"Like a bad star, I'm falling faster down to her. She's the only one who knows what it is to burn."649Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBHSGRIjSab
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Day three of withdrawals came, and they hadn't changed much from day two. If anything, they were just a touch worse, if that was even possible. Sleep and an appetite had suddenly become mysterious, inexplicable perplexities to me, and lets just say that some I had some very real issues with my stomach. While my aggression had somewhat subsided, these more than made up for it. Exhausted and carrying a stomach that seemed to have gained a life of it's own, I lied on the couch across from Jay and watched as he fiddled with the tuning of his guitar.
"The worst part is almost over." he lied his guitar down horizontally onto his lap and glanced up. "It usually starts easing up on the fourth day."
His eyes fell downwards again and met the strings of the guitar. As his foot tapped against the floor, a smile I had yet to see from him spread across his face. It wasn't a regular smile that you would see anyone on the streets wear, it was one of those unabashed, shameless smiles that only confident people could wear. Jay wore a smile that declared he was unafraid of the derision he could have faced from the people who seemed to berate him with every chance they got.
That was also why he had been a noted musician and I was the basement-dwelling drug addict.
"Son", she said, have I got a little story for you. What you thought was your daddy was nothin' but a. . ." Jay began to sing Pearl Jam's 'Alive' as his fingers bounced between an A and a G with an added ninth. Even while he sang, his smile still seemed to remain while not affecting his singing at all. "While you were sittin' home alone at age thirteen, your real daddy was dyin'. Sorry you didn't see him, but I'm glad we talked. . ."
Jay stopped playing as he ended the first verse of the song, looking up once again to find me still watching. What changed this time was that he hadn't looked away, he just stared like I was an alien or something amazing that he was unable to tears his eyes apart from. While I had done the same, it was only because he had been doing it. I didn't know why he was looking, nor did I care. Okay, maybe I did. Just a little.
He turned the neck of his guitar outwards, pointing it towards me. "Your girlfriend, she's a musician, no? You gotta know at least a little something, then. How about some Smoke on the Water?"
Sitting upright, I was surprised to see Jay get up and come around before sitting next to me. It was after he sat down that he attempted to hand over his guitar again. Carefully, my fingers started to loop around the neck of his expensive-looking guitar and pulled it towards me. As my fingers met the strings and fingerboard, it hit me like a freight train. Everything from the rosewood to the overall finish was so familiar to the only other guitar I had ever held. It was just like hers.
After Grace had asked me to learn, I took it seriously and learned everything I could with her - all while enjoying every last second of it. Before long, I had moved far past Jay's snarky recommendation and was playing actual songs. Well, a couple, at least. It had been a little over a year since I last played or even touched one, but I could still faintly remember one song. Only because it was a song from one of her favorite bands, and a song that she played a lot herself. Grace loved Finch, and that song was one of her favorites.
Starting with an E, my hands motioned into a D suspended solely from memory.
"Today's on fire. The sky is bleeding above me, and I am blistered. I walk these lines of blasphemy, every day. And still. . ." I found myself taking a deep breath, not because I needed to, but because I had suddenly felt something burst inside me. "Like a bad star, I'm falling faster down to her. She's the only one who knows, what it is to burn. . ."
Trailing off much in the same way he had, Jay gave me another surprise when he took over where I left off and I surprised myself even further when I continued playing. "I feel diseased. Is there no sympathy from the sun? The sky's still fire. But I am safe in here, from the world outside."
As though I had returned to reality, my hands stopped moving. The only thing I had been able to do next was look up, and that was where my eyes met Jay's own pair once again. His expression wasn't exactly the most readable, then or at all. It hadn't said shock, but it also hadn't said disappointment. Maybe he was surprised about how bad I was, or why I even attempted it if I hadn't known what I was doing? I knew I wasn't that good, even when I was with Grace. As much as I enjoyed it with her, I was nothing more than average, if not just outright mediocre.
Slowly, without any warning, he brought his hand to my cheek. I immediately thought what most girls would think, and that was Jay trying to make a move. Just as I was going to reject his advances, his right hand brushed my hair behind my ear and was followed by him pulling back to where he was sitting before he had done that.
"You know, that's the first time I've seen you smile." he brushed his own hair back as he leaned into the arm of the couch. "Probably the same for our little audience here, too."
