chapter 46
wish you were here
The quietness of the night is disconcerting as it clashes with the rage still brewing inside of me. The only sounds I hear are the unforgiving January winds and the faint rattling of cars as they pass the streets outside of Travis’s neighborhood. I inhale the cold air and fizzle out slightly as it burns my lungs. I haven’t smoked in months, but the harsh chill fucking stings as if I just lit up a few moments ago.
I’m relieved to find Travis’s car parked in his driveway. For some reason, I was fearing he would skip town and avoid facing me. Giving me some sort of closure is the very least this fucker can do. After all that has happened, after all the shit he’s done, he owes me that much. I want an explanation. I want to know what the hell he was thinking when he drove away and left my brother for dead. I want to know what happened to the man I thought he fucking was. I don’t know if that man was a figment of my imagination, a romanticized version of him, or someone who died a long fucking time ago.
Taking a deep breath, I roll up my window and hop out of my truck, crossing the street and walking up the sidewalk to get to Travis’s home. I parked by an oak tree down the street, hoping he wouldn’t see my truck and decide to lock himself inside his house, hiding like a fucking coward. An older woman, who I assume is his neighbor, gives me a horrified look as I approach his house.
“Mind your own fucking business,” I mumble beneath my breath as I pass her by.
I know I look fucking horrendous; I don’t need a fucking mirror to know that. My face is bruised from where I hit myself. I’ve been crying like a little bitch for the past few hours, and my bloody, injured hand is wrapped up with a dirty cloth. Add to that the ugly scar over my left eye and the numerous tattoos I have, and I don’t look like someone you want venturing into your neighborhood at night. The older woman saunters off, looking horrified. I hope she doesn’t call the cops on me. That’s the last thing I need. I need to settle things with Travis, then go home to my family and sort my shit out. I don’t need to be locked up for the night.
I approach Travis’s house, preparing to bang on the front door and yell until he opens up, but I’m surprised to find it slightly ajar. I pause for a moment, wondering if he really did skip town in a hurry because this shit isn’t like him. Well, this shit isn’t like the Travis I thought I knew; I don’t know who the hell he is anymore. He used to be so fucking anal about everything. Not the type to leave his front door open for anyone to walk the fuck in. I cautiously push the door all the way open and enter, almost expecting him to be standing in the foyer waiting for me. He’s not.
“Travis!” I call out as I slam the front door behind me to announce my arrival.
There’s no answer. He must be fucking hiding from me like the coward is. Not wanting to own up to the shit he was too afraid to tell me before. Just thinking about him locking himself up in his bedroom and avoiding me makes me livid. He was too much of a fucking pussy to save my brother, and he’s too much of a pussy now to own up to it. He’s a far cry from the man I once thought he was. Hell, he’s not even similar to the man I used to know.
“Are you seriously going to fucking hide from me, Travis? After everything we’ve fucking been through together… everything you’ve done… You’re going to fucking hide from me!?” I call out, becoming more and more enraged with every step I take.
I make my way down the hallway toward his bedroom. It’s the only room with light shining out from under the door. A mirthless laugh escapes my lips. He’s really going to hide in his bedroom like the rat bastard he is? How disgusting. I want him to tell me the truth while he looks me in the face. I want him to look me straight in the eye and confess his guilty actions. I don’t want excuses. I don’t want any tears. I just want to hear him utter the words he’s avoided for so long.
“Travis!?” I call out again as I reach for the doorknob to open the door. It’s fucking locked and my anger skyrockets. I continue to turn the doorknob anyway, hoping the rattling will shake him up enough to man the fuck up and open the door for me. It doesn’t take long for me to realize that isn’t going to happen. So, I let go of the knob and begin kicking the door, smiling as it dents under the heel of my boot. The damage I dish out on the door feels fucking incredible. Releasing some of the pent-up rage that’s been bottled up inside of me is blissful, so I kick until the dent in the door transforms into a gaping hole.
