Achieving Unbroken
Chapter Thirty Nine

—

"Wasting my time on you, so many nights
What am I supposed to do?
I'm losing my mind"
David Bowie | chloe mk

—

Lilla
[Friday, July 30th, 2018 - 7:42 AM]

Rubbing my eyes, exhausted out of my mind, I trudge up the stairs to the main floor so that I can get some kind of makeshift breakfast from the kitchen. Hopefully nobody is awake yet, or if they are, they aren't in the kitchen. My mental state has not been prepared for socializing yet.

"Oh! Good morning, Lil!" A familiar voice chips.

Fuck. Especially not for this.

For a split second, I consider the endgame of growling at Shay and Bianca, and crawling back down to the basement where I can just sit and deprive my body of nutrients. The aching of my stomach shuts that idea down fast.

"Morning," I grumble, pushing past them and opening a cupboard. There's a pack of bagels; I'll just throw one in the toaster and slather some peanut butter on it. Sounds good.

"Somebody's grumpy," Bianca attempts to joke around. "Did you not sleep well last night? You looked pretty cozy on Jason's lap."

Pushing down the lever on the toaster, I spin around, leaning myself against the counter.

"Bianca, if you're trying to make some sort of statement about my relationship with Jason, spit it out. You didn't have this kind of hesitation when you were flat out calling him an asshole," I tell her, turning back to search the pantry for a jar of peanut butter.

"Well well well, someone's in one of her moods." Without looking at Shayla, I roll my eyes, mouth turning into a frown. "Bee and I and just trying to understand what's going on with Jason. I mean, you did dump us for him."

It's actually too early for me to have to handle this shit.

Slamming my hands on the counter, I face them.

"Yeah, I did. I'm sorry that you're not over it."

The bagel makes an abrupt pop! when it is done in the toaster, so I get a small plate to slide the halves of the bagel on to.

"We're confused, Lilla. You didn't even know this guy, and you chose him over your best friends."

"Because I don't associate myself with people who lack empathy and human compassion," I deadpan, spreading peanut butter on one half of the bagel.

"You don't know Jason, Lil." Bianca starts again. "He's a loose cannon. He's fucked up over that kids death—"

For a moment, a small, instant moment, I think of Cannon's words.

He's a ticking time bomb, Lilla.

But it doesn't last long in the slightest.

"That kid was his brother, Bianca!" My voice raises. At this point, I don't care who I wake up. "He has every right to be 'fucked up' about it! And you have no right to judge him; I know him much better than you do, you don't know what happened—"

"Do you?" Bianca challenges.

I feel an imaginary gust of freezing air rush over me. And the answer hits me, like a baseball bat to the head, and I feel tears prickle in my eyes for no other reason than that I'm exhausted and I can't give them the answer that I want to.

I don't know what happened.

"He found his brother dead at a party. The details, I don't know, but you know what? No one does. We've all heard the rumors, the nasty, the shit that got spread about Joey and the taint it put on that family. Jason has heard it too. So you should stop saying things that have already been said. All that it's doing is making people loose respect for you and exhausting us all."

Before they can formulate a lame response, I walk past their dumbstruck frames with my plate in hand, retreating back to the comfort that is the basement.

"Oh, hey," I hear when I finish the last step of the staircase. Jason is standing in the main room of the basement, wearing no shirt and just a pair of shorts.

Hoe don't do it don't look—

Involuntarily, my eyes flicker to his torso that is almost unreal for a teenager. I roll my lips into my mouth and lick them, gaze lingering a little to long, and a throat clearing brings me back into the real world.

"Sorry," I say to him. He's smiling, really wide, almost victoriously. I can't help but be amused by the situation myself, and my face breaks into a bashful grin as I avert my eyes, biting my lip.

"You good?"

This guy. He knows I literally want to attack him and he's so smug about it.

"All good," I force out, still kind of breathless. "Why are you up so early?"

"Got hungry. And I'm assuming that's the same for you?" He asks, nodding towards the plate in my hands.

"Yep. But I don't know if going up there is the best thing right now. At least not for me."

"What? What happened?"

He steps closer to me, like, significantly closer. I take a deep breath.

"Just hashing it out with Bianca and Shayla. Nothing new."

Jason's face falls. I see his hand raise up, as if to touch me; but it falls back to his side as quickly as it lifted.

"Was it about me again?" My eyes widen. "Patrick filled me in. Why didn't you tell me?"

"'Cause you don't need that toxicity. They're idiots. You don't deserve to hear their ignorant ranting."

He takes another step forward. I genuinely don't know what to do with myself besides focusing on not dropping the plate in my hands. My body is humming with his close proximity.

"But it's stressing you out."

"It's not your fault though, Jace. And it's not your problem to fix."

Jason sighs. I feel his warm breath brush my face, miraculously not smelling like morning breath. God bless.

"I just feel like I'm causing problems."

