Will You Catch Me If I Fall?

Trace’s POV

I woke up slowly, blinking my heavy sleep filled eyes several times before my surroundings came into my blurry vision. I groaned, resisting the urge to close them again and go back to sleep, even though everything was telling me to. I smiled at the quiet snores that were filling the bus, and could vaguely see Ant’s foot dangling out of his bunk, his sleeping body half covered by the curtain that closed his space off from the world.

I didn’t move, feeling a thin arm draped carelessly over my chest. Instead I smiled to the ceiling, moving my head slowly to gaze down at Addison, still asleep. I wondered did she know how she fit herself into the concave of my body in her unconsciousness. How her body would curl just right, like a jigsaw piece into mine, her head would be tucked perfectly under the crook of my arm. Sometimes as she was now, her arm lay across my bare tattooed chest, and in her sleep her fingers would clutch to my skin, gripping me in an almost painful way as if in dreams I was slipping away from her. But I wasn’t. I’m right here.

It appeared I was the only wakened mortal on the bus besides our trusty driver, whom I was beginning to realise, we lay our lives into his hands. How did we know that he wasn’t going to drive off a cliff in the middle of the night. I chuckled at my insane thoughts, and banished them from my mind, not wanting to think such things.

I winced as the sharp movement of my head caused shots of pain to flash across my head. Pain that had gone unnoticed before. With a careful hand, I rubbed at my forehead, groaning quietly as flashes of the night before ran through my mind. All I remembered was shots, lots and lots of tequila…laughing faces, and a wonderful mass of dark red hair as her lips brushed down my neck.

I shuddered in desire, automatically looking at my object of lust, the centre of every waking thought to see big green eyes staring back up at me. I jumped, unaware I was being watched, smacking my head loudly into the wall behind me…fuck, they should really make these walls bigger. I’m writing a letter of complaint to the bus company, from a dissatisfied overgrown rockstar.

Addison giggled, burying her face into my chest. I squirmed at the ticklish feeling and shivered as her fingers traced my tattoos. She looked up smiling at me, and I shook my head;

“How are you not fucked from last night?”

She laughed softly and gazed at me, shrugging “I’ve had worse, believe me”

She looked away, and I knew she could feel my weighty gaze upon her. I could bet she had worse, and I didn’t want the count of how many times she may have had worse from all kinds of comedowns, drink and drugs.

I ran my hand through her shining hair, and kissed the top of her head, wincing at more pains of a throbbing headache on its way. Addison laughed, witnessing the results of a hard nights liquor intake and smiled “I’ve Advil in my bag…”

I groaned, pushing my face into my pillow “You get it…”

She snorted and pushed my shoulder “Fuck off, I’m not the lightweight here that’s moaning like a baby…”

I bared my teeth at her “I’ll have you moaning in a second..”

Addison’s eyes flashed in excitement and amusement, and I noticed with a smirk the faint pink tinge her cheeks took on. I cupped her face in my hands and leaned over to kiss her, our lips were barely touching when I heard the sound of another curtain rack being pulled back, and Mason’s voice;

“People are trying to sleep so shut up!”

I gave him the finger but turned reluctantly away from Addison, stumbling out of the bed and her warm embrace. I shivered for a minute away from the heated oversexed covers of our travel bunk and rubbed my arms with my hands. I glanced at Addison “Where’s that Advil?”

She snorted, probably at my morning hair…I’ve never been quite able to tame it and jerked her thumb towards the living area “In my pocket of my bag, I think…look for it”

She rolled back over in the bunk, showing me her back and I rolled my eyes at her. Nevertheless, I stumbled my way over to where I could see her large black bag perched on the table. I stared at it for a moment, warily eyeing the way the ominous straps floating around the opening, the zipper looked like teeth ready to bite a man’s hand. In my opinion, women’s bags were a taboo area. I was always warned not to go near them. You never know what you might find.

“In…In the pocket?” I called out softly, wondering did I have permission to actually go near the thing.

“Yes!”

