ELBINA 3

Chapter 31

I look at Lucas, he's quiet as usual.
His hand rests on the gearstick between us, his right arm resting on the windows lazily steering the car. We haven't talked much, the ride silent just like it had been between us for the past week since we left the safe house.
I didn't know what to say to him, and even if I tried he'd only give me one word responses. He didn't want to talk, and that's fair enough I suppose.
But I didn't expect it to stay like that.
Even if it had only been a week of this, it felt like a lifetime.
It had been weird, going home. June and Jake walked on eggshells around me, and well Lucas just didn't say anything. It didn't even feel like home anymore, not after so long away, not after everything that's happened. So being at home has been surreal in all honesty.
This silence was no different than last week.
The tires of the van bring us to a halt in front of the house, and I glance out of the window when we do. The grass now overgrown on the front lawn and the short bushes that line it from the neighbouring houses are wild and untamed, it already looked different.
The silence is uncomfortable and before I can think of anything to say, even if I know I wouldn't be able to come up with anything helpful, he takes off his seatbelt and jumps out of the car.
By the time I've slipped out of my seat and rounded the back of the car, Lucas is already shutting the boot and picking up the boxes in one hand, a black roll of bin bags slipped under his other arm. I try to smile, hoping to reassure him but he doesn't look at me and he's already walking past. His feet crunching along the gravelled path to the front door, his head tracing the grass lining it. I held back, he fumbled with the lock until it finally opened the door and he slipped through it out of sight.
June told me to just be here.
He didn't exactly want me to come anyway but of course, June insisted.
But he didn't want me here, so I feel like an intruder.
Gradually, I get the confidence to follow him in, my own eyes looking at the ground that's beginning to grow through the small rocks. The air stale once I pass through the door and as I walk further in, I can hear a clashing of something. It's in the back, past the front room and into the kitchen.
Following the noise, I pause in the doorway. Leaning on the wall just watching him as he's dropping the utensils into a setup cardboard box.
He doesn't even look up.
Just be there.
I try to remind myself that, biting my lip of all the things I wanted to say that wouldn't actually help him right now.
So many questions that I wanted answers to.
And now we were here, now that I knew his secret. I wanted to know everything that I could, because maybe I could help him.
That's stupid, even I know that.
I'm not sure why I even thought it, it's an excuse....if I'm being honest. An excuse to butt in where I probably shouldn't.
So I should listen to June. After all, she knew better than me.
But then, that's easier said than done.
And I'm not the same person she knew before, something I think her and Jake are starting to discover.
"What do you need me to do?" My feet shuffle under me unsure, crossing my arms tightly.
It takes him a second to even realise I've said something. "Erm, I'm not sure." He says, throwing the plates and bowls into another box. His head following the line of cupboards around the kitchen till he pauses on the one closest to me. "Maybe, the glasses?"
"Sure, no problem." Thankful for the job, I moved further in and set my hands to work. Just happy that I have something to do with them and give my brain something else to focus on instead of my incessant need to know everything.
We work quietly, keeping to ourselves and not really saying anything.
I carefully stack some of the nicer glasses, the plastic type ones I stack into each other and organise the box to fit in as much as possible.
Lucas has moved from one drawer onto another, making quick work of packing things away. We'd discussed that the basic things like this would go to charity, or something like that. We didn't just want to throw it away, it was still useful at the end of the day.
"He's got some decent baking equipment there." I point out to the offset spatula and baking tins as he's lifting them out of the cupboard.
"Huh?" He dropped them into the box, looking up at me in confusion.
The look he gives makes me falter, falling over my words. "The baking stuff. Jake might want some of that."
"Oh, yeah... sure, whatever he wants." He waves his hand. Going back to ignoring me and I sigh to myself, continuing on with my own mission. This was going to take us the entire day, but it had to be done.
I had placed the box of glasses on the top of the counter, and now it was full. I was trying to lift it up, my frustration growing when I was too weak to move it, and when I'd managed to lift it slightly from the counter my stomach stings forcing me to drop it down.
"Hey! don't try lift that yourself!" He jumps up once he hears the clattering of glasses vibrating against the others in the drop. Making light work of lifting it from the counter and dropping it by the door behind me. A grimace forms on my face watching him, running a hand over the front of my torso, easing the pressure accumulating there.
"Lucas, I'm fine. It's been over a month." I grumble, and it had. I hated this vulnerable feeling, and I hated people tip toeing around me. Treating me like I might break in half any second.
He only shakes his head, opening up another box for me. Sliding the cardboard into place till it's prepared as he drops it on the counter in front of me. "Which isn't long enough. You still have to be careful."
"I'm fine now." I try, except he gives me a stern look.
