Running through the dark park, Nathan followed me onto the faintly lit field, where the flowers on the ground were just as abundant as the stars in the sky. Well, it obviously wasn't even close to the same number, but sometimes the sheer beauty of them all made it seem that way. Nature seemed to move to its own song and dance, to its own will and shape. It created beauty, it created beauty and then so cruelly, savagely flattened all of it.
There was never a reason and never an answer. Nature gave and took as it so pleased, without regard for who was around or how that person felt. It gave life and it took life, with and without reason. Nature made its own choices, for every last living thing on this Earth. Whether an animal, a person, or even a tree lived or died was completely up to nature itself. If that was the case, then what made nature any different from a dictator?
Both rule with an iron fist, killing as they please. Both bring joy and pain, satisfaction and destruction. Nature and a dictator have no team to help them make their choices, nature and dictators have no congress to veto a decision. Nature and dictators are identical, the exact same in all but one way. That one single difference is simple, dictators are the ones that show their faces after each choice is made. Good or bad, life or death.
Nature took my everything and left me with nothing to blame - except myself.
"It's nice out for once." I thought aloud, spinning to see how far Nathan was behind me.
Appearing under the dim light, his swollen eyes and nose were accompanied by a cut lip among other small marks from the fight he had with Devin. I was under the impression that guys liked to show them off, like they were trophies or something to be proud of, but Nathan did no such thing. If anything, he shied away from them. He hadn't said a word about them or the fight throughout the whole drive, not even about the results or how much it hurt.
He was actually more silent than he typically was. Most of the time he played himself out to be arrogant, laden with sarcasm and witty responses, but not right then. At that moment, he looked like someone else. He looked like me earlier that morning. Tired and empty with no will to do anything but disappear. That hadn't been the Nathan I saw or knew, or was he faking it all the entire time?
"It is." he answered distantly, slowly closing in.
Framing Hanley began to play in the headphone that was stuck in my right ear, and without even catching myself doing it, I had started to hum the song as I spun once again. The smell of the fresh air flowed into my nostrils as the snare smashed into the chorus, and that was when a smile began to creep across my face. I had no clue if it was Nixon's voice hitting me or if it was something else entirely, but Framing Hanley always managed to put a smile on my face. They weren't the most uplifting band, and I had no idea why they did that to me, but they just did.
"Nathan. . ." I sat down on the grass and watched him follow. "Can you be honest with me?"
He looked away for a moment as a mom and her son walked by. "Depends."
I brushed my bangs out of the way and pulled my headphone out. "Do you want to be around me? Or are you only around because of what happened?"
Nathan's hair partially fell over his eyes as his expression took a dive into clear thought, much deeper than I would've liked to see. It was simply a passing thought that I never planned to ask, but it stuck to me and it wouldn't leave. I had no idea how I would react to either answer, aside from the happy or the sad. Even then, what exactly was I looking for in his answer? I already knew somewhere deep inside that he was there because he felt responsible, but I had to know if there was something more that I wasn't seeing or hearing.
"It's both."
A wave of unsurety and unexpected emotion stormed my mind as I leaned in and slugged him with the palm of my right hand. It was as though it were instinct, a completely thoughtless gut reaction without no thought put into it. "Don't fucking pity me, Nathan. If you don't want me around, then I won't be."
It was the lack of clarity in his answer, his eyes that hurt more than anything else. Whether he was lying to me, or he really hadn't known was irrelevant. I just wanted the truth, and if the truth meant being alone again, then I would've been okay with that. I would have found another way to live, to hold on for her. Maybe it would have been drugs or maybe it would have been another person, but I would've found another way. That was what I wanted to tell myself, at least.
"I'm not." Nathan looked up, his palm vertically ran over his mouth. "It's. . .just hard to explain."
"What is it, then?" I could feel my composure slightly cave as I crawled forward. "Do you want to fuck me? Is that it?"
With a quivering lip, I mindlessly leaned towards him, my right hand meeting the same cheek it had just hit. Just like that late afternoon at the pool, it felt like another girl possessed me and started doing the walking and talking for herself. I was stuck watching, feeling as her hand drifted along his cheek, watching as her mouth moved in like Seal Team Six. I could only watch as my mouth, my lips landed on his, kissing him in the same way I had always done to Grace. I was only able to suffer as I let myself betray her.
Just as my hand started to pull his own towards my thigh, Nathan's free hand pushed me away and onto the grass in front of him. At that moment, I wasn't able to quite figure out if I was happy that he pushed me away and stopped me from doing the one thing I would regret or if I was hurt because I was too useless to do even that for him, that I was too messed up for him, that I was too dirty for him.
That was the answer I needed. Nathan hadn't wanted any part of me, but he felt like he needed to stay around because he felt responsible. He let me sleep in his house, he let me eat his food, and he even gave me the shirt I was wearing, but I couldn't do anything for him except keep using him. The one thing I could do for him, was something he hadn't wanted. He claimed he wasn't interested, but I think even a stranger could've told that was a lie. A complete fucking lie. What guy didn't want to get in a girls pants? It was obvious there was something more.