I feel like Jack fucking Torrance as I quickly duck down to get a look inside his bedroom. Travis has his back to me, sitting on the edge of his bed and just staring out the window. He hasn’t seemed to even notice my presence at all. I apparently don’t scare him quite like I’m scaring myself right now. His body is perfectly still and his mind seems somewhere else completely. I reach through the hole in the door to unlock it before pulling my hand back out and opening it. As I walk inside his bedroom he doesn’t so much as flinch. If he weren’t sitting up straight I’d think he was fucking dead.
“Travis?” The anger in my voice fades into confusion as I look at him. There’s something fucking eerie about seeing him sitting like that. I walk around the bed so I can get a better look at him. His face is void of any emotion and his bloodshot eyes are just as dead. Regardless of how much I fucking hate him right now, I can see the face of the man who was once my friend. The face of the boy I grew up with: a boy who was like a second brother to me. The memories of the past few hours come rushing back and any fondness I’m feeling for him quickly dissipates. I wish I could think of him as a fucking stranger because then this wouldn’t hurt so fucking badly.
I say his name once more and watch as he still sits completely unresponsive before me. My rage turns into fear as my gaze trails down to his hands, which are wrapped in a vice-grip around the pistol in his lap. Everything in my world comes to a resounding halt. I look back to his blank face in disbelief. So many thoughts course through my mind at once, causing them all to sound like one angry jumbled mess. I’m too far gone to make any sense of them. The tension in the air is palpable. When, I reach out to grab ahold of the gun, Travis shakes out of his catatonic state. He holds it tightly in his right hand like it’s all that he has left in this world.
“Travis… what is this?”
“Please,” he begs, his voice gruff and resigned. “Just leave me alone, Trevor. Just get the fuck out of here and leave me be.”
“No. What the hell are you doing, Travis?”
I’m not going to let him fucking do this. I can’t tell if he’s acting out of cowardice or if he’s been suffering for a very long time. Regardless, I’m not going to allow him to kill himself because of his fucking guilt. He’s shaking before me. He’s no longer the monster I made him out to be just hours before. He looks like a very small, remorseful man who made a really fucked-up mistake. He looks pathetic, like he’s practically dead already. This piece of shit who’s now contemplating his own demise took so much from me. He destroyed me—left me to pick up the pieces of my fucked-up life while he watched from a distance. I hate him. I hate him for so many things, but as tears prick my eyes I realize that I don’t really fucking hate him at all. And that’s the hardest pill to swallow. I want to murder him myself, but I also want to wrap my arms around him and tell him that everything’s going to be all right.
Despite the dark feelings coursing through me as I look at him, I still love Travis like a brother. What happened was a horrible fucking accident, completely devastating, but as I look at the pusillanimous man he’s become, I slowly begin to find forgiveness in my heart. Whatever it takes, I’m not going to let him die tonight. I couldn’t save Dean… I couldn’t save Cat… but I’m going to save Travis. I won’t him slip through my fingers like everyone else. He’ll survive even if he doesn’t want to. He can beg for death, but I’ll show him another way. Instead of reaching for the gun I sit down on the floor beside him, my posture completely non-threatening.
I don’t know what to fucking do, but I know I can’t give up on him. “T
alk to me, man.” I try to sound strong, but my voice fucking cracks.
With the gun held tightly in his right hand he shakes his head, tears well up in his eyes before they trail down his cheeks. He’s fucking shaking like he’s a ticking time bomb getting ready to explode before my eyes.
“Please, Travis. Fuck, just say something,” I practically beg.
He’s silent for a long time.
“It was an accident, Trevor,” he finally says with a sob.
“I know that,” I assure him, wrapping my arms around my knees so I’m sitting in a fucking ball on the floor at his feet. “I know it was an accident.”
Travis looks at me for a long time. His eyes are so red they look fucking cashed, and his posture’s so tense he’s vibrating on the bed. I stare back, unwilling to look away for even a second, fearing he’ll do something drastic. Another sob escapes his mouth as he buries his face in his left hand, still clenching the gun to his chest with his right hand.
