She opened it and looked up at me with a tear-stained face, her makeup in muddy tracks down her cheeks.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, and she stared stricken for a few heartbeats as if trying to decide how much to tell me. Her expression crumbled, and she started to cry all over again and said to me, “I just don’t think I want to be alive anymore and I’m scared.”
“Oh, baby. Fuck,” I muttered, and I pulled her toward me. She crashed against me, sobbing heartbrokenly into my chest.
I stepped into her, over the threshold and kicked the door shut behind us and just let her cry.
I had no idea what the fuck had happened, but it said something to me that I, the fuckin’ guy she’d literally just met, was the only person she had that she could call at a time like this. I mean, that was something fucking tragic. Wasn’t it?
“I’m so sorry! I’m sorry!” she cried between her sobs, and I just clutched her tighter to me.
“It’s okay, I got yah. It’s alright now. You just let it out.” I didn’t know what else to say. What else to do. So, I just did what my mom had done for me when I was a kid. What I’d seen her do for my sister a thousand times. I gave her a safe place and permission to cry it out. Then I would ask some questions and figure out what needed doing to fix it, if there was even anything to fix. Sometimes with women, that wasn’t what they wanted. Or so my sister had told me, once upon a time.
Sometimes all they wanted was to cry and to vent.
I felt helpless in this situation, but I knew in the front of my head, that I wasn’t. I was doing exactly what I needed to be doing right this minute by just being here for her. It was my own thoughts and feelings that were racing, that were whispering I should go out and find a motherfucker and do harm. I wanted to hit something, someone, anyone. I wanted to rend flesh, and I knew it was an impotent rage that was stirring in the center of my chest. I was just angry for the sake of being angry because she hurt and there wasn’t anything I could do to stem the flow on it.
We ended up on the couch and she wept brokenly for what felt like an age and I just did what I could to hold her up.
She seemed so fragile; as thin as glass, and I worried gravely over what she’d said… about not wanting to be alive anymore. She was begging for help, crying out, and I was here, but I was no psychologist. I was a hammer where fine surgical instruments were required. I wasn’t cut out for this… but she’d called me and I wasn’t about to let her down.
I couldn’t save my sister, but maybe, just maybe, I could save Aspen. It was a unique set of circumstances and for me to know what I was up against; I would need to pull back some layers.
“How you doing?” I asked when she’d quieted down and settled.
“I honestly don’t know,” she whispered back dully.
“That’s alright,” I said and massaged up and down her arm with my hand.
“I’m really sorry,” she whispered brokenly, and it was a strange sort of intimacy created by the dark in her house. The only light on in here appeared to be emanating from somewhere in the kitchen, the rest of the house plunged into a dim, close dark that cradled us both in the palm of its hand.
“Stop apologizing, babe. You have nothing to apologize for. Everybody goes through it. I’m just glad you called me so you don’t have to go through it alone.”
She sniffled and laid her head on my shoulder, the leather of my jacket and cut creaking in the dark. I was warm in here, bordering on too warm, but I didn’t want to move her. Didn’t want her to think anything negative about herself or this interaction when I could already tell that was where her head was at. She was apologizing for every damn thing and I was expecting any second that she would apologize for simply existing. I wanted to know where she got these ideas from and put a hurt on the motherfucker that’d given them to her.
I seethed and simmered in my chest beneath her head, but I don’t think she knew. I aimed to keep it that way. She didn’t need any more stress.
“Thank you for coming,” she murmured and swallowed hard. I couldn’t see her face but I could imagine fresh tears tracking down her ivory cheeks just the same.
“Anytime, and I mean that,” I said, giving her a light squeeze. “You want to talk about it?”
“No,” she whispered. “You’ve already put up with so much I—”
“I’m not ‘putting up’ with anything, Aspen. I’m not that kind of guy. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be.”
She sucked in a breath and held it for a moment before saying, “I apologize, I didn’t mean to offend.”
“You didn’t. It’s late. I promise no funny business, but let’s get your face washed and get you into something that’s more comfortable than these work clothes. I’m staying here tonight. What you said? It’s got me worried.”
She held still, contemplating my words for a moment before finally nodding.
“I’m worried too,” she said. “And I don’t want to be alone.”
Jesus, fuck. She sounded so vulnerable.
“You’re not alone. You’re not going to be alone. I’m right here for whatever you need.”
“You’re too kind, you know that?” she asked.
I barked a laugh and bit down on it when she jumped at the abrupt sound.
“Sorry, just never been accused of that, you know what I’m sayin’?”
“What? Of being kind?” she asked, pushing off of my chest and sitting up on her own.
“Yeah.”
“That’s a shame,” she said, and I could barely make out the glitter of those fantastic green eyes in the dark, back lit as she was by the dim light in the kitchen behind her.
“It just is what it is,” I said with a gusty sigh.
“I think I’m all cried out,” she said, and I nodded.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
She thought about it for a minute and sighed saying to me, “Uncomfortably numb.”
“Yeah, time for bed for you,” I said. “Things ’ll look better in the morning.”
She got up, and I followed her to my feet, shrugging out of my jacket and cut and laying them over the arm of her couch.
“Um, you really don’t have to stay,” she said. “I mean, if you don’t want to.”
“I want to,” I said evenly. “And I’m not going anywhere tonight after what you said when I came in here.”
She hung her head, hugged herself, and said, “I don’t think I meant it. Not really.”
I sighed and felt my shoulders drop and I shook my head.
“My sister…” I started and stopped a moment, getting choked up like I always did when I talked about Lacy. “She, uh, didn’t reach out or ask for help. She came back from college up in Bellingham. Wouldn’t say what happened. I found her in the bathtub. I couldn’t save her.”
She covered her mouth with one hand and stared up at me, eyes wide.
“I’m so sorry, I never would have—”
I made a hissing noise to cut her off and raised a hand.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’m not going away. Not tonight. I’d like to think the gods put me in your path for a reason. Maybe this is it.”