Toxic (Harry Styles)

Chapter 37

Chapter 37

Sometimes people think they can't live without their addiction. That they can't survive without that addiction. But what if your addiction wasn't physical? What if your addiction was the love and compassion you strung yourself with another person? It's like being half of something. You can't work without them.

Detox is absolute hell.

I don't remember how many days it has been to be honest, just that every night it becomes harder to sleep and every morning is difficult to face. Even now, my eyes droop, heavy with the want of sleep but I know I won't acquire it. The only time my mind it remotely off the subject of a certain person is when I'm practicing the group dance. I stumble many times even then, to which Lilly chastises me on.

My new partner is a boy I've never seen before, but apparently he's worked here for a bit over a year now. When he tells me his name, I can vaguely remember writing out his pay check. He works in the back room mostly, putting shoes and costumes in the right place, or ordering new ones.

We don't talk much except for simple hello, goodbye, or if it's about the dance. He smiles at me though, every day with big brown eyes. I try to ignore the ache in my stomach when I realise they remind me of Thomas.

My solo doesn't help with my mind set. I work on it every day when no one's around. The song is slowly, a ballad of sorts, and the routine is simple, nothing that will bring in anything new, but it catches people's attention. But the problem with it is that it brings back too many thoughts that I'm not supposed to have, or rather I'm not supposed to want to have.

I chose this song in a better time, and now I'm beginning to regret it.

Other than work and practice, I haven't left the house. I figured that if I want to have no chance of a 'relapse' I'm better off at home. But the truth is that it's no better.

I'm stuck with my thoughts when I'm alone - trying my best to be around Dad when he's off of duty─ and there's no way to get rid of them. I sit around just thinking, or I'm trying to get sleep, or I would stare at the folder that I hadn't dare opened until a few days ago (I think it was that long ago). I didn't plan on opening it at all, but as I would watch it seemed like the information was just taunting me. It held a certain power, a power that I didn't know about.

Now I do. I gave into the temptation and read it one night. It took about all night to even read it all the way through and then sometimes I had to reread it just to comprehend it. Then, around the hour when the sun─ for the first time that week ─had started to rise, I found a piece of paper, smaller than the others, which told me more information than I could have ever wanted know.

He killed him.

My brother.

Evan.

Evan killed my brother.

I should've been upset. I should've been raging with fury and doing everything in my power to get revenge. But I didn't.

For the rest of that day, and every day after that, I felt numb. I wouldn't move much instead of reading the rest of the file and forcing myself to eat when I absolutely needed to, and even then I feel like it could come back up any minute.

Especially when my mind unwillingly mused over Harry.

The thoughts would come at any moment of the day; quick to make me remember and reluctant to leave. But the crying stopped a while back, I just feel cold and senseless and dull.

I feel like I know my brother better now than I ever have, which is ironic seeing as I didn't learn any of this from him. The folder written with his name on top held details ranging from places he went to things he did at work to people he was around on the weekends. I assume that Evan keeps these profiles on everyone that works with Lucas, but Kyle's death wasn't planned.