"No. You're not, so just leave me to it." I gulp, his tone made it feel like he was growing irritated with me. I reside myself to accepting it, I didn't want to upset him any further. He goes back to his side of the kitchen and it takes a second for me to go back to my own work, my eyes trailing his movements with interest.
I wanted to go back that day, before everything. Before I got shot, when we didn't tip toe around each other and he was so honest with everything he was thinking and feeling. Ever since I woke up from surgery, it was different between us.
They all said, including Lucas, that I barely survived. The bullet ripped right through my spleen and a portion of my gut. But I didn't die, evidently. Lucas was set up in the safe house and I was in hospital for two weeks until I was finally moved back with him. And whatever traction we had made with anything past friendship had been lost, right back to ground zero.
I should be happy, shouldn't I?
That I survived, that I'm still here.
Still breathing.
That doesn't change the fact that things just don't feel right. It's not what I want, nothing is the way I thought it would be if we were going to survive. Being home is nothing like I thought it would be.
Which is weird, because I'd been hoping for home. Hoping it would bring that content feeling, and that I'd feel like me again.
But now I'm here and I don't feel like me, Lucas doesn't feel like Lucas and everything is different.
It's like I've been dropped back into a random world and I'm just supposed to feel normal. Things are supposed to feel better.
And annoyingly, and unsurprisingly, Lucas played a big part in it. Of course he would, after everything that had happened to us. We shared something that no one ever would, and the people that did... well most of them are dead.
Or in prison, but I haven't brought myself to see Nero.
But ever since I went past that friendship barrier with Lucas, I didn't want to go backwards. I didn't want to accept going back to that when I knew what it was like to have him in a way more than that.
So now, there's tension between us, even if it were just on my side. Again, it's been hard to decipher exactly what Lucas saw us as anymore.
He was preoccupied, and I understood that at least.
"Do you want to do anything tonight?" I try, he shrugs his shoulders.
"I'm not sure, I think I just want to go to sleep." He sounds tired, and I lean on the box with my elbow to keep my eye on him.
Before I can say anything else, He picks up a box and walks past me. I'd have followed him but there was still a lot to do in here yet. I'm only thankful that Mitch had a bungalow and that we didn't have many rooms to empty.
It continues like that for another hour, I pack all the basics into boxes until I've emptied out the final cupboard. Any tin cans or dried pasta bags I placed into a shop for life bag I found at the back of the kitchen door. There's enough food that I can fill two of them and I place them by the door for Lucas to grab. It feels weird at first, but by the time I've finished the last cupboard and I've placed the box by the door, it's more mundane than anything.
"That's everything in here?" I nod, pointing down at the last box. He picks it up without saying anything more but this time I follow him out. Out into the warm sunny day, heat spreads over my cheeks after being in the cold house for so long. Lucas, by this time, has taken off his jacket leaving him in just his loose t-shirt, ready for the highest temperature of the day.
The box thuds onto the back of the van before he slides it in. It's almost satisfying, the way each box slots together like a tetris game. He shuffles some more boxes, checking that they all stack neatly together.
I bite my lip again, it doesn't stop me though.
"When did it happen?"
I lean against the car, knowing the hardest bit was yet to come. This was only the basic pieces of his life, we had yet to look through his bedroom and the front room too. If I knew anything, it's that those will hold the most sentimental pieces of Mitch's life.
I thought he wouldn't say anything initially, the only reason I know he heard me is because he faltered in his movement and his shoulders tensed.
"A couple of weeks in." He said gruffly, pushing up the sleeves of his long sleeved navy top as he stepped back away from the back of the van. His black jeans sit low on his hips when he looks back at me for the briefest moment, an uncomfortable look on his face until he turns away. He rubs a hand over the back of his neck as he walks down the path back to the house.
I follow him back up the drive, stepping into the house just behind him. This time though, we don't go into the kitchen. We head into the front room instead and I watch unsure as he flicks open a black bin bag. It takes him a few flicks of the wrist till it opens up fully which is when he picks up some stuff from the shelf beside me and he just starts throwing stuff into the bag.
"Lucas," He doesn't stop, beginning to throw some items into the bag with more force than necessary.
"How about we have a look at some of this stuff?" I say timidly, nervous about his attitude. The same attitude I'd dealt with this past week, it's not something I've had much experience with when it comes to Lucas. I pick up a piece he'd dumped in the bag after walking up beside him, turning it over in my hand.
"No need. I don't need it." He grabs it from me, dropping it back into the bag before moving away and grabbing more stuff from the opposite side of the room.
"You say that now but -" I pause, hands stalled on the acrylics resting on the shelf beside me.