"Wha-"
Both eyes launched up where they were met with Lucas, Joanna, and Rebecca, along with another face or two from the staff that I hadn't recognized. Unlike Jay, they looked surprised, as if I hadn't been capable of playing a few chords and singing in what was pretty mediocre fashion. I was talentless compared to Grace, Finch, and Jay. Yet, they looked at me like I just went multi-platinum.
Even as all of their eyes bore holes into me, I had been feeling something else ever since I started the song. It had been a feeling that started at the pit of my stomach and traveled all the way up to my heart like an electric shock. Instead of it being a sharp bolt, I felt warmth. It felt like a ball of fire was now sitting inside of my stomach, slowly growing with each passing second. I had no idea what that warmth was at the time, but I'm pretty sure it saved me. That ball of warmth saved me and faintly lit my way forward.
"I thought Jay put the music on too loud again." Rebecca smirked, pulling her sleeve up as she headed back off. "Enjoy yourselves."
Lucas sat down and looked at me for what felt like the first time since I had gotten there. He was quiet, and easily mistakable for nonexistent. Just like I was. Maybe it was because of how quiet he was that I left him alone or hadn't tried to talk to him. He didn't like being talked to or talking, and to some degree, I was the same way. If it hadn't been for Joanna and Jay tugging my voice out of my throat, I probably wouldn't have been too talkative, either.
Jay and Joanna, over the two days I had been there, literally kept poking and prodding until they caught onto something, like a fish to a hook. Then Rebecca came as the cleanup hitter and fully extracted what they pried out of me. Rebecca had actually gotten me to tell her about what happened that night, and even then, that had been partially because of Joanna. They had gotten all of their answers, but I still hadn't gotten mine. Why had they cared so much about someone that wasn't worth their time?
Lucas brought himself around the opposite couch and sat on the arm. "Where did you learn to play guitar, Lynn?"
"My girlfriend." Lucas, ever so slightly, cocked his head. "I started because she asked me to, but I ended up really enjoying it. Then everything just. . .just went to shit, I guess."
That Finch song, What It Is To Burn, was a song I secretly learned just for her. I buried myself into learning and studied until I understood what I needed to learn that song specifically, but by the time I had learned it, it was too late. Everything fell apart, everything came crashing down. My life had turned into something along the lines of a unceasing house fire, and there hadn't been a damn thing I could do. The song itself had become so little comparatively that I forgotten about it, but what if that song could have saved her? What if it could have stopped her, at least long enough for me to talk her out of it?
At the end of the day, it was another regret on top of the hundreds I already had. I regretted not being able to say that I loved her again. I regretted not fighting for and with her. I regretted not being better to her. I regretted not being with her more. I regretted everything, and I wanted so badly to have a second chance. I just wanted a time machine to go back and fix what I had done wrong. But that wasn't the case, I was stuck with my choices and the beds I had made.
I was stuck with needles in my arms while she slept her life away. I was stuck in a daily hell while she slept her life away. If she had been awake, would anything have changed? Would Nathan still have been in my life? Would I still have fallen into drugs? Would I have went to that party to begin with? Would I still have been raped? They were so pointless, but these thoughts incessantly ran through my mind. Only constant reminders of the what could have been changed.
"How long have you two been together?" Lucas asked.
Was I supposed to include all of the time I hadn't seen her? What about all the time she'd been in the coma? I had never considered us to be broken up at all, even when she had been in her coma. If that were the case, I had come very close to cheating on her, but I was pretty sure that I never did. At least from what I remembered. What had I been to her when she sent that text? Had she texted me as an ex or had she not thought that far at all?
"Around a year." I answered vaguely, wanting to drop the subject all together as I pushed myself up. "I'm going to go lie down for a little. I'm exhausted."
Everyone had given their nods and acknowledgments before I left down the hallway. Taking unhurried strides forward, I began to torture myself, as usual. If it hadn't been something I was doing, it was something I did in the past, and I seemed bent on punishing myself for it. I punished myself for everything I did, because I felt like I never did anything right. I felt like a constant failure to the people who actually put stock into me. I was a letdown.
I threw the door open and entered the room as the door closed itself behind me. Well, it would have if someone hadn't stopped it from closing. Watching, the door was the pulled back open and in came an unexpected Lucas. The Lucas in front of me hadn't been the one I saw just a few minutes earlier, he wasn't quiet or reserved. He only looked nervous and completely unsure, carrying shaky eyes with a bead of sweat falling from the left side of his forehead.
"I know you don't really know me, but. . ." he took a shallow step closer, entirely apprehensive.
"Can you help me with something?"
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