instead. For years, she worked her way up to the top in each category, first in the 100m freestyle, then butterfly, and finally breaststroke. The ten and under category was her playground, and she flourished there. When she turned eleven, she did the winter offseason and never swam competitively again, because she didn’t like people constantly coming up to her and condescendingly calling her an inspiration. She just wanted to swim.
The change in her competitive spirit was jarring, and your nightmares are about the cause of such a shift.
You’re eleven years old, getting into Fef’s grandma’s car to drive home from the big museum in Jacksonville. It’s late, because you were there for a special night demonstration where you got to use telescopes and that was pretty awesome at the time. This is where Fef’s memory cuts off—she walking to the car and then everything goes blank until she wakes up almost a day later in a hospital bed—and that’s where you told everyone yours stopped as well. Since you had a head injury, they believed you. But you lied. You remember every tiny detail. Each one comes to rip you apart while you sleep.
What actually happened between walking outside and driving away was this: you and Fef had fought about where to sit in the car, because you both wanted to sit on the left side. You were a little punk that always had to have your way, so you prevailed, and you sat in your seat, smug and satisfied.
Ten minutes into the drive, Glenys goes through a green light. The drunk guy whose light was red didn’t notice he was supposed to stop. He plows into the car on the right side, where Fef is sitting.
When you’re awake, you can still bring the exact images of what she looked like to mind. It’s not hard, really; they’re too deeply branded in your memory banks, but they still make you want to throw up. Your Fef, body bent and pinched between the back of her seat and the concave door of the car, blood beginning to pool around her abdomen from lacerations, face slumped against the mangled side of the car.
(“She was lucky,” you remember doctors saying in another room where they thought you couldn’t hear. “She was so lucky, she so easily could’ve died.”
You’ve never really agreed with them. After a brief period of mourning, Fef did, but you never once thought that everyone else—drunkard included—being able to walk away from that crash when she couldn’t was lucky at all.)
Somehow, your mind always manages to stitch together scenes that make the entire thing gorier, grislier, and deadlier.
There’s blood on her. There’s blood on you. It drips down your face, your clothes, your hands. Your hands. You scrub them on your pants, but more keeps appearing in its place, and when you wake you’ll swear you can still feel it under your fingernails. One of the metal supports of the car has burst through the frame, puncturing her straight through the chest and twisting her back so you see a bit of spine poking out from under the hem of her shirt. Her eyes are open and cloudy, dead and staring straight at you, and all you can do is scream and scream and—
You suck in a gasping breath. You do not scream.
Blinking hard in the darkness, you take another ragged breath and throw a hand over your eyes, trying to ignore the ringing in your ears. Blindly, you reach for your nightstand, knocking over a glass of water in your haste to grab your cell phone. Before you fully realize what you’re doing, a phone in a house down the street is ringing.
“Eridan?” Fef’s sleepy tone is music to your ears. “It’s three in the morning.”
Sighing, you pinch the bridge of your nose. The relief that she’s alive seeps through you slowly, not taking root instantaneously. “I’m sorry, I just…” Swallowing, you try again. “I just...”
“Are you okay?” she asks, sounding more awake this time. More alive.
“Yeah,” you say. It’s a bit easier to speak now. “I needed to hear your voice. I’m sorry I woke you.”
She doesn’t hang up. In the tone she reserves when she wishes to be soft, she inquires, “Nightmares again?”
You roll onto your other side, curling your legs inward. “They come and go.”
“Want to talk about it while I’m up?”
Yes. But you won’t. Instead, you’ll derail. “Do you want to come over tomorrow morning?” you say, fingering the edge of your pillowcase. “I’ll make you breakfast.”
“You need to talk to people, Eridan,” she chastises lightly, realizing immediately what you’re trying to do. “If not me, find a thera—”
“Can we not do this in the middle of the night?” you question, rubbing a hand over your face. You want to ask her to talk to you, to read the fucking phonebook if that means you get to hear her voice, but instead you say, “I’m sorry I woke you. Can Glenys drop you off at around ten? I’ll make crepes.”
“Fine,” she relents. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” Someday, you promise yourself, you’ll tell her what that really means, and hope she doesn’t break your heart. You honestly wouldn’t blame her if she did. “I’m sorry.”
You hang up before she can realize what you’re actually apologizing for. Something in you aches to go dig out a blade, but instead you scrunch yourself up further and try to go back to sleep.
