“What’s causing this?” I asked, confused. I’d seen Skye’s meltdowns before, but I could usually trace them back to a trigger point. Elliott’s birthday, the anniversary of his death or a snide letter from her mother insinuating that she’d left Elliott in her care and hadn’t watched him carefully enough. The weight of those conflicts would have crushed others, but she held steady, often crying, but with a heavy restraint that I feared would topple her one day.
Could this be the day?
“Stop holding on to it, Skye,” I said. “It isn’t good for you.”
“I don’t want to cry,” she replied.
“I haven’t seen you cry properly since…that night.”
“The night you held me?”
“The night you finally let yourself feel.” I’d stayed all night, cradling her as she finally opened up, felt like she was sinking, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t go on. Sometimes, the sound of her sobs still woke me in the middle of the night.
“That doesn’t mean I haven’t cried since,” she said, her defence mechanism kicking in.
“I hope you have,” I replied, stroking her back. “I mean…I want you to.”
“Why?” she said, pulling away, stepping back and folding her arms.
“I worry.”
“There’s no need to,” she replied, shrugging. “Loss is a part of life, isn’t it?”
“It is.” I nodded, but that seemed to make her worse.
“Oh, you agree? Thanks. Glad I’m not going mad.” She started wiping down the surfaces frantically. I half expected her to rub a dent in the wood.
“I can’t bullshit you, Skye. We all lose people we love, but the way you lost Elliott…it wasn’t fair. It was horrendous, hard for anyone to make sense of. But you, his sister, the one who was there for him–”
“I wasn’t there!” she shouted. “Will!” She looked frightened and exhausted. “Can’t you see? I wasn’t there for him when he needed me the most.”
“You did everything for him,” I replied. “You were like a mum to him, Skye. You gave up your life for him, worked three jobs just to keep a roof over his head and food in his mouth.”
“That doesn’t mean anything now,” she said, pulling in her mouth to stop the shake. “Nothing.”
“Stop,” I said. “I wish you’d get some help with this.” I tried to hold her, soothe her, but that wasn’t what she needed. She needed to unravel, and I was damn sure I’d still be here to pick up the pieces.
The distraught way she was wiping came to an abrupt stop as she narrowed her gaze at me. “Do you think I’m unstable?”
No, Skye. I think you’ve had a lot to deal with and this is a reaction to it.
“Of course not.” I replied. “I just want you talk to someone instead of trying to carry all this guilt around with you.”
“I deserve to.”
“No, you don’t!” I closed my eyes, lowered my voice. “It wasn’t your fault, Skye and you can’t change what happened by going on this…crusade.”
“Crusade?” she repeated. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“This is ridiculous,” I said, trying to calm her. “Come on, let’s go back to bed.”
Get lost in each other. Heal you.
“No, I want to know what you mean by crusade.”
We were hurtling towards no-going-back town. In fact, I’d been fired out a cannon without a crash helmet and landed headfirst into a brick wall there. I caught my reflection in the glass cabinet behind her head and my expression could only be described as terrified. I took a deep breath. Dug deep.
“The volunteering and handing out condoms and sex advice like the safety of the whole LGBTQ+ community is down to you and only you. Like you couldn’t exist if one of those kids took their own life because you’d add that guilt alongside what you already struggle with every fucking day of your life.”
A large tear dropped onto her crossed arms; the ones she’d wrapped around herself. She brushed it away quickly and pressed her lips together. All this time I’d waited for us to reach a crossroads, a decisive point in our friendship, the critical stage…the climax. And I knew…this was it.
“Something good needs to come out of this,” she said softly. “I have to make his life mean something.”
“Not to the detriment of you.”
“It’s doing the opposite.”
“No, it isn’t!” I shouted, shocking us both. “You’re hurting, Skye. I can see it and, Christ, I can feel it for you.” I stepped towards her, softened my hard edges that had formed out of frustration. “Skye, I want to take care of you. Let me take care of you.”
“Oh,” she said, pointing the spoon at me. “I get it. You think I need someone to take all this shit away. To tell me I don’t need to carry this anymore, that I don’t need to hold the guilt by myself.” She scraped her eggs into the bin. “I’ve given you some kind of superhero complex.”
“Skye–”
“You’re not saving me, Will. I don’t need you to.”
“You don’t need saving, but you fucking want it. You just can’t admit it to yourself.”
She laughed from deep within her throat, but the tapping of her knuckles against her mouth told me she was holding more in. Emotion. She wasn’t doing this willingly. She’d been pushed to her limit and was overthinking everything. How I wished she’d let it all out and cleanse herself. Let the tears wash away her guilt. The guilt that ravished her body. The guilt she didn’t need to bear.
She breezed past me, her dressing gown billowing behind her.
“I’m going to say this now and all I want is for you to listen,” I said, reaching her bedroom where she started picking up my clothes I’d discarded in a haze of lust no less than a few hours ago. I really wanted to be back in that place.
“We haven’t talked about us yet,” she said, barely looking up. “Shall we start on that next or do I really want your warts and all opinion like the one you’ve given me about my mental health?”
“Just listen to me,” I pleaded.
“If that’s what this all about, Will, some kind of mission to save me, you can go.”
“I won’t walk away from you even when you’re fucking pushing me!” I finally caught her eyes. Fuck, she was beautiful, but she was fighting a war and I wasn’t sure how long she could carry on fighting.
“You don’t have to say that.”
“I know,” I replied. “I’m telling you the truth.”
I watched her grip her lips together to stop herself from crying. She clamped her hand over her mouth and shook her head as more guilt weighed her down. “Shit, Will, I’m so sorry.” She threw her hands to her head and started pacing. “God, I’m an idiot. An ungrateful cow. I don’t know what’s happening to me.” She twisted and twirled in front of me, a wrestle between needing comfort and the fear that I might reject her. “Ignore me. That was totally uncalled for. I don’t even know where that came from.”