01.

A Chapter by Kassondra Lane

Chapter One

He was standing two yards away from me, arms crossed, chest huffed. His eyes may not have been sending the nicest messages, but the rest of his body language couldn’t have been clearer. I’d hurt him.

Again.

I tightened my jaw and shut the door to my bedroom as quietly as I could, but didn’t advance towards him. Instead, I let my hands stay firmly attached to the doorknob until it became the only thing keeping me composed. We stood staring at each other like that for a long while. It wasn’t until an unbearable itch below my eye unearthed itself, that I moved.

“So.” I said casually. He raised an eyebrow, but didn’t move. I nodded a little, reeling for things to say. An apology would sound empty, but it’s not as if I could just say ‘My bad’ and expect to have things smooth over nicely. “I’m…” No, it had to be something thoughtful. It had to be real, and honest. And I had to mean it. “I’m an a*s.”

He tilted his head a little and said, “Really?” His sarcasm made my chest cave in a little and I couldn’t reply. His eyes were shining with anger; something that I thought could only exist in books. “Is that all? Just an a*s?”

“What else is there?” I lifted my hands and dropped them by my sides. They made a small thud on my jeans. “A jerk? Is that better? Would that make you happy?” I leaned a little closer to him to emphasize my statement. I knew I sounded unpleasant, but correcting myself might set him off. He shifted his weight to another leg and took a deep breath. “Or do you want something else?” He wasn’t looking at me, so I leaned over a bit more to maybe catch his eye. It didn’t work, so rather than hang in the air like that, I stood back up. And not long later, his eyes followed.

“I don’t want something else Mathias. I just want something.” He only lingered there for a moment longer, before pushing past me and showing himself the exit. I heard him say goodbye to my dad as he left, and then the door shut. I continued to stand in my room, tasting the thickness of his words as they resonated in the air, for a couple minutes. I looked around my room, at the bathroom hall, the desk, my bed. I looked away from my bed, and back to my desk. I couldn’t hear my footsteps as I walked over to my desk, but I heard the chair squeal in protest as I pulled it back and sat on it. On the top of the desk was an array of papers. Homework, old pay stubs and the aces to the deck of cards in the drawer. I pushed it all aside and lifted up the photograph beneath it all. It wasn’t exactly a good picture, but I liked it. It was taken of us while we were at my family’s cabin last year. He had been in the middle of trying to chew something, and speaking while I was laughing with an uncapped marker in my hand. I smiled at the memory, and the un- glamorized picture. That had been a fun weekend for everyone. It was one of the only times we’d all gotten along, my family and I.

I looked at my bed. Memories of the abuse we dealt the poor thing came rushing back to me, and made it hard to deal with reality at the moment. Reality being, that none of those memories would probably every replay themselves again.

And it was my fault.

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