Chapter 6

POV Noralyn

I’m looking out of the passenger window but I see nothing of the surroundings. My mind is lost in a jungle of desperate thoughts. What I feared the most happened. For weeks after I had broken up with Keelan I kept feeling anxious that the fact that I broke up with him affects his mental health. He used to call me non stop until I told him firmly to stop doing it. Eventually I didn't hear from him anymore and now one year later….

When we started dating it felt like we were two puzzles that complemented each other. Keelan needed someone who would accept him for who he was and I needed someone who could understand what was going on my head, who wouldn’t pressure me to always talk about my bad thoughts, who knew what having a bad day meant, and who could deal with the fact that I would ghost them for days without any explanation. Keelan was that person. We met outside of my therapist’s office. I had arrived kinda early that afternoon so while I was sitting in the waiting room I played a game on my phone. I didn’t notice that someone had walked toward me until I heard his voice.

“We should grab a coffee someday,” he said.

I looked up to see an attractive boy with straight black hair that reached shoulder length. He had that kind of disarming smile he must have practiced on a lot of girls because the confidence he wore on his face gave the impression that he’d never been rejected once.

“On what grounds would I grab a coffee with a stranger that I met at my therapist’s?” I voluntarily put on an unimpressed face just to crush his expectation but he didn’t seem to worry that I wouldn’t accept his invitation.

He sat down next to me and grabbed one of the magazines piled on a glass table. He began turning the pages nonchalantly as he answered my question. “Based on the grounds that you’re also a stranger that I met at my therapist’s and it’s always a good idea to drink coffee.” 

“What if I hate coffee?”

That made him stop. He slowly closed the magazine, which he was absolutely not reading, and put it back on the table before turning toward me to attack my heart with his smoldering stare. 

“Les gens heureux lisent et boivent du café," he whispered in French and I swear that my heart stopped beating for at least five good seconds. “It literally means that happy people read and drink coffee. If you’re here I’m sure you could use a little happiness in your life, am I wrong?”

Later I found out that the sentence Keelan had told me in French was the title of his favorite book. I did accept his invitation to drink a coffee and four dates later we were officially a couple. He loved to say that I made him wait unnecessarily but I simply didn’t want to repeat the same mistake that I had made in my previous relationship. The guy I dated before Keelan always complained that I wasn’t the clingy type of girlfriend which he apparently liked. He couldn’t understand that I would need to have some space from time to time to be on my own. 

As I dated Keelan I realized that he was nothing like that other guy but he had an attitude that I couldn’t cope with, his overprotective jealousy.

“It’s gonna be okay.”

Kline’s voice suddenly brings me back to reality and when I turn my head toward him he offers a comforting smile. After I received Keelan’s call back at school I was stressing out so much that I knew I wouldn’t be in any condition to drive so I asked Kline to drive me. Mom and Dad will be furious that I left town but I’ll deal with that later.

“I hope so,” I answer. I don’t think I’ll be strong enough to bear the pain if something happens to Keelan because of me.

It takes three hours of driving to get us there. I exchange a few texts with Keelan’s mother on the way. Of course the first thing I did after receiving his call was to call his mother to tell her where Keelan was. The firemen and paramedics had arrived but apparently Keelan had passed out on the rooftop by the time they got there. Turns out he had taken some pills before and overdosed after I finished talking with him on the phone.

We arrive at the hospital around 3pm and I find his mother waiting for me outside of the room. I run toward her and she gives me a hug, pressing me tightly against her chest. I feel the tears that I was trying to hold back fall down my cheeks.

“How is he?” I ask when we break the hug.

“Angry,” she answers as she gently pats my hair.

I expected that. But I did what I did for his good so I don’t regret my decision of calling his mom.

“Can I see him?”

“You can, but the doctor said only a few minutes per visitor. He needs to rest.”

“Okay.”

I make a gesture for Kline to wait for me and he nods then I push open the door. As soon as I enter the room my heart breaks in a million pieces when I see Keelan. He looks nothing like the Keelan I knew before we broke up. His face turns toward me and his haggard look hits me. 

“Have you been sleeping?” I stupidly ask and he doesn’t answer. 

We spend a few seconds simply looking into each other’s eyes and I can feel that even if our pain is different, they’re also quite similar. Keelan doesn’t want to live, me I want to live but I’m tired of having to fight against my demons; most of the days they are winning the war and I simply have to curl myself into a small ball and endure all the guilt, the regret, the self loathing, the grief. 

Keelan’s father used to beat him constantly when he came out as a bisexual at the age of fourteen. His mother was powerless against his father’s violent behavior because he also used to abuse his wife. Until Keelan turned sixteen he had to endure living in this hell before his mother finally had the courage to file for a divorce, shortly after they fled their country France to come live in the USA. Keelan has always been bilingual because his mother is American and his father is French. When we met, Keelan had been living in town for almost a month. You could have never guessed what Keelan went through simply by looking at him. He always looked so careless and confident. But then again pain doesn’t show up on people’s face most of the time, except for now as I’m looking at him I can tell that he’s hurting to an extent that I can’t even begin to comprehend.

“It’s good to see you,” he says finally, his voice is hoarse. 

I walk closer to his bed and put my hand over his which he grips tightly. 

“It’s good to see you,” I answer and he offers a weak smile as a tear falls down his cheek. He gets embarrassed to cry in front of me and closes his eyes to try to hold back the tears.

“What happened?” 

Something must have triggered his attempt. I can only hope that I was wrong and that it had nothing to do with me.

“I missed you is what happened.”

His answer is like a knife cutting through my chest. He’s literally saying that I’m the reason why he attempted.

“So you decided to swallow a bunch of pills then called to threaten me?”

He opens his eyes and I see that he regrets what he did but he has to understand that this kind of behavior is horrible. “I didn’t want to be that guy.”

“But you chose to become that guy. You could’ve called me before you did all that."

“The only time you picked up my call after we broke up was to tell me to stop calling.”

After the car accident I was dealing with way too much to endure the pain in Keelan’s voice. He came to see me once at my school but when I made it clear to him that he should never do that again I never saw him afterwards. 

“A lot of shit was happening Keelan, you have no idea.”

“I wanted to be there for you,” his voice quivers and I feel my eyes filling up with tears. “Even as a simple friend I wanted to be by your side through whatever you were going through but you just decided to cut me off and then you left town without even saying goodbye. Do you know how it felt to realize that I would never see you again?”

“Hurting yourself isn’t the option you should have chosen to deal with that. I came here running but do you know how I felt thinking that you might die because of me? How would I ever be able to live the rest of my life afterward? Have you thought about that?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry won’t cut it Keelan!”

My scream echoes through the room and my chest begins rising and falling rapidly as my breath becomes more erratic.

A silence falls in the room, filled with frustration and regret. His hand starts shaking inside of mine and this time when more tears fall down his face he turns his body completely away from me.

“Thanks for coming,” he says. “I won’t call you again.”