I made a face, recognising the tone of voice and asked no more. I grabbed the bag, cursing as it fell onto the floor with a thud, contents spilling out onto the floor.

I bent down, hastily shoving them back into the pockets, hoping I’d put them in the right place. I stopped as I came to a large square object, frowning at the brown wooden frame. I flipped the picture frame over and studied the photo that it held.

I looked down at a much younger picture of Addison and I smiled. This was an Addison I’d never seen before. She only looked around fourteen, maybe fifteen. Her red hair was the same but she wore glasses and braces were present in her mouth. Her smile was large and true. A type of smile I’d never seen her wear before. Her green eyes were shinning with an innocent happiness, an innocence that had long been replaced by a mocking of the world around her. I knew Addison was a complex person but here she looked simple, ordinary…..

My eyes wandered to the girl she was beside, her beauty to me not half as remarkable as Addison’s but all the same she was beautiful. Long straight blonde hair, an intelligent gaze with bright blue eyes. I froze, and looked from the unknown girl to Addison. They had the same nose, their eyes crinkled in the same way and even the way they were sitting in the picture made them look remarkably alike.

Addison had never told me she had a sister…

I thought back to when I had visited her house. It had been deathly quiet, the distance between the family hugely obvious to even me, a stranger to their home. There had been no pictures, no hints that there was a second daughter, an older daughter…

“What the hell are you doing down there?” Addison’s voice was sharp and I whirled around guiltily but she wasn’t standing behind me. She was still in the warm cocoon of bed, unaware of what I was looking at…

“Nothing…” I said softly. I looked at the blonde girl again, and the ghost of what my Addison had been before quietly replacing the picture back in the bag. I picked up the tub of Advil from the floor and I walked back to the sleeping area. The bus braked and I didn’t even laugh with the others as Mason fell out of his bunk, landing heavily and painfully on the floor, too lost in thoughts about the lies Addison had been telling me. Or the secrets she had been keeping…

~

“Addison, lets go for a walk” I wrapped my arms around my girlfriend, kissing her neck. We were at a pit stop, travelling to Massachusetts. She stopped, looking at me oddly but shrugged “Okay”.

I took her hand, and swung it gently as we walked down the small dirt path that ran by the lone gas station. Foliage covered the track, and brushed my face and body. I kept Addison close, suddenly afraid that if I let go, she’d run away from me, into the shadows that threatened to consume her.

I could hear the sound of a river, and I headed for it, not knowing where ‘it’ was exactly but I was burning with questions, questions that needed to be asked now and not answered later.

I wondered vaguely what people saw when they looked at me and Addison, at out interlinked hands. We certainly didn’t look all that normal, my lanky body inked with colour, my dark shirt highlighting them even more so today. My face was covered by a large pair of sunglasses, my hair black and straight as always. A rockstar, or a wannabe one anyway.

And Addison? What did they see with her? A normal girl, with long red hair, and pale skin slightly highlighted with freckles? To the outside world that’s what they would see but they weren’t looking close enough. They needed to look closer, to look at the pale skin of her arms where faint thin lines hinted years of self abuse, to look at her thin body to know she didn’t eat enough, to see her eyes that at times were so lined with shadows you’d know she was a near addict. But the real shadows were in her eyes, in those furious green eyes. There, a pain was held, deep and secure. A pain that was threatening to break free, but was kept behind walls. A pain and an anger. Her eyes held statements, questions to those that looked deep enough to see them. “Why should I help the world?” they said “What has the world ever done for me?”

And that was the question I needed to ask…what had the world done to Addison? What had it done to make her become the covered shell of a being that she was today? Where was the girl with the happy eyes and the real smile? Where was she? Because I wanted to meet her…

We stopped as we reached a bridge, the water rushing far below us with a violent gurgling sound that threatened to swallow you whole if you fell. Addison let go of my hand, walking slowly towards the fence of the bridge. She swallowed, looking down with eyes that looked transfixed, bewildered in some way.

I stood beside her, watching her watch the water.

She didn’t look at me as she spoke “Would you catch me Trace?”

