Chapter Thirty-Four

Panic is what I should be feeling, and the expression is clearer on her face right now. It's clear she wants to ask so many questions, but is holding her guard for the time being. Asking the wrong thing will cause me to fly away once more. The last thing she wants is for this situation to be more awkward than it has to be. There's a comfort in the tentative silence that follows, like we're both in a mutual understanding of things that the other could not comprehend.

Glory has always been a bit like this. Reservation towards certain things is what gives her such good footing with most people. Somehow, she's always astounded me with how easily she can dance round people. Every conversation she gets into feels like a carefully constructed tango where she's taking the lead. You don't need to profess your problems for her to understand that there's something under the surface.

Over the years, I'd grown my own avoidance to this nature. By turning my back and walking the other direction, she didn't have much room to snipe. I was an enigma to her, and part of her hated this.

But as we stood on opposite ends of the porch, we had reached this understanding. Words she wanted to say were lost to a wind of silenced expectations. It was so unlike her. With just a few words she could have made this awkward. It's not like she had been blind.

To say that I appreciated this would have been an understatement.

Carefully leaning against the railing, one hand was wrapped round a bottle. It was probably one she had been nursing for quite some time. Her steady composure revealed this much too me.

Everything about her seemed so perfectly poised in this moment. Not like she stepped out of a movie, but more like she had selected the most suitable posture for this. Her arms were folded across the wooden railing as she looked down at me, almost beckoning me to come up and join her.

"You alright?" she asked with a subtle softness to her tone.

Regardless of what my own answer was, her response would be the same. A quiet noise of understanding and a slow, tempered nod of her head.

My feet were stinging like hell right now, but not something that I couldn't walk off. Souls were built to carry burdens, and bodies were made to trod through life, no matter the weather. The blood had dried up fairly quickly once they'd stopped colliding with the hard, jagged edges of the sidewalk, but it still hurt. Each step forward seemed weighted down by the pain of earlier today.

But she wasn't really talking about my physical state of being. More so, she was talking about my head. She wanted to know if there was any permanent damage done. All she needed from me was a confirmation of where I stood.

The problem with that was that I certainly had no idea where the hell I was.

Half the time it felt like I was standing at the jaws of infinity, waiting for a black hole to swallow me up and make escape from life impossible. The other half felt like I was in the eye of a hurricane; having made it through a painful experience, and just waiting for the other foot to eventually drop on me.

A slow, calculated shrug of my shoulders gave my sister all the information she needed. It was enough to imply that I wasn't fine, without diving into too much detail. Almost like her personality, it was calculated in such a way that it left everything vague and to the imagination. People could believe what they wanted to think of me, and Glory was no different. The only thing she lorded over everyone else is that she could genuinely say she had my best interests at heart.

I staggered forward slowly, my face contorting into a wince with each collision against the solid ground. My eyes only met with Glory once as I approached the bottom of the steps. There she was, a grin on full display for the world to see.

She shook her head, still smiling. "You're such a fucking idiot," Glory remarked playfully, slowly bringing the bottle to her lips and taking a small sip.

"Tell me something I don't know," I mumbled back. Stopping when I reached the bottom step, I let loose a breath that my lungs had somehow been holding for the longest time.

Without needing to be told, Glory had propped herself up, no longer leaning. Her movements were slow as she made her way methodically down the stairs. Each step seemed to come with its own weighty stagger. Not one of a drunken twenty-something, but rather one of someone who was trying to find their bearings.

We both managed to sit on the last step at the same time, a few inches from each other and eyes trained forward into the street.

"For a minute, you had me worried for you," she remarked softly, no longer taking her usual jokey tone with me. "Like I swear, you have to promise not to do that again."

Words were all I had in this moment. Unfortunately, the majority of words I had were trapped in the back of my throat. There was so much I wanted to say. I wanted to tell her that I was fine, and that this wouldn't happen again.

But how could I promise something like that when I had no idea where the future would take me. When I still felt like I was floating in some sort of cosmic abyss. When it felt like I was sometimes drowning on the very air I was breathing in.

Glory just didn't understand it. And because she didn't understand it, I didn't feel like I could promise her anything.

But words still had to be said. And so, against the better judgement of every fiber in my being, I asked her the one question that had been on my mind for the longest time.

"Do you miss her?" I asked, the subdued sound coming from my lips distorted by my own sadness.