“Do you know what you’re going to do now that you guys are almost finished?” I ask before taking another swig of my beer.
Travis smiles and shrugs before taking a drink of his IPA. “I got accepted to CU Boulder with Dean.”
This is news. I always thought Travis wanted to leave Colorado. “I thought you wanted to go to school out of state.”
“I don’t think I could deal with being away from Dean for that long,” he admits. “I mean, he’s my best friend and we know so many people at this university.”
Fuck, they must be fucking closer than I thought if Travis is willing to stay in state, a place he’s always claimed to hate, just to be near Dean. He changes the subject, transforming back into the perfect star athlete my mom’s fucking obsessed with. Sometimes, I want to be more like him. His life just seems so fucking perfect, while mine even seems like a fucking mess to me. However, I know I could never be that straight-edge. I admire the guy because I could never be that good if I tried.
The memory is fleeting; the Travis in my thoughts is such a stark fucking contrast to the Travis sitting before me right now. The man sitting in front of me is defeated to the point he’s unrecognizable. He’s allowed that one accident to fuck him up beyond repair. He’s transformed into a man who’s nothing like the boy I knew him to be growing up. I want to look away, but I don’t. I stay focused because I want him as calm as possible.
“I just can’t do this anymore. I can’t live with what I’ve done. Every day is a fucking living nightmare. It’s hard to get out of bed because I know it wasn’t a terrible dream. It’s my God damn reality, Trevor. I’ll never be able to take any of what I did back. It’ll always be a heinous fucking scar I’ll have to carry with me. I’m tired of lying to myself. I’m tired of thinking that one day I’ll wake-up and feel better again. You have no idea what it’s like to live with blood on your hands!”
I can see the hysteria brewing behind his irises; his haunted look takes my fucking breath away. Travis was practically Dean’s brother. Regardless of their friendship he looked Dean in the eyes, then made the decision to save his own ass by driving off—leaving my brother to die. He saw Dean was struggling to breathe, fighting for survival. He knew Dean was trapped in the front seat of his car. He had to accept he did that shit to my brother. I can’t wrap my mind around the guilt that must be eating him up. I thought my demons were bad, but his seem indescribable.
“I killed him,” Travis wails, tears spilling down his contorted face. “I killed my best friend! It all happened so fucking fast! I’d been drinking. I just wasn’t thinking when I got behind the wheel of my car. What were the fucking chances, you know? I fucking drove like that all of the time and nothing ever happened. I thought it was safe, no big deal, right? It was a late at night on the road of a dead-end town. I didn’t think anyone else would be out driving because of the late hour. I just got in my car and thought nothing of it.”
My stomach drops because I know this is the part I don’t want to hear, but I need to hear it. I need to know the truth, no matter what. Once he tells me how it happened, all of this will be fucking real. I’ll never be able to turn back time and forget the images that I’m sure his words will sear into my head. Things always tend to stick with me, and I know that this will fucking stick in my mind forever.
“I was drinking a beer while driving home and I dropped it. It spilled all over my phone and seat before it settled in the floor of my truck. I leaned over so I could reach down to grab it, unable to let the rest of my beer go to waste. That’s when I felt the impact of an oncoming car. Everything was a blur. The sounds of the car crunching, tires screeching, and the blood-curdling screams were all that registered in my mind. I could barely understand what was happening, but I could hear everything. The sound of the car’s steel crunching is something that has stuck with me all of this time; as well as the sounds of Cat’s screams as their car spun off the road and into that fucking tree. There was so much noise and movement, then nothing besides the faint whisper of my radio playing classic rock. When I turned my car off and stumbled out into the night, the silence was debilitating. How could there be screams one moment and dead silence the next?
