The Friend Zone

Chapter Thirty-Three: Recovery

 The next few days were the worst days of my life, I didn't want to do anything other than sleep. My dad came in the day after I got released from the hospital and we stayed at the local hotel and thought it'd be better for me to be there instead of at school. All I wanted was to be with Taylor, who couldn't skip class just because I was an emotional wreck, but I couldn't ask him to skip class or practice, it was down to the wire here with playoffs coming up and midterms were the next week, he needed to focus on hockey and school right now and not my emotional wreck of a human being.

After that night with Taylor, I hadn't cried once. It was like all the tears in my body had flooded out of my eyes and now there was nothing left for me to cry out. So I just laid there staring at the ceiling, my head spinning as I thought of what was going to happen to me if my mother died and I was charged with her murder.

Dad knew I was a wreck but he didn't try to make me talk about it or tell me to just get over it either. He knew I needed space because Taylor had told him everything that had happened that afternoon of the shooting.

It had been almost a week and I still couldn't get it out of my head, the sound of the gunshots, the look on her face when she put her finger on the trigger to try to kill me, the feeling of the gun kicking back in my hand as I pulled the trigger over and over again with my eyes squeezed shut.

It was all I could think about.

"Can I come in Tess?" Taylor asked Friday afternoon as he knocked on the door.

"Yeah," I replied quietly as he unlocked the door with the keycard and quietly came in.

"So, uhm, your dad just got a call," he said quietly as he crawled into bed next to me, "Your mom, she, she died this morning Tess. I'm, I'm so sorry." 

"I killed her," I said, tears welling up in my eyes, "Oh my God Taylor I killed her."

"Sh, baby don't say that," he said as I began to sob.

"I should've kept my eyes open when I shot her, so I wouldn't shoot her in the face," I sobbed, my chest heaving up and down and tears poured from my eyes, "I never should've picked up the gun."

"But then she would've killed you," he said, "There's nothing you could've done, you did what you had to do in order to stay alive," he said, pulling me in close so I was now crying into his chest, "I don't even want to imagine a world where you didn't pull the trigger Tess, I don't think I could live without you," he said after pausing for a minute, "Please try to think of it that way, please Tessa I'm begging you."

"Taylor what if I go to jail," I sobbed.

"You won't," he said, "Trust me, I talked to a couple of people, you won't go to jail, especially considering your mother's past as mentally unstable."

"If I would've just told the whole truth-" I began to say, "Nevermind."

"What?" he asked.

"I don't want to talk about it," I remarked, "I just want to lie here."

"Then I'll lie here with you," he said, kissing my forehead as he ran his fingers through my knotted, greasy hair, "It's all going to be okay Tess, I promise." 

I don't know how long he laid there with me that afternoon, I fell asleep in his arms after a few hours of soft sobs into his chest. I knew he'd probably skipped practice and class, he had probably told my professors why I wasn't in class too and made sure they all knew what had happened.

That was the thing about Taylor McCarthy, he was so thoughtful but you didn't expect him to be. He gave off the vibe that he was just your typical college jock who was way too wrapped up in his sport and not too keen on the school side of things. Back in high school, he and his teammates were the most popular guys in the school, they were the only guys in school who were guaranteed to play collegiately and it put a damper on the football players' egos when the hockey guys were all committing to a college in their sophomore years of high school. I knew Taylor at home, not just at school, so I knew he was more than a cocky bastard who dated girls like it was his second sport. I knew him from hanging out in my basement late at night watching movie marathons or sitting around the table with my dad telling stories. He had a big heart, but he was born into a family that was full of tension and fighting and two parents that never really loved each other in the first place. He took the first chance he got to get out of the small town outside of Toronto when he was sixteen to come live with us in Buffalo and play junior hockey and never really looked back from there.