He took hold of my head by my chin and looked me in the eyes, locking them in. "Are you high?"
I was alone, and no amount of drugs could hide that from me. No amount of numbness could hide the fact that I was alone, that I had nothing but myself left on this planet, on this plane of reality. There was nowhere left for me to go. I didn't have a single place to go, and the worst part was that I wasn't wanted by anyone, that I wasn't needed by anyone. I was alone with no place in the world, with no place in anyone's life. I no longer belonged to anyone.
She was the only one who ever made me feel like I was accepted here, like I wasn't watching from the inside of a snow globe, like I wasn't watching from another timeline or reality. I was obsessed with everything she showed me and I was addicted to every feeling she ever gave me. Maybe I was weird or there was something wrong with me, but the day she decided to die was the day I was going to follow her, because I had no place on this earth without her.
Anyone could have said what they wanted, but she was my world. She was the only thing, the only person that made my life worth living. Nothing could have ever truly replaced her, not Nathan and not drugs. Nothing in this galaxy was able to replicate the way she made me feel.
"Does it matter to you?" I smacked his hand away as I neared the edge of my sanity for the second time that day.
"You were a great girl before all of this shit happened. That girl is still in there." Nathan's hands latched onto my shoulders. "But I'm just seriously worried about you. All this stress and shit you're putting yourself through can't be healthy. You need to get help, Lynn."
Putting my hands over my ears, I curled up into a ball and let the tears fall for the second time that day as my face buried itself into my legs. She always called me a crybaby, and she wasn't wrong. I did cry a lot, and it was usually over the stupidest stuff, but this was different. The situation and my entire life had changed. I had no time to cry over stupid things when I was crying over being haunted by ghosts, when I was crying over being alone.
"I'm useless to everyone. . ." I spoke into my thighs, through the sobs and a slow breeze. "I couldn't help Grace, my parents don't care if I exist, and I can't even do anything for you. I'm just. . .I-I can't go anywhere without feeling alone. I'm stuck in this cage and I can't move anywhere."
". . .Would you please just tell your mom, at least?" Nathan's voice sent an unending echo through my skull. "Please?"
"No."
Lifting my head, I wiped my the makeup-laced tears off of my face with the sleeves of my shirt and looked up at Nathan who had yet to remove his hands from my shoulders. Just like that night, he looked torn between doing the right thing and respecting what I wanted to do. The right thing would have ruined my life and my future. Doing the right thing would have done the exact opposite of what I wanted.
Reaching into the breast pocket of the flannel shirt, I pulled out the bottle full of pills that Erin had given me before I decided to leave. All she said was to take them only when I really needed them and nothing else. Not what they were, not where they had come from or what they did, just that. It was just the pills and her eye-covered smile.
After walking for a mile or so, my phone kept ringing and ringing. Lo and behold, it was none other than Nathan calling me. Nearly yelling, he made me tell him where I was and fifteen minutes later he had pulled up to me in a grocery store parking lot. All said and done, that was how we ended up at this park. No conversations or questions asked. He was clearly angry, now whether that was at me or something else, I wasn't the slightest bit sure.
Nathan took the bottle from me, spinning it in his fingers. "Looks like Xanax. Kerrigan's was popping this shit like candy."
". . .I did heroin." my own jaw went slack as I told him, entirely unsure of why I was saying anything at all. "It made me feel normal again."
"What? Lynn, don't do this shit." his hands turned into fists. "You don't need drugs. You need real help."
"But it's okay for you tell someone what happened even after I told you not to?" I swiped the bottle back and stood up, avoiding his eyes as I turned. "You don't get it, Nathan. If I get help, I lose Grace. If I keep doing this, I slowly kill myself. Either way I go, I'm fucked. I'm not the one who gets the happy ending here."
As I set off in the opposite direction of his truck, I was thrown around in a full circle and met with his face. It was twisted with anger and thought, pain and a shadowy darkness. He had been just as split as I was, but in a different way. He wanted to help me, badly enough to betray the trust I put into him. Nathan only wanted me to escape the exact thing I wanted to hide from everyone around me.
"I had to, Lynn. If you would just fucking look at yourself, you would see that your falling the fuck apart." Nathan's anger became clear, looking as though he was about to explode.
"Obviously!" I shouted, shoving him with all of my strength this time. "Is it so hard to understand that if I lose her, I fall apart, too? I lose, Nathan. I fucking lose either way."
Nathan hadn't seemed to understand any of what I was feeling. Every road I could take would've led me to a dead end, a loss. Every one of them was a game over screen. There wasn't a director's cut or an alternative ending. If I lost Grace because she found out, then I would have fallen apart. If I kept doing and taking drugs, then I would have fallen apart. It was like I was playing Russian Roulette with a fully-loaded gun.
My life had become a lose-lose situation.
". . .I can't stop you, Lynn. If you want to do this shit, then do it. Just make sure I'm there when you do it from now on." Nathan's palm rested on the crown of my head as he seemed to suddenly calm himself down, breathing deeply.
"Okay?"
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