“Can you believe we’re already halfway through our first semester of senior year?” Fef says around a mouthful of blueberry crepe.
“Hallefuckinglujah,” you say wryly, smirking around the fork in your mouth. Swallowing, you go on to say, “I think the college applications we’re drowning in are pretty good indicators of time passing.”
“Bluh, let’s not talk about those.” She leans back in her chair, eyes lifting to the ceiling. “They take up too much our time for us to talk about them when we don’t have to.”
After taking a swallow of milk, you agree. Across the room, the timer on your microwave screeches, forcing you to get up and take the bacon out of the device. The aroma wafting from the paper towel covered plate makes your stomach emit a noise of yearning. Bacon smells like love.
Soon, you have a fucking buffet on the table: eggs, bacon, blueberry crepes, strawberry crepes, and apple cinnamon crepes. God you love crepes. You love most breakfast foods; they’re what you know how to cook. For other meals, you just make some microwavable dish you keep in your freezer. Your dad used to have a cook that came in, but that stopped a couple of years ago.
Everything tastes wonderful, which isn’t surprising. Fef seems to be enjoying the food as well, as she produces little pleased noises that make the corners of your lips turn up slightly. Conversation is sparse, as you’re both pretty focused on cramming as much food into your mouths as possible, but when you do talk it’s about her cuttlefish that laid some eggs or the new treadmill you bought for your gym or the last episode of Graceland.
You flinch when the front door clatters open because it’s so unexpected; you almost choke on your bite of eggs. Turning around in your chair, you crane your neck back to see Cronus come storming past the archway that serves as the main door to the kitchen. His footsteps stop momentarily, and a lump of dread forms in your stomach when he backtracks and pokes his head in to look at you.
“Where’s dad?” he demands. If his loud plodding and door slamming hadn’t clued you in earlier, you definitely would’ve been able to tell from the tone of his voice that he’s mad.
Swallowing even though there’s no more food in your mouth, you tentatively answer, “He’s at the base. They needed an extra hand.”
He growls, the sound almost covered by his phone bursting out into some weird techno song. Fishing it out of his pocket, he answers the call and goes deeper into the house without another word to you.
Relief causes your chest to fall, expelling a harsh breath as you turn back to your food. Just as another bite of eggs passes through your lips, you look up to find Fef staring at you inquisitively. “What?” you question around the mouthful.
“I haven’t seen you and Cronus in the same room together in years,” she says, reaching for her coffee. She takes a sip and her lips twist, so she grabs the sugar from the middle of the table and spoons three more scoops of it into her drink. One corner of your lip tugs down; you wish you could drink coffee. They said down at the rehab center that you could have it in moderation, but what’s the point of that? You either drink no coffee or five cups, there’s no in-between. “I just… picked up on something, that’s all.”
Something strange and terrifying twists in your chest. It’s that feeling that you get when you read something poignant or tragic that pulls on your heartstrings enough that one of them snaps. “And what would that be?”
She purses her lips like she doesn’t want to tell you, and that makes you fear for the worst. You put down your fork and fold your hands on your lap to try and hide the fact that they’ve begun to shake. “Fef, I can explain—”
“I always thought you just hated him,” she says, speaking over you. She doesn’t really sound horrified like she would if she’d really figured out what was going on, so that makes you feel marginally better. “But that’s not really it, is it? You’re afraid of him.”
“Of Cronus?” you snort, rolling your eyes and crossing your arms over your chest. “No way, he’s too much of a loser to be afraid of.” Just in time to prove your point, he comes storming back down the hallway and as he passes the archway, he trips on the rug and almost falls flat on his face. Snarling at the person on the phone, he goes back outside. “See?”
Unconvinced, she goes on, “He turns his attention on you for even a second and you cower. That’s not normal sibling behavior, Eridan. I mean, I know you guys fight a lot, but what has he done that’s so..?”
You’re saved from answering from the conversation piece himself. The front door swings open and smacks the wall yet again, and he calls out, “Hey, chief, I need you to help me with some boxes!”
Boxes of what? you wonder as you stand. “Wait here,” you tell Fef, pushing your chair in and heading outside.
