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There is something unsettling about it, he decides—about the way two people could hold an entire conversation with neither of them really hearing one another.
“Tell me,” the woman says, tapping the end of her pen against her notepad. “How have you been?”
“Fine,” he says, because it’s what she expects to hear, but not what she wants.
“Any changes?” she asks.
“No,” Jonathan tells her, his voice perfectly bland.
The woman across from him frowns, the pale curve of her mouth settling into a slight frown, and she shifts in her seat. She unfolds her legs, crosses them, then settles herself, the end of her pen still taping against the notepad.
“And the nightmares you mentioned,” she says instead, her pen suddenly scribbling against the clipboard. “A couple of days back, during last weeks’ session—are you still experiencing them?”
Jonathan fidgets, but he doesn’t break.
“I’ve been taking my medication as prescribed,” he answers honestly, but not completely. Carefully, he watches her watch him, his face reflected back in miniature, floating in the dark browns of her eyes. Her frown deepens.
“Any unusual side effects from taking it?”
“...dry mouth and minor headaches,” he admits quietly. “But Dr. Owens says that these sort of things are common.”
“Anything else?” the woman smiles.
“Sometimes I get dizzy.”
The woman hums and continues to scribble on her notepad, her mouth still frozen into a half-formed frown.
“Well,” she eventually says, drawing out the word until Jonathan can hear all the things she isn’t saying, like how nothing has changed and how she knows that his words are half-truths at best. “That’s good, that’s really good.” She flashes him a quick smile, and the pen on her paper stops scribbling, coming to a rest in her lap.
Jonathan just nods, but he’s not sure what bothers him more: that he can see the lies dripping from her face, voice as sweet as his brother’s breakfast cereals, or the fact that they can’t be bothered to find him someone who will tell him the truth.
—
The knock on the door comes when Jonathan is in the middle of peeling potatoes, sleeves rolled up past his elbow and peelings dusting the bare skin of his knuckles, slippery and wet.
“Doors open,” he sighs, because he’s expecting them. Whoever it is. Someone always shows up when they know his mother is at work. Sometimes it’s Nancy, sometimes it’s Hopper. It doesn't matter if he shouts because they always let themselves in anyways. The door creaks open before jostling shut, a loud thump of shoes quickly being kicked off near the door mat and he knows that today it’s Steve.
He rolls his eyes, feeling an irrational stab of anger hit him like a sharp wave.
A curious nose peers over his shoulder.
“What is it?” the other boy asks, staring down into the half-filled colander.
“Potatoes,” Jonathan says bluntly, reaching across the counter and grabbing another one. Steve shifts accordingly, but his body never strays more than a few inches from Jonathan.
“I like potatoes,” Steve says brightly, his lips stretching wide into a tentative grin. “Are you mashing them? I like them mashed.”
Jonathan let’s out a long, ragged sigh and feels his teeth clench tight.
“I...I don’t know, Steve—it’s just for dinner later,” he clips out, grinding the heel of his palm against the rough surface of the vegetable. The potatoes are old, he thinks. Last seasons crop. He rinses it briefly and the tendons jump in his arm as he roughly begins peeling it with a short handled knife. He moves a little more than necessary, just enough that his shoulder brushes the curve of Steve’s jaw.
Steve, for once in his life, takes the hint and backs off a little.
“It must not have been a very good day,” Steve says flatly from the kitchen table behind him, hip pressed against it on an angle.
“What day is?” Jonathan grunts and roughly chops the potato in half, the knife slamming down hard against the cutting board. He dumps the potato pieces into the colander in the sink and looks down at his fingers. His hands are a gritty brown with a dusting of sandy dirt clinging to his knuckles, and it dirties the faucet when he turns the water on all the way to hot.
“I’d like to think that you’ve had some okay days,” Steve then says, voice quiet.
Jonathan scrubs his hands until the skin turns an angry, scaled red, until the hot water stops feeling hot and more like a constant numbness. Slowly, he pulls his hands out of the deluge and turns the water off, the cool metal of the faucet cutting into his flesh like the razor edge of a knife.
“Why are you here?” Jonathan snaps, suddenly feeling very tired. “Don’t you have basketball practice or something? Don’t you have better things to do then talking to the towns’ resident weirdo, huh Steve?” He sneers his name, drawing out the vowels much like the woman from earlier in the day had, stretching the letters thin. He thinks of his mom and how Steve will probably tell Nancy about his behavior later, who will then quietly call Joyce at work and let her know what’s happened.
Steve just shrugs, offering him a simple:
“Not at the moment, no.”
Jonathan closes his eyes and leans forward over the sink, gripping the edges of the countertop with his hands hard enough that his knuckles turn white.
“Look man, I know you had an appointment with your therapist today,” Steve says, almost gentle. It makes Jonathan want to throw up.
“Who told you?”
Steve shifts on his feet, clearly uncomfortable.
“Nancy.”
Jonathan lets out a heavy sigh, squeezing his eyes shut.
Then:
“So what? Did you come here so you could pat my back like everyone else and tell me, ‘better luck next time, Jonathan! Maybe something will change’?” Jonathan laughs raggedly, staring down into water, draining in the sink. “Did you come here to comfort me and maybe, just maybe think I would be so upset that I would forget what a shit person you’ve been to me in the past? We’re friends because Nancy wants us to be friends,” Jonathan spits out, still staring into the sink basin. “Don’t forget that.”
“Jonathan, what the hell man? We’re friends because I like—,”
“Just stop, Steve,” Jonathan exhales viciously.
Jonathan can hear Steve’s breath shudder and start from behind. He bites down on his bottom lip and tastes blood. The silence stretches on between them until Jonathan can hear his own heartbeat rattling around in his empty chest, each beat scoring deep marks against the hot, white numbness in his brain, his thoughts loose and incoherent.
“What do you want me to do, then? Not come? Pretend that this is normal? That you’re okay? ‘Cause you’re not okay, man. You’re not,” Steve says quietly, finally breaking the quiet.
Jonathan grips the countertop even harder, feeling dead wood bite deep into his hands. He breaks.
“I want you to give me my life back,” he says hoarsely. “I want you to make it so the nightmares go away and I stop seeing images of my brother dead everywhere I go. I want to be able to sleep through the night without waking up choking. I want, I want, I want—,”
His arms start trembling, unable to hold him up much longer.
“I’ve got you,” Steve says, his breath hot against the back of Jonathan’s neck. Jonathan closes his eyes and allows himself to be led to one of the old kitchen chairs lining the table.
As always, Steve is ready and waiting, and his words are the only truth that's he's heard in a long, long time.