Speechless

I slept like a baby for the first time in a long time. A part of me wanted to go talk to Brendon and make him feel better, but another part of me told me he was getting what he deserved. I couldn’t just waltz over and start talking to him again. It didn’t work that way. Whatever, I thought. I would just continue living without him right? That’s what I’ve been doing, and it was working out quite well, was it not?

There was a foggy mist outside the window this Saturday morning. An eerie feeling surrounded me as I got out of bed. I walked down the stairs in my pajamas to see that the house was completely empty. I walked over to the kitchen where I could smell the delicious scent of piping hot coffee and freshly baked donuts. And there it was: a box of donuts from Dunkin’ Donuts and some coffee to go with it. There was also a note:

Ryan-
I’m going on another business trip. I’ll be back in a week.
Love,
Dad

So I had the house to myself for a week. I sat down and enjoyed my coffee. He got a multitude of donuts to last me throughout the week. I picked the plain donut to go with my coffee. I wasn’t in an extravagant mood at that moment. Now, I didn’t know what to do with myself. Usually Dad had me busy around the house doing something. I think he knew cleaning got my mind off of Brendon for a while, so he made me do it a lot. Well, now I had absolutely nothing to do.

I stared out the kitchen window, again. Brendon was gone, but the feeling of sadness lingered. I could feel it. I sighed. I had absolutely nothing to do. Maybe I would pay him a visit and see what’s up. It couldn’t hurt, right? I could always go out with Keltie if I had to escape from him, right? I did have her number…

I went upstairs and put on a clean set of clothes and gussied up a bit. I didn’t want to look like shit. Nope, he wasn’t allowed to see me at my worst ever again. The growing number of scars on my shoulder stung when I thought about seeing him face to face, again. Most of them were healing, but a few newer ones were still easily visible. I grabbed a sweatshirt to put on over the wounds but rolled up the sleeves to make it seem a little less obvious as to what I was doing.

My mind was set. I had to do this.

I left the house and dashed for his. It had been a long time since I had gone over there and seen his house. Something about it gave me a depressing, nostalgic lump in my throat. I walked up those porch steps and knocked on that door for the first time in months. It seemed too empty there, just the two of them in that big house living alone.

The door cracked open a little bit, and after a moment, his mom opened it all the way.

“Ryan?”

“Hi… is… is Brendon there? I… uh…”

“He’s in his room. Come on in. Make yourself at home.”

She seemed a bit shocked to see me but extremely relieved. I wondered what was bothering Brendon so much.

“Thanks. Look… I’m sure you know what happened but… I”

“I know,” she said coldly. She walked away with attitude as if I was the cause of Brendon’s despair last night. I couldn’t have been. Just that day he was laughing hysterically at lunch with Spencer as if I had never existed, and I had absolutely no contact with him in any way.

I ignored her, though. I made my way up the stairs to Brendon’s room. I heard the quiet sounds of a guitar being played perfectly in the background. An angelic voice filled the room. The music was too quiet, though. It was too sad. He was trying to hide his music from the world at such a low volume that I don’t think his mom even knew he was making it.

I knocked on the door.

“Mom, I’m busy.”

“I’m not your mom.”

I heard his guitar drop to the floor with a loud thud as a gasp escaped his lips simultaneously. I heard him shuffle around the room in shock. I figured he was trying to clean himself up as quickly as he could so I didn’t see him looking as bad as I had when I woke up.

He opened the door. He wore a hoodie with the hood up over his head. His eyes were sullen, puffy, and red. His fingers had blisters from constant guitar playing. He was a wreck, and here I was, looking as good as ever showing up at his house when he clearly wanted some privacy. I was such a dick. On the other hand, so was he.

“Hi… um… what are you doing here?”

“I was doing the dishes last night, saw you out the window on your back deck. You looked sad.”

“You were spying on me? What the –”

“Nooo!” I yelled frantically, “I just looked out the window and saw you. Why on earth would I spy on you? That’s creepy.” I gave him a fake shiver to play along with my words.

“Yeah, sure. So why are you here?”

“I don’t know.” He didn’t say anything back. We kind of stood there in an awkward stance, moving our eyes from side to side, careful not to look each other in the eye. “So what was that song you were playing?”

“It’s nothing.”

“It didn’t sound familiar.”

“I wrote it. It sucks though. I’m not a good writer. Not compared to you.”

“I haven’t written anything in a while.”

“Why?”

I held my breath. He didn’t need much thought to figure it out.

“Well, I guess I’ll be seeing you.”

“What, you’re kicking me out already?”

“Reminds me of a similar scenario that happened to me.”

Oh. I sighed. “Look, I was really upset. I was harsh, but so were you. I figured that was even, and we were done.”

“Ryan… I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry? Up until last night you seemed fine without me.” I unintentionally added harshness to my voice. I didn’t mean to, but that’s how it came out. I guess that’s just what happens when that’s how you really feel.

“I… uh. Forget it. You should probably go, now.”

“Brendon…”

“Look, I just want to be alone right now.”

“Okay.” I didn’t even say goodbye. I walked down the stairs and out the door without another word. If he wanted to be like that, fine. We couldn’t even be friends? That was his problem, not mine. I could always hang out with Keltie. I could always make new friends.

That’s exactly what I was going to do. I grabbed my phone out of my pocket the second I walked out of his front door. I went through the very small number of contacts on it and selected Kelties name.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Keltie. It’s Ryan. I’m gonna be home alone all week, so I was wondering if you would help me throw a little ‘get together’ at my place tonight. Invite all your friends. I don’t really care. It’ll be fun.”

“Ohh, a party! I love parties. I’ll come over and help you set everything up. It’s going to be so much fun! Where do you live?”

And so began a weekend of pure teenaged bliss.