Cronus’ truck is loaded with his junk, thrown haphazardly into storage bins and spilling into the bed and dangling over the sides. None of it is tied down; you’re surprised that none of the bigger, more precariously perched things spilled out. If anything did get dumped on the street, you’re pretty sure that he wouldn’t have bothered to go back and pick it up.
“W-why do you have all this stuff?” you question, uncomprehending.
“God, I need a smoke,” he mutters to himself, shoving his phone into his pocket. He pulls open the tailgate like a child throwing a tantrum even though he’s twenty-one and grabs the first box, grunting as he lifts. Finally, he answers, “I got fucking evicted, that’s what happened. I’ve gotta move back in for a little while until I find a new place.”
Instead of thinking about his bombshell in depth, you fight off nausea and grab a box. After you take the first one upstairs, you go into the kitchen to find Fef. Her plate is empty and she’s doing something on her phone, distracted, but she looks up when you enter. “Hey, what’s going on?”
“I’ll tell you later,” you say, popping the last bit of bacon into your mouth before throwing away the rest of your food and putting both your and Fef’s plates into the sink. “If you want, you can go in my room and use my computer until I’m done with this. You know my password.”
“You didn’t even get to finish breakfast,” she protests. “What does he want?”
“I’m helping him move stuff,” you explain. “I’m sorry.” Before she can question you further, you go back out to assist your brother.
It takes nearly half an hour to move everything upstairs. Some guys he paid are taking all his furniture to a storage unit—that’s who he was on the phone with earlier. Apparently they couldn’t handle simple directions and why the hell was he going to pay them if they were just going to fuck up his stuff and blah blah blah. Before he can con you into unpacking everything for him, you go back downstairs and into your room, locking your door behind you.
Fef has made herself comfortable at your desk, and you recognize the dark blue dashboard on the screen. At first, anger flares because you think she’s on your account, but then you notice posts that include brightly colored, polka dotted dresses and sea creatures. That’s definitely not what’s on your dash, especially your old one.
“You have a Tumblr, right?” she asks, turning a bit to look at you. “I’d like to follow you!”
Before, your blog was full of things you wouldn’t want her to see—it was a personal blog with hipster undertones, which sounds pretty normal on the surface, but there were posts about self-harm and depression and hopelessness that you knew would make her cry, so you never gave it to her. It felt sort of like lying by omission, somehow, but then you’d remind yourself that you’re not obligated to show her every facet of your life. You doubt she’d want to see them all, anyway.
You stopped going on that blog after you got out of rehab, only logging in to make a final post saying to message you if any of your followers wanted your new URL and smashing your keyboard to make a new password, effectively locking yourself out of the account. Your new blog has a lot of nature photographs, plus some science and history stuff, but you have about eight hundred fewer followers now.
If Fef follows this one, maybe it’ll be a deterrent for you if you ever get tempted to return to your old format. Sure, it’ll mean the vagueblogging posts about being pitifully in love with her will have to stop, but that’s what drafts are for. “I’m vespasianEstuary,” you tell her.
“I’m surprised you’re not caligulasAquarium, seeing as that’s what you are on everything else,” she teases, turning back to the screen.
You don’t tell her that’s what it used to be. “Let me guess, yours is cuttlefishCuller?”
“Yep!” she affirms, and you watch her type in your URL and follow you before logging out and shutting the lid of the laptop. “Now,” she says, wheeling towards your bed and moving to sit on it, “what just happened?”
It takes you a second to make yourself join her, sitting across from her with your legs folded under you. Thinking about her question has allowed the last half hour to seep into your mind and penetrate your awareness, forcing you to confront what’s happening. A gigantic lump begins to form in your throat, but you are so fucking sick of crying, so you just shrug slightly and cross your arms over your chest, trying to look disdainful. “Fucker got evicted. He says he has to move back in for a while, but I don’t think he’s talked to Dad about it yet.”
“How’d he manage to do that?” Fef questions incredulously. “Your dad pays his rent!”
“Hell if I know,” you sniff, “I didn’t ask.”
You know she realizes by now that Cronus is a touchy subject, and you’re glad when she drops it. Instead, she moves onto a topic that has the potential to be just as uncomfortable. “We need to talk about what happened last night.”
Rolling your eyes, you say, “Nothing happened last night. I had a bad dream, called you up in a fit of stupidity, and now we’re here.”
“Do you remember what it was about?”
