“I couldn’t shower for months afterward without seeing his lifeless body lying there,” I say, bulldozing over her words unintentionally, too wrapped up in my own head. “Do you know how much it sucks to take two-minute cold showers because you’re terrified you’ll find another dead body once you step out of the tub? I had to continue living there for years.Years.”
“Is that the place you moved out of this year?”
“Yes, fucking finally.”
“Why were you living there in the first place? How old were you when this happened?”
“Sixteen.”
“Gaige…” It sounds like a broken cry.
“I told you I was a fucked up kid, Hales. I meant it. That year was the worst year of my life.”
“That…” She shuffles until she’s sitting up and scoots to the other end of the couch until we’re opposite one another. I wish she hadn’t moved because it’s so much easier to tell her all this without having to look her in the eyes, and because I can’t feel her anymore. I don’t know if she’ll bolt or force me out of her home. I can’t read her from so far away. “That’s a blanket statement. Be specific, Gaige.”
“I shoved my mom, got into a fistfight with my dad, and was kicked out when I was barely sixteen.”
“They kicked you out and just…left you?”
No, Hales. I left them. More than once.“I deserved it.”
“Bullshit. You were a kid, Gaige. A fucking kid. You didn’t deserve that at all.”
I look away and stare into the black screen of the turned off television. I can’t meet her gaze. I can’t look at the stares of pity she’s throwing my way. I’m not worthy of them.
“You said three people died. That you caused two…” She trails off, leaving room for me to fill in the gaps, but right now the only gaps I feel are the ones in my breathing, the ones I’m struggling to climb over, to get ahold of.
Breathe. Just breathe.
“My mother,” I whisper hoarsely.
A gasp.
“My father.”
A sob.
I have no idea who it came from.
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