“I was fucking horrified, Trev. When I got out of my car to check out the damage… to see the extent of what I’d done. I didn’t even recognize Dean’s car at first. However, there was this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, screaming at me something horrible was about to happen. I got to their car as fast as I could, but when I looked inside, my world fell apart. You should’ve seen them, Trevor. He was looking”—Travis stops for a moment, gasping for air— “right at me. He couldn’t talk, but everything he wanted to say was radiating from his eyes. He looked so fucking dejected. He was reaching for Cat, who looked like she was already dead. Some of the glass from the windshield had been busted inward on her. There were glass shards sticking out from her neck and torso. She was bleeding all over the place. My God, the way Dean was looking at her tore me the fuck up. Then he looked back at me…”
Travis wipes away his tears and shakes his head as if he were trying to shake all the unwanted images out of his mind. I’ve never seen a person look so broken and it’s so fucking unsettling. As he talks, I can’t take my eyes off the way his finger plays with the trigger; it’s like he’s ready at any moment to raise the gun to his head and end his own life.
“It was nearly impossible to look at him, but I didn’t want to look away. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and tell him that everything was going to be okay. I wanted to be the one in his position more than anything. I loved him, Trevor. I loved him so much, but I couldn’t watch him die. I was such a fucking coward. I got back in my car and drove away, pretending I just hadn’t left him gasping for air in the front seat of his car. The only thing I could say to him before I left was ‘I’m sorry.’ I didn’t tell him that I loved him or anything else. I wish I fucking had now because ‘I’m sorry’ must’ve been the last thing he ever heard.”
“I loved him, too,” I say, trying to connect with Travis, letting him know that he isn’t alone in this darkness. “You’re not by yourself in this, Travis. We both lost him.”
Travis’s face looks so fucking pained before he quickly looks away, hanging his head. “No, Trevor. I was in love with him,” he admits with a wistful smile. I don’t know what to fucking think about that shit. “Dean never knew, but I would’ve followed that man anywhere. I would’ve done anything for him. Or at least, that’s what I thought. I thought I’d give up everything for him, but I couldn’t even save his life. I was in love with my best friend, and it fucking hurt so much to watch him fall in love with someone else. I can’t even look at my Godson at times because he reminds me of his father. I loved Dean more than anything. How ironic is it I was the one who caused his death? I killed the man I loved.”
Tears are coursing down my face at his admission and I have no idea why. I’ve cried so much today, so I suppose it just fucking feels right. Part of me hates Travis for what he did, bu
t another part of me just fucking pities him. If I lost Ronnie… if I was the cause of her death… I’d want to end my sorry ass life, too. I don’t know how he’s had the strength to go on for this long. I don’t know how he’s found it within himself to put on a brave face and lie to me every day.
“He’s gone now, and I have nothing left,” he says as his shaky right hand brings the gun up toward his head.
Time seems to slow down as I watch him with wide, horrified eyes. The gun inches closer and closer, his finger shaking on the trigger as if preparing to pull it at any second. My body seems to react before my mind does. I launch myself at him, tackling him down to the floor with me and we begin to scuffle over the gun. He cries out in anger, outraged that I’m preventing him from his desired outcome, and he begins to wail on me with the stock of his gun. My head is throbbing with pain and I taste iron as blood fills my mouth, but I don’t back down. I hit him back just as hard, wanting to knock some fucking sense into him.
“Just let me do it, Trevor!” he screams into my face. “Just let me die! I want to be with him!”
I can’t allow him to do that. I can’t watch him fucking kill himself right before my very eyes. I shake my head, looking up at his broken face with tears in my eyes. I wrap my arm around his shoulder, as if I was giving him a hug while trying to grab the gun with my other hand. He’s sobbing uncontrollably now; his eyes are filled with pure shame as he stares down at my beaten face.
“Give me the gun, Travis,” I say, trying hard not to beg.
“I can’t.” He violently shakes his head. “I need to pay for this.”
“You’ve been paying for it, man,” I quickly reason with him. “Now, give me the gun.”
The Blessing Page 62