The lie is on the tip of your tongue, ready to move your lips, but at the last second you stop, because you can see in her expression that she’s expecting you to lie. You stare at her and she stares back, and the strange impasse only breaks when you look away, down at the sheets of your bed. You see Fef’s finger start to absentmindedly trace one of the patterns on the comforter, and the familiar movement encourages you a little. “I do.”
She continues to lazily move her finger along the curling lines, and you wait for her response. Neither of you fall for the pretense that you’re talking about dreams; you’re discussing incapacitating fears.
“Dr. Mindy Schwartz,” Fef says suddenly, and you blink hard. “She was my psychologist for a few months after the accident. (“Fef—” you try to intercede.) I know she still has an office in town (“Fef, come on, I don’t need—”) and I promise she’s a lovely woman. I was back to emotional stability in weeks.” What she left out is that she’s always been a happier person than you in general. She swallows, reaching forward to grab one of your hands. “If you don’t trust someone you don’t know and you don’t want to trust someone you do know, then why not give someone I know and trust a try?”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” you say, because that’s not it. “It’s that—” You break off, not really knowing where you were going to go with that statement. Gnawing on the inside of your lip, you squeeze her hand once and think.
You see her lips part, forming a little o as realization sets in. When she speaks, her voice is low. “Part of it’s about me.”
“Yeah,” you respond, but you don’t know if she heard because it was near inaudible and your voice cracked on top of that.
Her grip on your hand tightens. You run and thumb across her knuckles, trying to show that you’re not mad at her and she’s not upsetting you on purpose, not at all, and oh god you owe her an explanation now, don’t you?
“Then maybe you should talk to someone else about it,” she says, sighing as her free hand starts playing with her hair. “You’ll love Dr. Schwartz, I swear. She has a specialization in clinical, a very pretty voice, she’s good at—”
“I have three main recurring dreams,” you interrupt, to usher her away from her ex-therapist, “and I’m not Freudian enough to think they actually mean anything, but they’re mainly memories. They get warped and twisted sometimes, but they’re real experiences. And one of them…” You feel yourself getting a bit antsy, noting the slightly hysterical edge to your voice and the shaking of your hands, so you exhale out of your nose to try and calm down. “One of them isn’t the sort of thing that’s up for discussion, but I’ll talk about the one involving you if you promise not to get mad at me.”
When you look at her face, she seems to be nervous with a smidgeon of understanding and suspicion, but you can tell she’s ready to hear it when she nods once. “Do you remember what happened in the parking lot of the museum, right before the accident?”
Her eyebrows pull together, and she lets go of your hand so she can fold hers together in her lap. You don’t tell her that motion scares you. “If you’re talking about that fucking stupid fight that neither of us claimed to remember,” she says, smiling bitterly, something fiery in her eyes, “then yeah. I really hope,” the emphasis on those words makes you want to cower a little bit, “you’re not about to start playing a blame game, because we both know whose fault it actually was, and it wasn’t anyone present in our car.”
It’s nice to hear she doesn’t find you culpable, but that doesn’t mean you don’t blame you. Your slumped shoulders shrug slightly, and you try to cover, “Fine, fine. That’s not even what most of it is about, that’s just how it usually starts.”
“Go on,” she coaxes when you stop, biting your lip.
“Let’s just go with this last dream instead of grouping them all together,” you say, huffing an edgy laugh. “Um, so we’re in the car, and we’re driving home, and—are you sure you want to talk about this, Fef?”
“I can handle this easily,” she says, blasé enough that you only think a little bit of it is an act. She willingly meets your gaze, but you find that you can’t look at her anymore. “Let me help you.”
You don’t really know how you’re supposed to say this next part, so you sit there floundering, mouth open and closing like a fish, until you can try to figure out how to put it. “Bam,” you finally say, eyebrows stretching towards your hairline, “the bastard ran the light and hit. I felt blood splatter all ov-ver me, it w-was on my face and my hands and everyw-where. Not a single drop of it w-was mine.” You suck in a deep breath, telling your brain to knock it the fuck off with the stutter, and your next words are slower, more considerate. “I looked next to me and there you were, a hunk of meat dead against the seat, metal shoved through your chest and bent and torn and—”
“Hey,” she interrupts, and you look away from the pillow you were staring at so intensely to meet her eyes. Any accusation that was there before is gone, replaced by something tender. “Is that why you called me? Because you saw me dead?”