I blinked “What?”

Her hands moved with a jerk as if she were about to heave herself over the railings and my body reacted to it. I flinched as if to grab her but she stopped, continuing “Will you catch me…” she whispered “if I fall?”

I looked at her, not understanding. Her leg raised and she leaned more heavily against the railings, bending over so her whole waist and above was suspended over the water “What would you do if I fell?…If I jumped?” her voice barely made it over the noise of the water but I heard it, and this time, fiercely grabbed her arm, jerking her back violently, not caring if I bruised her. It was for the better cause.

“Shut up Addison!” I spoke fiercely, and ran my thumb down her face, over her lips “I would catch you, I would fucking fall after you. If you jump, I jump, got that?”

She looked at , broken from her daze and nodded and then I sighed “There was a reason I brought you here, alone”

She stepped away from me, the spell of the death waters forgotten “What was it?”

My hand reached for my back pocket, where I had hidden the picture after taking it again, this time for interrogation purposes and pulled out the frame. I held it out, putting it into her hands, seeing the shocked expression on her face.

“Who is it?” I asked

She shivered “Where did you get this? Have you been looking through my things?” she whispered, wide eyed.

I shook my head “I found it by accident, this morning…”

The frame fell from her shaking fingers, landing on the bridge with a smash. The glass shattered, the shards shattering, spreading across the wood.

“Who is it?” I asked again and she looked at me…

“My…my sister…” her voice was hoarse and trembling, and I moved towards her;

“Why didn’t you tell me you had a sister?” my voice was gentle. All I wanted to know was why she hadn’t shared this information with me. She knew everything about me, my family, my dad, my sisters and brothers. Yet I was slowly realising, I didn’t know her at all.

Her eyes were stony then as she looked at me again “I didn’t tell you because I don’t have a sister” she said through gritted teeth.

I blinked “But you just said…”

“I had a sister Trace! I had a sister…but she’s dead! She’s dead and it’s all my fault!” The word 'dead' seemed to echo around the area, rebounding from the trees to hit us over and over again...

And then everything fell apart.

Addison had built a wall around herself, this I knew. And slowly, I had chiselled a hole shaped fo me that I could fit through. It gave me a place in her life. A place she had never intended, a crack in that wall that she had never meant to allow. But I was in and there was nothing she could do about it now..

But now, now everything came down. The whole wall, the reason why it was there in the first place and I got lost in the dust from the aftermath. I managed to grab her as she collapsed into my arms, sobbing like I had seen nobody sob before. I felt like her body was about to break in two as she gasped desperately for oxygen, beating weakly on my chest as if trying to punish me for breaking her down.

“It’s my fault…it’s my fault!” she whispered over and over again. I shushed her, stroking her hair…;

“Tell me, why?”

“Because…!” she shouted, all the emotions she had been keeping penned up spilling out and over “it should have been me. I should have died in that car. I should have gone! Me! I was the one that deserved to die. She was too good, she was too good a person…and look at me, I’m nothing like she was. Nothing!”

I kissed her tears away, tasting the salt on my lips “It’s not, it’s nobody’s fault…these things happen”

I held her frail body, trying to come with terms with what she had told me. She had a sister, a sister that had died. And she was blaming herself. Suddenly, everything about her became crystal clear.

“It is my fault!” she sobbed, her tears soaking my thin shirt “Death wanted me, and it took her by accident. You know nothing, nothing! If I had gone, I would have sat in the front. I would have been the one hit. I would have died…and that’s why…why…”

She didn’t need to finish the sentence. That’s why she was the way she was, why she acted the way she acted. Because she wanted to die. Felt the need to right her sisters death with her own. I didn’t know how to help her, realising that the girl I loved was way more broken and scattered then the pieces of glass around us. I didn’t know what to do but the one thing I could do? Be there…

I held her, clutching her close, rocking her back and forth on the bridge “You’re falling…” I whispered “But I promise baby, I’ll catch you. Some way or another, I’m going to find a way to catch you”