The Truth Hurts

89 │written in stone

A rotating icon flashes annoyingly on the screen, the small circles chasing each other before they fade out only to repeat their seemingly endless cycle.

"Shit internet." Jesse, wearing nothing but sweatpants, sighs as he stares at the computer monitor in front of him. In addition to the sleeve on his right arm, many tattoos cover his chest—the slender man apparently hiding a surprisingly athletic build—all the way down to his lower waist. Most are faded, although a few appear to be fairly recent. At first glance, without a shirt he looks like a prison inmate one would want to avoid in the courtyard. He reaches over to aggressively slap the palm of his hand against the router box, causing the entire table and everything resting on top of it to rattle. "Come on."

The several dots continue to spiral around in animation, the loading symbol practically taunting him by this point. With his patience running thin, he quickly drags his cursor to the top of the browser and clicks the 'Refresh' button—just as he can hear a light knock on the front door of his apartment coming from downstairs.

Still glaring at the screen, he rises from his chair and slips his feet into a nearby pair of sandals. On his back, centered just below his shoulder blades, appears to be a fresh tattoo of a halfway buried—or, perhaps, halfway dug up—skull with maggots spilling from its one revealed eye socket. The details are nothing but meticulous, from the cracks and splits in the bone itself to each individual grain of dirt as the corners of the image gradually fade to blend in to his skin. He grabs one of the many t-shirts piled up in a basket on the end of his bed and slips into it, covering the inked depiction of what he often likes to refer to as life.

Another knock, this one a tad heavier, comes from the door as he grabs onto the railing and descends the staircase. "Coming!"

Jesse glances over at the clock mounted above the bar near the kitchen's entrance, yawning the second he sees how early in the morning it still is and wonders who could possibly be visiting him at this time. After thirty seconds or so of lazily staggering his way to the door, he finally opens it to be greeted by a luminous glare of sunlight along with another surprise on the apartment's small porch.

A strip of trees, with their leaves already fading to an array of yellow and orange shades as the summer reaches its end, stand as a beautiful backdrop behind Kris, who uneasily steps forward with her hands nervously clasped together. Wearing a fiery red dress with a brown leather jacket and matching knee length boots, she's dressed up more than normal. It's as if her style has developed along with the seasons and, just as the trees begin to lose their leaves, she's slowly shedding out from her old skin and transforming into a new person. Hopefully for the better.

"Hey." Her gaze quickly lowers to the ground and, while receiving no response, she nervously clears her throat. "I really don't know how or where to start so I'm just going to jump on in. I love you. I know—I know that's something I never really said, and you're probably thinking 'Oh my god, here you go getting all sappy' and that's fine. It's just that I've gone so long holding everything in, even before the accident, and I tried to shrug it off like I was okay. But really, I was terrified. I am terrified." She pauses, closing her eyes anxiously before taking a deep breath and carrying on. "Now I'm not making excuses. I mean look at me, I'm clearly not the best girlfriend in the world. Or sister... But I want you to know that I love you so much and there's nothing that will ever change that. Not a different place. Not standing underneath the brightest spotlight in front of a crowd of people. And definitely not time."

Slowly, she finds her knees buried into the grass as she falls down and, as it turns out, her gaze wasn't directed toward the ground itself—but more so to the gravestone rising from it. Engraved into the headstone reads 'DANIEL ELLIOT LEVESQUE' followed by 'Beloved son, brother and friend. We miss you.'

"I love you, Danny." Tears immediately flood her eyes as her hands deeply dig into the still somewhat fresh soil. Clearing her throat again, she regains control of her emotions and rises to her feet. She can feel her knees trembling as she looks down at the grave and quickly glances up to the sky. "I... I have to go now and I hope you can understand. But this isn't goodbye."

She kneels down once more, only to place a single sunflower on the base of her brother's gravestone. "I love you," she says, quickly turning around to leave the cemetery before she finds herself breaking down into tears. A taxi, an older model with its yellow coat peeling at the edges, waits for her in the narrow drive that winds throughout the large burial ground.

It was near an hour later when Jesse had received the knock on his front door. Standing in the doorway, he blocks the sun from his eyes as he watches the same taxi peel away from the curb in front of his apartment complex. The shape of the car soon turns into nothing more than a silhouette in the sun rising past the wide strip of road and, although he can hardly make out the figure through the tinted back window, he knows that is has to be Kris. In front of his feet lies a green gift bag with a folded piece of paper taped to the front.

In sloppy cursive, it reads 'You were right. Thank you.'

Inside the bag is just what he had expected. Kris had placed the webcam he had given her weeks prior neatly back into its original box as if it were completely untouched. Sighing heavily, an internal debate sparks inside of him on whether or not he should have pushed her to pursue her dreams, even though he knows damn well that her doing so could only be for the best. Especially with the recent shitstorm that had just swept through the town, leaving nothing but broken homes and carnage behind for the vultures—or, as media would refer to them as, reporters—to consume.

But, in the end, was it really him that convinced her?

Jesse clings onto the wooden railing as he begins to walk up the stairs, a recognizable voice suddenly filling his ears. It grows louder with each step he takes.

"Say something, I'm giving up on you," Kris sings. "Say something..."

He reaches the top of the staircase and hurriedly approaches his computer desk, halting the second he sees a distraught Kris looking back at him through his computer monitor. The video had finally finished loading and, apparently, already reached its end. She breaks eye contact with the camera before lowering her guitar to quickly reach over and end the recording.

Slowly, Jesse reclaims his seat and sets the gift bag on the table next to his keyboard. His hand reaches for the mouse and, with a few swifts of the finger, he adds it to a private playlist to watch later before scrolling down to the comment section of the video. After a brief moment of hesitation, he suddenly finds his fingers quickly stroking the keyboard as he types a short message.

mindlessmayhem20: That was beautiful.

♫ ᴏɴᴇ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ʟɪɢʜᴛ / ʟɪɴᴋɪɴ ᴘᴀʀᴋ ♫