Dramatic Child Stars

Thirty-Four

Percy,
August 2nd, 2021,
3:02 pm.

Riley jumped off a bridge and Bryn didn't get out of bed for several days. Afterwords, Leah came back. Those were the facts. I knew a lot of facts. I was a college graduate. I could have gotten a masters degree. I was smart, so I knew I was able to understand facts, but it's like my brain was suddenly unable to compute things of that nature.

Feelings? They were completely unreachable.

I'll tell you everything I know, but first I'm going tell you about how Riley found of about the relationship between Bryn and I. It's a fitting distraction and maybe it will explain why I'm letting her stay in Riley's bed in my apartment that echoes metaphorically with the emptiness.

The day that Riley found out about Bryn and I was the same day Bryn ended it.... Atleast for the first time.

There wasn't a conversation, really. There wasn't much of anything. Riley walked in on something he shouldn't have. That wasn't his fault. If anything, it was ours for forgetting what was bringing us together in the first place. Our mutual concern was supposed to be at the forefront. Riley didn't deserve to walk in on something so contradictory to that. Riley just needed help. That was the point.

He walked in looking borderline suicidal and homicidal at the same time, and then he promptly rushed out when he saw what he wasn't supposed to see. Bryn and I hurried to cover up. Then Bryn ran swiftly after him while I collected myself and cycled my thoughts on how incredibly selfish it was for us to put him in such a position.

Shortly thereafter, Bryn came back into her room. She'd only been gone about three minutes. Her face was still flush, but her expression was that of complete resolve. That's how she and Riley operated. They were always straight to the point.

"Riley has asked me to... to not do this to him," she said carefully.

I nodded in agreement and that was that. End of discussion. End of relationship. End of it.

That's a lie though.

We'd be off and on repeatedly after that. We'd go through agreements and then break them. We'd try to be platonically concerned and then fail. Bryn and I were so inconsistent that sometimes it just felt maddening. We didn't actually fully break things off until she found out I was moving and taking him with me. That day she told me to never speak to her again and I complied because it was maybe the only actual way to sever the cord.

That relationship hurt a lot. It hurt for a lot of reasons that I can't even really explain. Mostly I remember it hurt because Bryn looked so desperate and scared when it came to her obligation to helping Riley, and I'd ended things permanently her by taking him away from her. I thought I was helping.

When I listened to her stand there on the bridge screaming, I knew I hadn't helped a single damn person. I'd just destroyed the both of them. Several days had now passed and I could still hear the sound of that screaming in my head. I didn't think I would ever forget something like what happened out there.

Riley had jumped.

That's the difficult fact. He'd been standing there, and then he wasn't. We all rushed to the railing after him, even God and his daughter. We all watched the ripples made from when his body hit the water. We all waited to see if he surfaced, or if we'd simply see a body floating in the early morning current.

He didn't surface.

There were no flashes of color beneath the glass of the river. By all visual measures we could see he'd hit the water, and he'd not come back up. He was gone. He'd completely vanished from existence.