i have a loneliness that is tangible, but it is not a loneliness. it is a rock, and it is me, and it is being too tired to shower. i say i am sad, because that word is short and my mouth is weary, because everything is weary, because i am sad (see). i am not sad. sad feels different, transmutable. this not a burning house, but a house already burnt. it is not the fire but standing in the ashes after, sifting through the soot for pictures of the people you thought loved you the most. i am tired, but it is not a tiredness. it is a pair of hands pulling me through the ground, always, and always, and always.
Her response honestly didn’t surprise him. With everything that had been happening, he would have thought any other answer was a lie. “Are you going to get clean?”
“I don’t know.” She says again, finally unable to meet his eyes. “I don’t know how to feel anything without them.”
He looked up at her when he spoke this time, trying to convey to her the kind of pain that was still sitting in his chest. There was a weight on his sternum all of the time, as if his heart had truly turned into the rock that Allie always said it had been. His voice was cold when he answered her question, and there was venom in the simple syllables that he spoke. “All the time.”
Blair can see it now: all that pain, all that nothing that she had let loose inside of him. He was the best thing that had ever happened to her, and she’d helped break him. It should have hurt her, she should have felt pain or guilt, but there was something blocking it - some dam in the way of the emotions she was supposed to be feeling. “I’ve never been in one of these places before. Couldn’t afford it, so I never told Jackson how I was feeling.” She shrugs, not really sure why she’s saying any of this to him. “Maybe if I had, I wouldn’t be like this.”
Jackson nods at her answer. He understood. He hadn’t really known how to feel either, ever since the plane crash. The next question was one his sister couldn’t get out of, though. “Are you clean?”
This time she looks him right in the eyes, wanting to see whatever crosses his expression when she answers with complete honesty, “No.”
It was the same question that the doctors had been asking him for weeks. In truth, he had been asking it of himself as well. It wasn’t until now, in front of her, that he could finally tell the truth. His eyes were cast downward as one singular word left his lips. “Yes.”
More than anything, Blair realized, she wanted Patrick to look at her. She wanted to see the pain in his eyes, knowing that she was a big part of the reason he was feeling it. She wanted the rolling waves of guilt, because it meant she was feeling something, other than this unquenchable apathy that she couldn’t shake. “Do you still want to?”
He shrugs, but immediately winces. His collarbone still wasn’t completely healed. “I’ve been worse. Still recovering, but doing better.” He studies her face for a moment. “And how are you?”
Blair doesn’t react outwardly when he winces, but something shuts down behind her eyes. “I don’t really know,” she says, shocked by her own honesty.
He scoffs. “Something I learned from Allie, and something I certainly didn’t think I’d have to teach you, is that there’s no point in yellin’ at someone who doesn’t give a fuckin’ shit about you.”
Blair nods, her expression oddly blank. Rather than linger on that topic, she finally meets his eyes, a morbidly curious glint in her own. “Were you really gonna jump?”