Blinking rapidly, you nod.
She grabs the collar of her shirt, pulling it down to expose the middle of her chest. You can see the pink bow in the center of her bra and the tan lines from her bathing suit. “There’s nothing there. I didn’t die.”
“It’s still not fair,” you say, and your voice breaks.
“Nothing is fair, Eridan.” She releases the hold on her shirt and leans forward. You know what she’s offering so you meet her halfway, pulling her into a hug. You’re glad that she always retains some of the same smells no matter what perfume she squirts on or what shampoo she uses—there’s always the scent of the ocean or chlorine lingering in her hair. “Nothing is fair, but you are absolutely blameless, understand?”
You hum, tightening your arms around her so she slides forward until she’s practically in your lap. “I’ll go,” you whisper.
“What?”
“I’ll try your old therapist,” you elaborate. “Maybe she’ll do more than they did down in Miami.”
“You’re going to have to let her help,” she reminds you, curling her fists in the fabric of your cardigan. You hope she’s proud of you.
“I know,” you say, wishing it would be as easy as she’s making it sound, “I swear I’ll try.”
“Hey babe, can you grab me the Smirnoff?”
Clenching your teeth, you head over to one of the kitchen cabinets to grab a shot glass. You know Cronus hears it hit the counter because he calls, “I don’t need a fancy fucking glass, just give me the bottle!”
You wonder how he acquired a taste for cheap vodka rather than the stuff your father keeps on top of the refrigerator. Cronus’ new stash is in one of the lower cabinets, behind an unused toaster oven and a Magic Bullet, and you figure it’ll overflow into other compartments soon. You find a bottle of grape Smirnoff amongst the clutter of beer and hard liquor, and soon you’re trotting into the living room and offering it to him.
He swipes it from your hand and twists off the cap, taking a swig. As you turn to go, he says, “Wait a sec.”
Before he can tell you want he wanted to, the lock on the front door clicks and both you and your brother whip your heads toward it as it opens. Your father steps inside, still in full uniform—he’s the head officer of the human resources department on a nuclear submarine base, and honestly you think that’s an awful job for him. He informally does a whole bunch of other stuff there too, but that’s his official designation. He hangs up his cap on a hook on the umbrella stand and undoes his coat. “Evening, boys,” he greets, shrugging it off and folding it over one of his arms.
He looks from Cronus to the bottle of vodka to you. “You better not have taken a sip of that, Eridan.”
Snorting, you say, “I haven’t, but you say that like you don’t give me a glass of scotch with dinner if you’re in a good mood.” You’ve only sipped it once, but he still does it nonetheless.
He grunts instead of giving a proper response, heading upstairs to change. “I already ordered dinner, one of you is going to have to pick it up in fifteen minutes.”
“What’d you get?” Cronus calls after him.
“I decided we should try that new brick oven pizza place downtown,” he responds, voice faint, and then his door shuts.
Cronus gulps down a few swallows of his vodka, and that’s how you know without him having to say that you’ll be the one driving.
Family dinners are always awful, even when the food is great like it is tonight. You scarf down half a pizza and some chicken wings, trying to ignore the awkward silence. You think you avoided any painful conversation until your father questions, “Cronus, what do you want?”
“Huh?” your brother responds, mouth full.
“You only ever drop by if you want something,” he elaborates, dropping his napkin onto his plate, “so what is it this time?”
He shrugs nonchalantly, a smirk making his lips curl. You know that expression well, and you want to punch him every time you see it. “I tried to call you earlier, you know,” he says matter-of-factly. “But you never have really been willing to answer the damn phone, have you? Not for me, not for Eri, not for Mom—”
“That’s enough,” he bites, cutting your brother off immediately. “Just tell me why."
“I’m moving back in for a month or two,” he says, not asking. Informing.
The thing about your dad is he’s always been incredibly firm on the outside, but the second you or Cronus really want something, he caves instantly. “If you must,” Father responds, “but you have to get a job.”
This makes your brother gape, and you’d laugh if you didn’t think he’d make you pay for it later. “What?” he sputters.
“You dropped out of school two years ago and have been stagnating ever since.” He gets up from the table, grabbing his own plate and heading to the kitchen. The dishes won’t be washed by anyone here; they’ll be left for the maid that comes in at around nine every weekday morning. You’re usually at school when she comes, so you really don’t interact with her unless you’re on break. Even then, you try to avoid her. “If you cannot find your own job, I’m sure I’ll be able to find you a janitorial position at the base.”
