Zessa

chapter 5

Chapter 5

Harry

Outside of the kitchen window, the grey sky is beating down on the faded grass with sheets of blinding rain. I stare out into the storm, trying my hardest to ease the throbbing ache in my chest by gulping hot tea out of my chipped blue and white mug. My mouth is warm and my hands are warm and everything is fine except for that little hollow in my chest where I tore her out.

I hear my mother’s cautious footsteps behind me. “Harry,” she says quietly, then stops. There’s nothing left for her to say, but she still won’t stop trying.

I don’t even bother with a response. I just keep staring out the window and periodically taking sips of my flavourless tea. It needs more sugar. No, fuck that. It would still be disgusting, even with more sugar. I just want coffee. I like coffee. If she were here, she’d make me coffee, because she likes coffee and she knows how much I like coffee.

“Christian called again,” my mother says, taking a seat next to me and looking at me with a quiet desperation in her soft blue eyes. Tessa has blue eyes. Tessa has blue eyes that say I love you when she laughs and turn grey when she cries.

I think she cried a lot. I think she cried too much. I think it was because of me.

“Have you changed your mind?”

My grip tightens around my mug. “About going back?”

She closes her eyes and leans her head tiredly against the window frame. “You have to go,” she replies gently.

The corners of my mouth turn down in a dark scowl. “Don’t tell me what I have to do.”

Her expression flashes to match mine. “I’m your mother. What do you expect me to do?” She stands up, as though she’s going to walk away, then sits down again, and that sadness is back in her eyes. “You need to go back.”

“I’m perfectly fine right here,” I snap, rising to my feet and setting my empty mug down on the countertop. “I don’t need to do anything.”

As I make my way angrily toward the stairs, she follows, sighing heavily. “I can hear you at night,” she calls after me. “Do you know what that does to me? It hurts so much, because I can’t help you.”

“No one can!” I bark at her over my shoulder. “It doesn’t even fucking matter.”

She pauses before responding, and I’m just about to start for my bedroom when she responds quietly, “Tessa can.”

For a moment, the sound of her name renders me speechless and motionless, incapable of any thought beyond the mindless repetition those two syllables in my head. Tessa. Tessa. Tessa.

It takes me nearly a full minute to gather myself and force my feet to carry me up the stairs. The second landing suddenly seems so far away, and everything I’m made up of burns with an agony that I can’t distract my mind from. “It doesn’t matter,” I repeat to myself, closing my eyes as tightly as I can while I feel my way along the banister. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

I’m so tired. It seems like I’m always tired. But it’s getting harder and harder to even look at my bed these past couple of days, because every time I see it I remember the way Tessa looked at me in my nightmare, and I remember the way she looked at me when she left me, and I remember the way she looked at me the last time she told me she loved me, and it’s too much remembering and too much pain. Every time I think about her, a sharp ache rips through my chest, making me feel as though all I am is tissue paper.

I’ll sit down in the chair by my desk. I’ll look at the clock and I’ll look at the posters on the walls and I’ll look out the window, and maybe by the time the rain stops I won’t be so tired. If I can stay awake until then, I’ll be okay. I won’t have to see anything I don’t want to see.