Step-Lover by Bella Jewel

head is dropped, so I don’t see him approach. I merely feel his presence as he sits down beside me. I expect it to be Jack, but when I open my eyes I’m shocked. It’s not Jack, or even Blade . . . it’s Brody. I blink a few times, quite shocked. He’s the last person I expected to find me. I don’t even know why he did. He barely speaks, barely shows emotion and yet here he is.
    “I know how it feels.”
    I turn to him, blinking my burning, dry eyes. I’ve cried so much there’s nothing left.
    “Y-y-you do?”
    He nods, and reaches into his jacket. He pulls out a flask and opens it. He takes a long drink, and then hands it to me. I do the same, swallowing down the burning liquid.
    Then he tells me his story.
    “I was dating a girl when I was eighteen. We’d been together for two years. I loved her, but she had a hard life. She suffered from severe depression because her mom died from cancer two years earlier. She put on a brave face, but she was a girl in need of some serious help. I stood by her side because I cared. When I turned eighteen, things started going south. She became distant and fought me more than she loved me.”
    He stops and takes another sip. I do too.
    “I was eighteen,” he mutters. “I didn’t have the maturity to handle it. I was young; I wanted to enjoy my life. She wouldn’t let me in. I’d stood by her for two long years but she wouldn’t let me in. She was sinking. I tried to get her help, I went to therapy with her, I lost all my friends to stand by her side—I did everything I could to make things better for her.”
    I take another sip this time, because I have a feeling this story is going to be horrible.
    “She pulled back and I couldn’t get through. She was partying hard, so hard I spent more time dragging her home vomiting than I did just enjoying her. She refused to let me in, and eventually I just couldn’t take it anymore. I broke it off with her. Things were rocky after that; she didn’t take it well. I still followed her, tried to help her, because I felt guilty.”
    God. It wasn’t his fault.
    “But I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life doing that. It wasn’t fun. I was young and it wasn’t how I wanted things to turn out. I told her dad she needed help and he swore he’d get it for her, but he asked me to step back. The longer I hung around, the more she’d hold on. I agreed and stepped back. One night, about a month after, she called me.”
    This is about to get bad.
    “She said she was going to kill herself. Now, she’d said this at least a thousand times before, so you can understand I didn’t believe her. It wasn’t as though it was the first time. I told her she had to stop, that we were over and she needed to get help. Then I hung up and called her dad. He was out of town but he said he’d take care of it. That night, I felt uneasy . . . she’d told me she would kill herself so many times before, but this time felt different.”
    My heart twists and we both drink some more alcohol.
    “I decided to go and check on her. When I got to her house, it was dark. Her dad wasn’t home, so I broke in. I went into her room, but she wasn’t in her bed. I saw the bathroom light was on, so I barged in.”
    He stops talking and looks away. My heart is in shreds.
    “There was so much blood. I didn’t even know there was so much blood in the human body.” He gasps and I reach over, clutching his hand. “I knew it was her, even though I couldn’t see her face. I couldn’t see it because she . . . she had blown her own head off.”
    Vomit rises in my throat and I struggle to push it back down. Pain shoots through me, because I know, god do I know how graphic something like that can be, and how it sticks in your mind and never, ever leaves.
    “I see her every time I close my eyes. I see her face every time I even try to have fun. I let her down. I didn’t fight for her. Things got hard and I ran.”
    “You were eighteen,” I say softly.