"Ella." He cuts me off, "I don't want any of it!" I stare back, his jaw grinding away tells me he's serious when he shouts at me. We stare at each other, my hand trapped holding the paint pot within my hand. Eventually he lowered his voice, softer this time like he felt bad for shouting at me before, "Can we just do this in silence?"
He goes back to throwing stuff in the bag, I can't let him do this though. It wasn't healthy, I knew that. The whole way he'd handled his dad's death wasn't healthy.
"I don't want you to regret throwing everything away." His head shakes, ignoring my words until I speak again. "There must be something you want to keep?"
A grumble of words floated from across the room, his shoulders hunched and hiding his expression away from me. I think secretly he knew that I'd work out what he was really thinking just by looking at him.
"Why do I need to keep something?" Another thing thrown into the bag, clattering against the rest of everything else disposed of by him.
"I'm not sure... Isn't that what some people do? You kept Fallen's map, didn't you?" This time, he drops the bag in a heap, turning to me.
"And what did you keep, huh? You gave up the map first!" I step back, not expecting the snap back.
"That's different." I whisper back.
"It's not! You had a choice to have his stuff and you decided against it!" My gut hurts now, this whole thing has taken a lot out of me.
Certainly more than I ever dare to admit out loud.
"Because I saw him be murdered, Lucas! Of course I didn't want a fucking reminder." I hissed at him. I didn't deserve this, did I? I just didn't want him to regret this, I was trying to help him.
"And I don't want that either with my dad!" His eyes are wide, staring me down.
"Why wouldn't you want that? Surely you want to remember him?" I plant my hand on the shelf to my right, clutching my fingers around it to fight the tired feeling.
He shakes his head. "I don't."
Lucas turns away, grabbing the bin bag from the ground. He grabs a couple more things from the cabinet in the corner, chucking some more in until it's filled it and then begins heading for the door. I step in front of him though, stopping him in his tracks.
"You don't want to think about your own dad?" It didn't make sense. Or at least, it didn't make sense to me anyway.
"For fucks sake Ella, Leave it!" He glares down at me with frustration.
"Mitch was a good person and he deserves to be remembered!" My hands pushed him back to stop him leaving, shoving him a little harder than I should have done.
His frown deepening even further, the middle of his brow scrunching up with deep lines as he stares down at me.
"Yeah well. He will be, by other people. They'll be able to come up with some better memories of him then I will."
I shake my head, "Lucas-"
But then he just snaps, throwing the bag in a heap at his feet.
"He put me in shit situations! He made it so I had to be someone I never wanted to be! He ruined my childhood." He's really shouting now, spit spewing from the corner of his mouth from the sudden burst of intense emotion.
And I step back unsure, This was it, this was what was keeping him so quiet.
"He was fighting an addiction. That isn't fair." I pointed it out, hoping in some way it might push him to open up more. To quit with this silence from him.
He'd kept it from me the entire time. He kept it from me.
And I wanted to know why.
"What he did to me wasn't fair!" He shouts even louder, dropping the bag between us and turning away from me. Walking back and forth, my heart clenched at the pain in his voice. It cracks when he looks back at me, before he grabs that same pot of paint brushes off the shelf to my right. For a second he just looks at it, running his thumb over the pot covered in splatterings of paint.
It's like he's thinking, contemplating something. His emotions are erratic, and I watch as the grip on the pot tightens. His grip twisting against the coloured surface as a warning of another outburst.
I almost flinch when he suddenly throws it across the room. Smashing against the mirror above the small fireplace, a crack formed from the hard throw.
My gut drops, aching away as he shouts even louder.
"He's let me down again!" I almost step back.
Almost.
"He promised me! He promised he'd make it up to me!" He's practically screaming at me and I just take it.
"After everything he'd done, he was supposed to make it up to me. He was supposed to be the dad he should have been when I was growing up!" The anger dissolves leaving him with a defeated expression. "Then he went and died, there's no fairness in any of this." He turns away from me, his hunched shoulders rippling under the fleeting changes of emotions as he rounds the corner of the sofa.
He was right of course, there wasn't.
It wasn't fair.
We survived, we made it against all odds and when many didn't.
But that didn't make us lucky, and it didn't make it fair.
"He owed me." There's tears in his eyes when he looks back at me and I step closer, "To stick around and be there." He falls back onto the sofa, dropping his head into his hands so his next words are muffled.
"But he's fucking dead, Ella." I step closer again, standing over him with his back to me. I round the corner of the chair till I sit beside him, sinking into the sofa till he drags his head from his hands so I can see the tear soaked tracks that cover his cheeks.
"He's fucking dead and gone. And I'll never get the dad I was supposed to have." There's a twist in my gut that doesn't help. But I can't help it.