Now it's my turn to take a millistep towards him. The edges of the plate are touching both of our stomachs.

"You are not. You hear me? You have been an amazing friend and none of this is your fault. 'Kay?"

"'Kay."

Neither of us move away. We just kind of stand there, enjoying the presence of one another. Jason's hand raises again, and for a moment I think he's going to touch me; my arm, my face, wherever.

But instead, he slips a bagel off of the plate that I have tightly grasped in my hands. He has moved away from me, morning light from the window that he was blocking reaching my eyes. I feel him press a kiss to my cheek, followed by the crunch of the bagel as he takes a bite out of it. Taken by surprise, I slowly rotate to look at him, standing at the base of the stairs.

"Come on, lets go get some coffee and a substantial breakfast."

Deciding to mimic him — and act like I'm not internally screaming from just a kiss on the cheek — I strut over to where he is standing and elevate myself on my toes to peck his cheek, immediately taking a bite of the half of the bagel that is still on the plate. Jason's smile lights up the dim stairway.

"Let's."

—

An aggressive shaking motion rocks me awake. I see a figure standing over me, and my heart rate climbs; and I sit up so fast I get something adjacent to whiplash.

When my vision clears, I note two things:

1) The intruder is Patrick. He does not seem to be wielding a weapon. The house is safe.

2) It's only around 11 PM. The four of us had decided to head off to bed early, so I've been asleep for a little over a half hour.

What does Patrick want?

"Fuck, Rick, you seriously can't do that."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Have you seen Jason?"

This question wakes me up. I'm already slipping myself out of bed when I reply to him.

"No. I'm assuming he's not in your room?"

Patrick shakes his head.

"Gone. I don't think something bad happened, I was just wondering if you knew where—" To shush him, I place my hands on his shoulders.

""I'll go out and look for him. I'll have a flashlight. I'm sure he's fine, but I wanna know where he is."

Patrick attempts to protest, saying something could happen to me, but I'm just thinking that Jason will be in the kitchen getting a glass of water, or in the bathroom. I don't expect this to turn into a manhunt. Finally, Patrick twists on his heel and retreats to his shared room, and I quickly check the bathroom, which is empty. Shrugging, I tiptoe upstairs and peak through the door to the main level, not seeing him in the kitchen or family room.

I let out a sharp breath and pull on a sweatshirt, slip my tennis shoes on my feet, use my phone as a flashlight, and leave through the sliding door in the basement. Stomping through the grass of the yard, I hit the sidewalk, looking around for any figures strolling through the night.

No luck.

I walk a little more, closer to the staircase that leads down the beach, and I perch myself at the top. The moon is out tonight, and it sheds a little extra light on the landscape, and my eyes are searching through the dark; finally landing on a small view of someone at the beach.

Please let this be Jason and not some serial killer.

I jog down the steps and reach the bottom, squinting my eyes in an attempt to focus in on the person. The figure has taken a seat in the sand, and using my flashlight to see where I'm walking, I make my way towards them.

"Jason?" I attempt to call out. I think that the person turns their head.

"Lilla," they reply. A sigh of relief escapes me, a tension that had spread through me now dissipating.

It's Jason.

I jog over to him, and crouch down next to him; his figure more distinguishable now that I'm closer.

"Hey," I exhale. "I'm sorry if I'm interrupting something. Patrick just woke me up and said you weren't in your bed, and you weren't in the bathroom or kitchen, and I just wanted to make sure I knew where you were." A pause. "Well, uh, just don't leave the beach and be home by morning. I'll leave now."

A thousand thoughts spinning through my head, and a discrete weight on my chest, I push myself back up and turn away from him, about to walk away.

"You can stay," he speaks up. I turn back around. "I have been wanting to talk to you about this for awhile. I just didn't know how to start the conversation."

Intrigued, I go to sit next to him, lightly cringing when I think about how sand is going to get everywhere. But, I shake the thought off, focusing on Jason.

"I think about him so much," he starts, gazing off at the water. "I keep smiling and smiling and laughing and laughing and it's genuine, I promise, but he's still there. But the worst part is that he's there, in my head, but I feel so disconnected to him. I feel like when we got Carl and Diamond and Sapphire, he was put on the back burner, and I wanted them all to feel included, and him and I just... Lost the brotherhood. He started being short with not just me, but our whole family, and there wasn't anything that could stop it. It was like a freight train going downhill. Faster and faster and faster, until... It crashes.

"He wasn't a drug addict. I can tell you that with one hundred percent certainty, but I feel like I'm missing something. Like when Charlie was going on and on about how his sister was dead because of Joey? I have no idea what he's talking about. But I'm going to find out."

"You should," I agree. "No stone left unturned."

"Right," he nods. "Lilla, I want to talk it out. I need to talk it out."

I'm hesitant to ask;

"... Talk what out?"

"I'm going to talk out what happened the night that Joey died."