Celestia wants to leave her home and get as far away as possible from her alcoholic mother. When she stumbles into a drunk man and helps him home, what happens when he becomes her way out?
#2 in Smile
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November 13th
I always thought I'd be dead by now. Whether it be because I slept with the wrong guys girlfriend or got drunk in the wrong area or ended my life on my own accord, I always thought that by twenty-one, I'd be dead and buried.
I never thought about what my parents would say or how they would feel or if they would even be worried about how I ended up on the path I did because honestly, I haven't spoken to my parents in four years.
I told Celestia that they were on a trip, I told everybody that, and I've been lying since I was seventeen about it. I'm not sure why because it's not like it made any difference. Sure, I got beat up less and my own home didn't feel like a war zone, but it wasn't any less empty. Just a whole lot more quiet.
I have, and probably always will be, been supporting my parents financially. I don't care, as long as they stay the fuck away from me and my life and my Celestia.
And even though I say that they're no longer here and haven't been in four years, I still think they're haunting me. I never noticed it—not until Celestia said something about it the other night—but I'm quiet. I'm vulgar and aggressive and rude, but to her, I'm quiet. I'm so quiet that she almost never hears me get out of bed or when I sneak up behind her without saying anything.
To her, this house is just as quiet as it's always been for me but it's not scary or makes her panic. She enjoys what I'm so terrified of that I can't think about it for too long without feeling empty.
And it's funny because I haven't thought about the emptiness of this house or the lack of noise or static in awhile, I've always just thought about Celestia being here. The quiet that has been comforting me for the past five months and providing peace for the one thing I've got left, I've only just now realized has begun to exist with meaning other than my parents and their anger.
This silence, that filled the air that wrapped so tightly around her perfect shape as she rested in my arms, was perfect and quiet. It made my heart quiet. And not the kind that knots up your stomach and forces your heart through your chest like a fucking cartoon, the kind that makes you feel like you're resting in a jar of warm honey.
I don't think it's the house that's changed and I know it's not because my parents left that it feels this way either; it's because of her.
I'd known that she's made me different since the day I met her and I'd known that she made my house feel like my home and not just another belonging of mine since the day she stepped inside, but I never realized how peaceful and silent she has forced this suffocating quiet to be.
Even now, when I'm hiding more secrets than I'd care to admit because I can't seem to break them out of their titanium cases, and the thought of having to watch Gillian's ashes be spread across the sand of her favorite beach, she still provides me so much peace without even trying.
