Saturday
9:48 PM
home
"Do you want me to tell you a story?"
"Nah."
"Do you want some water?"
"Go be with your girlfriend."
I chuckle and grin at my little sister, tucked under her white blankets. "Okay." I kiss her on the forehead and she turns over as I get up, finding a more comfortable position for sleep. "I love you," I say as I flip off the light. "Good night."
"'Night," she responds and she closes her eyes.
The house is still calm with the smell of lasagna from tonight's dinner. My parents are out, and I'm left alone with my siblings. Okay, and Darcy, too. She's not technically supposed to be here, but my parents love her more than I do. I slowly open the door to my baby brother's room as I ponder the word "love." Love is something that nobody really quite understands; all we know is it holds everything together. Love is something I don't know if I'll ever be able to feel again.
Adam is fast asleep in his light blue crib of moons, the real moon shining down on his angelic face. I smile at him before leaving the room again and shutting the door quietly.
Love is something that I've been stripped of, because of one mistake. It's not fair, really.
I leave the hallway light on like Angela likes it and I finally descend down the stairs, back to the living room.
If I ever want to fall in love, or even if love wants me to fall for it, I can't, because I've been burdened with this unbearable guilt every time I feel anything, for anyone. And I've lived with it for two years. I've lived with it until now.
Darcy is sitting on the floor of my living room, her slender back facing me. I take a few more steps and I can see her lovely smile. She's smiling downward at a stack of pictures in her delicate hands. She has found the picture box. A decorated box that's stored inside a large tupperware container that's full of pictures of my family's whole life. It's not one of the first things I'd show my girlfriend, but we've been together for a while now and I'm not embarrassed of the silly pictures of my youth. I sit down next to her on the brown carpet, laughing and blushing.
The pictures start growing older though. Our faces start to lose their youth. My two brothers start to disappear from the pictures entirely. And I can tell Darcy soon becomes bored, when I start to disappear from them too. I watch her as her eyes wander back inside the tupperware container, and her eyes light up as she spots my box. I reach out to stop her but it's too late. She has a cute, devilish grin on her face and she opens the box, sifting through all the items. My parents have a box for each of us; they start it when we're born, and they eventually give it to us to put our own memories in. They're the crazy-psycho kind of parents that keep their kids' locks of hair and crap. And yes, Darcy adores my little brunette lock of hair she finds inside the box.
I'm more interested in Darcy's cute expressions and reactions in her face, rather than what she's actually reacting to. "You're so cute," I say adoringly, brushing my nose against her cheek affectionately.
"No, you are!" she argues, showing me a picture of myself as a toddler as an example. She looks through the box a little more and when she thinks she's seen it all, she finds one last picture at the bottom of the box, turned upside-down. It's long and skinny and I try to remember what it is before she flips it over, just to see if I can.
Unfortunately, I couldn't in time, and my memory fails me once again.
I rip it out of Darcy's hands the second she flips it over - the same second I realize what it is. I jump up off the floor and take the picture with me, many feet away from where Darcy can see. In one glance, I look at the four photo-booth images of Ryan and I.
One - We smile.
Two - Ryan licks me.
Three - Ryan kisses me.
Four - We happily scrunch our noses together, pretending like we hate each other.
Neither of us would've thought one day we actually would.
"Brendon!" Darcy scolds, although in a somewhat concerned tone. "What was that?"
My mind races. Part of me wants to tell her. Part of me wants to rip up the picture. Part of me wants to cry. Two out of three isn't bad.
I don't know why my eyes begin to tear up, but before I let them fall, I rip the strip of paper right down the middle. Hot-dog style. Vertically. Right between Ryan and I.
"Brendon!" Darcy shouts again from the floor. But when I turn around to look at her, I can tell she feels horrible. Her green eyes are glazing over herself. "Brendon, was that... Ryan Ross?"
I won't tell her. I can't tell her. It wasn't supposed to happen this way. Damn you, Ryan... "Who's that?"
She stares, her green eyes piercing mine, her lips parted in confusion, or something. I kind of pray it's confusion. All I can do is pray and wait, wait for her final reaction. I don't want to lose her... not because of Ryan.
And Darcy gets up off the floor and straightens out her American Eagle jeans. "I have to go," she says.
Crap. I touch her arm gently. "No, please, Darc-"
"No," she says firmly, taking another step away from me. "I really have to go." And she makes her way through the furniture of my living room and exits out the front door.
I stare at the spot her shoes last touched, and then I bring my eyes to the two strips of the photograph I now hold in each hand. It was the night we snuck out to the county fair together. I remember it was so difficult for me because my family stays up late, and Ryan was so eager to get me out of my house, just so we could ride the ferris wheel together, just once. And then we stayed there, long after all the lightbulbs were turned off, and we climbed to the very top of the ferris wheel and sat at the top again. It was one or two in the morning by the time I became too paranoid to handle and I had to sneak back into my bedroom.
Ryan never had to sneak out. His dad didn't care. I think about Ryan now and what kind of hell he must be in.
Wait, am I worrying about him? Why am I thinking about him at all?
Probably because there's this sliver in my heart that's pained me for so long... And Darcy nudged at it tonight, and all this time that I've resented Ryan, it's gotten deeper. I guess I've known all along that Ryan's the only one that can really get it out.
I guess you gotta grow up sometime.
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Not such a great part, but hey, deal. The next few will be good.
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