Page 36 of Chaos

Instantly, all the air left my lungs, and then I couldn’t remember the correct sequence to breathe normally. At first, my breaths were too fast, closely resembling that of a hummingbird’s flight. Where were Noah and Dad? Why weren’t they home? My sides rapidly heaved as I tried to tell myself they had gotten a flat on the side of the road. I knew it was a lie. Dad always had a spare. I couldn’t bring air into my body without terror burning my insides.

“Are you Eris Greyson?”

Despite how much I wanted to answer him, I couldn’t. Words weren’t something I was capable of right now. Fear ingested my body and sealed my mouth to silence. My feet somehow found the carpet and strength to carry me to the door, but no sounds left my lips. I wouldn’t allow the tears the satisfaction of falling from my eyes when there was no reason for them. I knew he had to be all right. He was only a child.

As my toes barely lifted and dragged the remainder of the steps that brought me in front of the officer, his forced composure ruptured and his bottom lip began to quiver. He removed his hat and asked if we could go to the living room to talk. My head shook back and forth in response. He didn’t argue my decision.

The next thing to leave his lips were the words no parent should ever have to hear.

“There’s been an accident,” he said quietly and reached for my arm. I took a step backward and covered the bare skin with my hand. I tried to ignore them as if he’d misspoken, but he repeated himself when I didn’t respond.

“We tried to save them,” were the last words I heard and would continue to hear until the last breath left my now purposeless body. I no longer had a reason to live. They were gone. He was gone. They tried to save them. They tried to save him. Tried. As if made it better that they tried. All of their futile efforts were wasted because they weren’t coming home. He would never come home.

I hated this man before me. He didn’t try hard enough. He should have tried harder to save them. He should have saved him. I shouldn’t have let him go. I should have protected him. It was a mother’s one job—to protect her child. I had failed Noah.

One solemn nod found its way to my head as the words flew from his mouth. The words I didn’t wish to hear. The words I could not accept. I considered pinching the skin on my arm as my fingertips nervously shook against them, but I knew it was pointless. There was no reason to do anything except quit. Quit living entirely. How could it be possible for someone to live when their entire reason for living was gone?

The answer was, you couldn’t. I simply existed now.

Noah. He was my reason. My entire existence. He was my birth. My death. He was my everything. He gave me all of his love, and without him I didn't know how to live. I didn’t have a reason to do so.

The tears I denied earlier now poured from my eyes and avalanched down my cheeks as I screamed, “No!” repeatedly, until I didn’t have the strength to say it anymore. I wouldn’t accept they were gone. I could not believe he was gone.

The trooper apologized and pulled me into his arms, leading us to sit on the staircase. I cried until there were no more tears left in my body. Honestly, there wasn’t much left of me.

I assumed all parents who suffered the loss of a child had good and bad days, but for me the nights were the most intolerable. Tonight was one of those nights. After dreaming of him, I missed Noah so much it hurt to breathe. When I inhaled, daggers of loneliness and heartache slammed into my chest with such a force I expected them to rip through my back at any given moment. It wasn’t often I’d admit I needed someone, but I told myself, if only for tonight, I needed Drex to keep the daggers from driving deeper into my body.

“Are you okay?” Lexie asked in a hushed voice, but had drunk a little too much for it to actually be considered quiet.

“Mhm.” I told her what she wanted to hear and closed my eyes for a split-second to hold my composure. No one ever truly wishes to hear a negative answer when they ask if someone is okay. I think a lot of times it’s only asked because it’s expected of people to ask it.

I wanted to scream at them, even though they had nothing to do with me losing Noah. They were here and so was I. It would have been easy to explode and blame it on the alcohol, but that wasn’t how I rolled.

“Are you?” I replied with a small giggle of irony. I hoped to appear cheerful, but I laughed because I was so far from okay. Honestly, I’d hung onto such a thin thread of just being okay for so long, I knew it’d eventually break and I’d plummet into full-blown insanity.

Lexie simply shrugged her shoulders in response as her fingers wrapped around the bottle’s neck and she put the rim to her lips. She stood and swayed her hips to imaginary music, taking one last gulp, and set the bottle down in front of Henry with a wink. She cupped her hands over her mouth and pretended she was playing a harmonica.

Henry laughed and joined her in the middle of the kitchen floor, dancing around her as she closed her eyes and flipped her hair from side to side. His deep throaty voice belted out an unfamiliar blues song as his hands snaked up her sides and he linked their fingers.

Drex’s body shook with silent laughter and unbridled happiness found his eyes as he watched them over his shoulder. As I watched him smile, I did, too. It was rare he smiled this wide, so when he did, it was contagious and impossible for anyone near him to deny doing the same.

He pulled his phone from his pocket and found a song that instantly changed the mood of the room with the first note. Leaning upward, Drex slid his fingers into mine and sadness swam behind his eyes as they roamed my face. By the creases setting into his forehead, he’d caught onto my mood. It was clear why my stupid heart had let him in. He saw me, even when I didn’t want to be seen.

It had taken forty days for me to fall for him, and I wasn’t even sure that was what I’d done. Was it even possible to fall for someone in that short amount of time? If someone had asked me before I met Drex, I would have told them no without hesitation. Now, I wasn’t sure how to answer that question.

Typically, when you fall for someone there are romantic gestures and empty promises uttered to one another. None of that happened with us. I didn’t even know that I loved Drex. I think it was more the idea of finding someone who knew pain as I did, even if I didn’t know what his was. In this moment, it was undeniable that he was in my bloodstream, and I flowed through his. That I was positive of.

I wanted to let the hate into my heart that I’d felt all day, but staring at Drex, I couldn’t. I silenced betrayal tapping at the iceberg’s tip of hate inside my mind. I didn’t want to be reminded of the hate I held for the world. At least I would try because I was honestly exhausted.

Lexie and Henry danced to the table, and Lexie handed Drex the whiskey and her keys.

“It’s your choice.” She winked at the both of us, and Henry pulled her into his arms.

“Henry.” Drex’s hand left mine and formed a fist as he scrubbed his beard with the other. His annoyance and sense of protection were clear in his voice.

“Where’s your wife?”

Wow.I assumed he was single since he was dancing so closely with Lexie. My mouth dropped open, but I was quick to close it. I was on the verge of calling him an asshole when Lexie laughed. Perhaps she was so drunk she didn’t care?

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