“That’s some fucking bullshit,” Cronus snarls suddenly, standing up fast and hitting the table with both fists. Everything rattles, and you can’t help but flinch. “I have a fucking job, I—”
“You play at some shitty bar on A1A one night a week,” you can’t help but remind him. “Dad means a real job.”
The way he snaps his head around to look at you makes you instantly pale. “Shut it, brat, you just want me out of the house.”
“So what if I do?” you say, and then you break before anything else can be said, looking down at the table. “Sorry, I’m sorry.”
“You should be,” Cronus sneers. He picks up his plate and throws it like a Frisbee. It flies by your head and slams into the wall, exploding into shards of porcelain.
“Cronus!” you dad yells from the kitchen, and you hear his footsteps stomping closer.
Your brother knows when to run. He’s out of the dining room and out the front door in seconds, and you can hear his truck start up and pull away. Exhaling hard, you turn around to look at the damage. There’s a slight mark on the wall where the plate hit and the larger chunks are scattered in a three-foot radius across the wooden floor. One piece is pretty damn close to your foot. You kick it away with your bare toes just as your father comes storming in.
He sighs, long and hard, like he’s trying to keep himself from taking out one of his guns and going apeshit. “Get the vacuum,” he tells you in a voice that’s hard but doesn’t contain anger. As you leave your seat, grabbing your own plate to put in the sink, he bends down, picking up the bigger shards.
Seymour Ampora was never good at being a single father, you ponder as you dump your dirty stuff into the sink. He was the type that could do decently enough if he had a partner—who he did have for ten years of your life and fourteen of Cronus’—but ever since she was gone, he’d struggled. He didn’t know what to do when Cronus dropped out of college or when he started drinking and smoking excessively or when you attempted suicide. You don’t really blame him; you wouldn’t know what to do either. He’s trying his best.
When you come back with the vacuum, he takes it from you and plugs it in, but before he turns it on he says to your retreating back, “Eridan?”
“Yeah?”
He seems to be at a loss, as per usual, but finally he requests, “Will you have tea with me? Your favorite is earl grey, right?”
Surprised, you nod. The caffeine in one cup of tea shouldn’t hurt, seeing as you didn’t have any coffee this morning. “Go put on the kettle,” he requests.
“Dad,” you say quickly, before the loud whirring of the vacuum can fill the room. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”
There’s a pause as he struggles for something to say. He finally comes up with, “We fought last time we spoke, about the naval academy. And while I still wish you would apply, I shouldn’t have yelled.” That’s the closest to an apology you’ll ever get, and you know he’ll probably fight with you about it again soon, but you keep your mouth shut. “I’d just like to talk, now.”
And talk you do. He natters on and on about the happenings at the base, not drinking any of his tea so you drink your cup and his while he speaks. You doubt he has anything to talk about besides work, so you just sit and nod in the right places.
“So how’re… things?” he finally asks.
Raising an eyebrow, you say, “You’re going to have to elaborate.”
He waves his hand through the air like he can grab the answer out of it and comes up with, “You know, your depression stuff.”
You snort lightly, a little bit relieved you have news to report. “I made an appointment with a therapist today.” You drain the rest of your tea.
“Good,” he says, and that seems to be the end of the conversation. He seems a bit relieved that he didn’t have to do anything or listen to complaints. “Just tell me if you need anything.” He gets up, taking the empty cups from the table and your hands, saying, “I’m glad we’ve had this opportunity to talk.”
It’s weird, that you can talk other people’s ears off when they’re not members of your family. You can gossip with Kar endlessly and complain to Kan for hours and Fef shoulders all of your nagging thoughts and worries; yet when you’re home, you can hardly get a word in.
You head upstairs and get in the shower, washing the day away. As water pounds into your back and carves rivers through your hair, you wonder about your future. A lot of things seem to be hazy—you have no idea where you’ll go to school next fall, you don’t know how your therapy session in four days is going to go, and you don’t think you have the courage to throw away any of the physical reminders of your condition just yet. However, you’re taking small steps, and as you sink to the floor of the shower and rest your cheek on your knees, you wonder what the hell you’re supposed to do from here.