He goes back to delving his head into his hands, so it's silent and I just sit there. One of the paint brushes rests not far from the end of my boot, the glass of the mirror still broken, a few tiny pieces dropped out leaving the dark surface behind it exposed.
"I remember I went to see him," My head flits to his, listening intently for anything more. "It wasn't long before the anniversary. The one you came to before all of this." I nod, knowing all to well the words he'd spoken to me that night and how right he was even then.
"I was taking some recycling out front, and when I was putting it in I saw an empty bottle." I froze listening to him.
He lifts his head up, rubbing his hands over his cheeks to get rid of the wetness."I don't even remember what type it was, all I saw was that alcohol awareness mark on the back of it and I just snapped." Then his eye catches mine, only for a brief moment until he stares off at the broken mirror too.
"I'd grabbed it and I'd thrown it in his face. I was so unbelievably angry with him. But then...Turns out, it wasn't even his. His neighbour had run out of space in theirs and asked to dump some of their recycling in his bin." I twist my hands together, unsure how to react to this.
"But you should have seen his face, he knew that I didn't trust him...He knew that even though it'd been nearly three years since he'd even touched alcohol... that I didn't see him any different."
I shake my head, "He knows you didn't think that."
He wipes tears from his eyes, a snort sounding from him when he shakes his head right back at me.
"He was right to think it. Because that's exactly how it was. I didn't trust him,"
"Lucas -"
"Why should I have trusted him?!" I can't say anything to that.
"I'd been to enough meetings with him to know what it's like for them, Ella. That it's a struggle every. single. day. That it could be any day when they might slip up. I hated those things. I'd go to support dad and everything but I hated them. You know what they said about relapse?" I wait quietly, "They say that 'it's okay, it happens' but fuck that! What about the people who need them to be perfect, need them to never slip up?"
"I'd heard enough from people, warning me that it didn't matter how long he'd been sober, it was always possible. A week, a month, or even nearly three years sober.... he could just slip up one day."
"So how could I trust him?" He glances at me, almost looking for confirmation. "How could I risk that feeling again, watching him fail again. I've seen it too many times to count to see it again." I don't say anything, I mean, what could I say?
I don't have to, Lucas speaks again.
"It'd never been quite right between the two of us, he knew that but we ignored it. But that night, the look on his face. He couldn't ignore it anymore and I couldn't hide it either." Then he looks at me, his voice breaks and he's crying.
"I really did try though Ella. I tried so hard to forget the past, to embrace this new him. To pretend that nothing had happened, which was stupid. It was never going to work. I never forgot any of it, and that night only solidified that mindset for the both of us." He fumbles with his hands in his lap, shaking his head and avoiding eye contact. "That what he'd done, who he'd been, what he'd taken from me. It would never be forgotten no matter what he did."
"I did try, I swear-" He trails off and I pull him towards me. Grabbing him till I have him secured in a hug, his nose running over my skin at my neck as he cried. His shoulders heave up and down, choking so I wrap my hand around the back of his neck harder to calm him.
"You still loved him. He was still your dad." I mumble back, tears surfacing from my own eyes. All it's been this past year was pain, grief, fear. It's exhausting, I'm exhausted.
It was too much.
"I don't know why I'm so upset, I barely even knew him. I didn't have the time to get to know him." He shakes his head.
"But you could." I said, swallowing my own emotions down till my throat aches.
"Meaning?"
"Just because I barely knew Fallen, didn't mean I wasn't going to grieve for everything that could have been." My hands trails up the back of his neck, delving my fingertips into his dark hair and holding him tight.
"You're grieving for the dad you could have had. It's probably because actually, you did have some hope."
"You think?" I involuntarily shiver against the hot breath feathering along my skin. Even if it is mixed in with tears smearing against my neck.
"You just needed time. And I'm sorry Lucas, that you didn't get that." I wrap my arm around his shoulders keeping him close. "I'm really sorry."
He squeezes me back tighter and I do exactly the same back, the room too silent around us for a few moments.
"I won't be the same." He mumbles, he doesn't need to elaborate though. I know exactly what he means, what he's thinking now.
And I hadn't seen him touch it, it didn't even seem like he's struggled with it either. He was scared though, scared that he'd be a hypocrite.
"I know." His head drops down, wrapping his arms around my waist. His fingers touching the bare skin at my lower back. I close my eyes tighter, trying to put him in the forefront of my mind and not about the way he made me feel.
Because today wasn't about how I was feeling, it wouldn't be for a while in all honesty.
And I can accept that, I knew what it felt like to some extent.
It wasn't the same, nothing is ever the same because we think different and we deal with stuff different. But I know he needed time just like I did when it came to Fallen.
So I'll give him that, and secretly hope that we can get back to how it was before.
I run a hand through his hair and whisper again, "I know."