"i just want to keep calling your name until you come back home."
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how does one ever stop the guilt? do you just continue your life in a vicious cycle of deliberations?
wondering what could've happened if you stayed home that nigh...
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[cw: mentions of physical and emotional abuse]
Alison had not seen Lonnie in over a year.
She hadn't even received a phone call from him in that time, even to talk to her and see how she was doing, and he'd never answered the times she called him. So reluctantly reuniting with him had a knot forming in her stomach. Alison knew Will would never willingly seek out Lonnie, and she would have been happy never to see him again.
Ever.
But they needed to know.
The ride was silent except for the quiet hum of the radio playing some new song by Reagan Youth that, on any other day, Alison would have cranked up and jammed out too, much to the amusement of her brothers. Instead, she slumped further into her seat, staring out the window as they left Hawkins in their rearview mirror.
She grimaced at the texture of her hair when she twisted a strand through her fingers due to the bun she'd pulled it into during her last two showers, with no motivation to wash it. She pulled her hair up and rested her head against the cool glass of the window, exhaling deeply.
Her breath fogged against the glass as the lead singer sang the final word, and an all too familiar guitar riff picked up where the previous song left off.
Jonathan inhaled sharply.
She lifted her head from the glass to look at him, watching the muscle in his jaw twitch and the skin stretch over his knuckles when his grip on the steering wheel tightened.
"Please can you put this on your mixtape, please!" Will had begged her only two weeks beforehand when he'd found her meticulously crafting yet another cassette, "It's the best song ever, and you know it."
"Wrong, I do not know it." Alison had laughed at him, "The best song ever is Comfortably Numb, and I'm not afraid to fight you on that."
"Nah-uh." Will shook his head stubbornly as Jonathan's shoulders shook with his suppressed laughter, "The Clash is where it's at."
"Careful, kiddo! Your Jonathan is showing."
A smile split across his face at her words. It was something he deemed to be the highest of compliments – being compared to his big brother.
"Dude, Comfortably Numb has been on every tape you've made since the first time you heard it. Switch things up a bit." Jonathan laughed at his sister as he looked down at the paper she'd been scribbling songs onto, "Ali, you can't keep putting your top four onto every new mixtape you make."
"I can and I will." She huffed, glaring playfully at her brother.
"Come on, Al." Will exclaimed, "It totally changed my life."
![[cw: mentions of physical and emotional abuse]](https://img.wattpad.com/2868707ea2c9af68f3bb6baaafc1d219cf528142/68747470733a2f2f73332e616d617a6f6e6177732e636f6d2f776174747061642d6d656469612d736572766963652f53746f7279496d6167652f676f4b5551433332327a613673773d3d2d313235313633303134332e313731623062663963313266646364613936393233343534313533312e676966?s=fit&w=720&h=720)