I didn't need to look at her to see a reaction. The creaking of the step gave way, as Glory almost was taken completely aback with the question. My eyes were trained on a car which was slowly cruising down the street, almost as if it were looking for something in particular.

Glory sighed heavy, overpowered only by the clink of a bottle as she set it down on concrete.

When I turned to face her, I could see it written all over her face. 'The Sutton Storm.' This metaphorical dark cloud that loomed over us. Long had I thought it was gone, mostly because everyone was acting like everything was okay. But her eyes were looking straight through me, as if I'd just reminded her of a most painful memory, only then to realize this is exactly what I'd done.

Her fists balled up tightly, but not a trace of anger ever shone on her. Either she was hiding it well, or she had learned how to wrestle that one particular demon down.

"We all miss her," Glory stated. Her voice matched my own melancholic tone, trying her best to be a good older sister. "We might not show it sometimes, but fuck..." Part of her wants to cry, and I wouldn't blame her for it. But restraint is something our family possesses in spades. "There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about her."

It takes a moment for the words to sink in, but when they do I find the puzzle lacking. There's something else I need here. Something I'm missing.

"Why am I the only one like this?"

The question is one that I mean to ask in my head. Too late do I realize that I've said this aloud. That one thing that burns my inner soul and makes me feel weak is ow out there. Even if there's no answer, at least it's out there in the world.

Without so much as skipping a beat, Glory has her hand wrapped around my shoulder, pulling me closer. I feel so weak, faint, and numb, that I'm putty in her hands; near enough crashing down and just embracing this moment and it's intended tenderness. She allows me to melt and meld into her.

I don't expect her to keep up this at forever. Vulnerability has never been something that either of us are great with, and when it's said and done, we'd go back to our usual rituals. Right now was a fleeting moment, only brought around by the notion of trying to work through our bullshit. But I didn't care. This moment made me feel just a little more human, like I was born with a heart that beat in time instead of this empty vacuum I'd grown accustomed too.

"I wish I had answers bud, I really do." Her face was a picture of strained imperfection, trying to look for some sort of meaning. Her arm just pulled me in a little closer now. "Some people just do things in different ways I guess."

The answer made me a little angry. It felt like such a cop-out response, not like I could argue back against it. What made it worse was that it seemed like such a final response. As if this was the way things were always going to be. I could not, and would not, accept that

I've always known that being a person was more complicated; that there really was no difference between black and white. But not having the answers right now wasn't exactly helping. I needed to know why I was this way; perpetually stuck in some sort of anger vortex that was sending me hurtling away from everyone else.

Slowly, I managed a nod, just trying to take everything in. My feet were no longer burning, mostly because my insides felt like they were a little numb. Thoughts that I had were now colliding together in one grand clusterfuck.

"Can I ask you a question?" Glory said, releasing me.

It took a few seconds for the words to even sink in. "Sure," I manage to reply, my voice weaker than ever.

Glory paused. It was more contemplative than I would have liked. The question was there, but she wasn't entirely sure of how she should even broach the subject, or come at me.

Her fast-paced tango was slowly devolving into something she couldn't quite control. Words were now escaping her, and it was a sight to see. Very rarely would something ever catch her off guard, and even when it had, she usually had ways of wording herself. But now it seemed like she was stuck in a rut, almost trying to feel the room for a moment before even speaking.

And it's in that precious moment of silence that I began to understand. Nothing ever caught her off guard, unless it was a personal question, or something which could shake the foundations of a relationship. Or in this case, both.

"You and... Garth?"

My eyes snapped to her. "What about me and Garth?"

She blinked, taken aback just a little. "Well I'm just trying to find out what's happening there," her voice said in this calming, almost expressionless tone. "Whether he's just a really good friend, or if there's something else that's going on there."

"What makes you think something else is going on?"

Now her face lit with a soft smile and a gentle roll of her eyes. It was like she could see the universe in front of her, like she was eavesdropping in. Her knowing look made me believe that even if I told her the truth, she'd still need to know more.

But then what was the truth.

Truthfully my feelings on Garth were complicated. We were friends who had been thrown into a shitty situation. The times we shared together were the only real times where I felt like I could be normal about all the things going on in my head. We didn't even need to talk about it, because just being there in his presence made the constant whirring feel like nothing more than a silent whisper.

"We're friends for now..." I said finally.

Glory gave a small distinct nod of approval before rising from the step. Her eyes were still glassy, however they seemed to be glassy for a completely different reason right now.

"For now," she murmured to herself more than anyone. "Let me know when that changes."