Teenage Dirtbag

Haley’s POV
Alex and I had been sitting comfortably close to each other throughout the rest of the movie. When the movie ended, I didn’t really feel like getting up, as I was pretty comfortable. The lights went back on.
“My eyes!” Alex cried out, causing me to laugh.
I lifted my head from Alex’s shoulder reluctantly and sat up straight. Alex’s arm was still around my shoulders. While everyone was leaving the theater, we were still sitting there.

“We should probably leave” I suggested.
“But these chairs are so comfy” Alex protested.
“Oh you poor thing, come on” I said, getting up.
Alex didn’t move, so I grabbed his hand and pulled him on his feet. When he stood up straight I headed for the exit, turning around for a moment to see if he was following me. We left the theater and headed for Alex’s car.

“Why don’t we go get a drink?” I suggested. “The night is still young and it might actually give us a chance to talk, instead of a theater where people expect you to be quiet.”
“Count me in” Alex replied. “Where do you want to go?”
“Oh anywhere will do, as long as the music isn’t too loud” I replied.
“I know just the place” Alex answered as we got in his car.

Alex drove off to the place he had in mind. After a 10-minute ride Alex pulled over at the side of the road. He got out of the car and I followed his lead. He led me into a building that seemed to be a small pub. The place was pretty cozy and the only music playing was soft instrumental music at a low volume. Alex walked over to a small table that had comfortable chairs on both sides and he sat down. I followed his lead and sat down oppose him.

“I love this place” he said after we both settled. “I always come here to write songs. It’s nice and quiet and they make great hot chocolate.”
I smiled. “Well, I should probably try it then.”
“You definitely should” Alex answered.
A waiter showed up next to our table and Alex ordered two hot chocolates.
“So do you write a lot of songs?” I asked him.
“Oh yeah, I have tons of lyrics at home. Most of them aren’t exactly good though, but it’s a nice outlet you know” Alex answered.
“I do actually” I answered. “It has helped me a lot over the past few years. I’m probably not even going to use those songs for anything ever, but it just helps me express my emotions and keep me from going crazy.”
“Exactly” Alex answered. “It really helped me after my brother’s death.”

Alex looked down, seemingly upset by mentioning his brother. I was silent for a moment, hesitating if I should ask him about his brother and if this was the right setting for it. I realized I just wanted to get to know him and his brother’s death was unarguably a part of him.
“You don’t really talk about him, do you?” I asked softly.
Alex looked up. “Not really… It’s just… I don’t know…”
“It really helped me getting over my mom’s death, talking about it” I told him. “At first I didn’t want to. I was afraid I would just start crying every time someone mentioned her and I didn’t think I could handle talking about her. But then Jack suggested I should go see a therapist. At first I got mad, thinking he thought I was crazy or something. But going to see a therapist really was the best decision I ever made.”

I fell silent because the waiter had arrived at our table with our mugs of hot chocolate. I looked at Alex, who was showing very little emotion but I knew he was listening to me. After the waiter left, I wrapped my hands around my mug, warming up my hands since it was pretty cold outside.
“If you don’t talk about these things and keep them inside instead, they’ll just keep bottling up inside you until it eats you alive. I spend the first session with my therapist just sitting there, crying. I realized I hadn’t cried since the day I found out my mom had died. I know everyone deals with loss their own way, but not dealing with it isn’t the right way.” I continued.

I lay my hand on Alex’s hand, which was laying on the table.
“Who says I didn’t deal with it?” he asked.
“I know you. You’re always trying to help everyone else deal with their problems but you forget about your own in the process. I’ve been there, trust me. After a few days in my room, I just started taking care of my father and Rachel. I cooked, I cleaned, I did everything they weren’t capable of at the moment, until I broke down after a few weeks. That’s when Jack made me go to see a therapist. She made me realize I had to deal with my own pain before helping anyone else dealing with theirs. I poured my heart out in my second session with my therapist and it was deliberating, honestly.”

Alex’s POV
She really had me all figured out. I wondered if what she was saying was true. Would talking about it really make it easier to deal with my brother’s death? It had been two years already. Would it still make a difference? I figured I had nothing to loose and could just give it a try. If things between me and her were going the way I wanted them to go, I would have to tell Haley eventually anyway. I sighed.

“As Jack probably told you already, he killed himself” I started. “My brother’s name was Tom and he was 3 years older than me. At the time of his death he already didn’t live with my parents and me anymore. We didn’t see him enough to realize how bad his depression got. He had been depressed for a few years, but we thought he got better after he moved out. We thought it was the town, his school, maybe even us that made him feel that way. Whenever we’d come to visit him in Philadelphia he had always seemed better. We didn’t see him a lot, but he would always call a few times a week. Until that one week in March 2005. He hadn’t called for a week and we couldn’t get a hang of him either. We decided to drive all the way to Philadelphia to see what was going on. When we got there, his flat mate told us Tom didn’t live there anymore. He left a week before, all of a sudden, and his flat mates hadn’t heard from him since. My parents went straight to the police in Philadelphia to report him missing. Little did we know he left the city a week before we went there. The cops had been looking all over Philadelphia and its surrounding for him, but couldn’t find him. We went back to Baltimore on Sunday because I had to go to school. I decided to go to the spot Tom and I used to hang at when we were little, just to reminisce.”

I was silent for a moment, dreading to tell her what happened next. Haley had been quiet the whole time and hadn’t taken her hand off of mine. She squeezed it, encouraging me to continue.
“That’s when I saw someone lying in the grass near the bushes. I walked over there. I think in the back of my mind I already knew what I was about to find when I got closer and looking back I should’ve just called the cops, but I didn’t. There I was, in the middle of nowhere, standing next to my brother’s lifeless body. I didn’t have to check if he was breathing. His skin was cold and pale, his eyes were closed. I somehow found the strength to call my parents to tell them I found him, before I collapsed next to him, crying uncontrollably. After what seemed like hours, I felt a hand on my shoulder and noticed my mother kneeling next to me, tears streaming down her face. We sat there for a few hours, my mom, my dad and me, just crying, before we called an ambulance. The autopsy showed he had overdosed, 6 days earlier. He had been lying there for 6 fucking days…”

I was fighting back my tears. I wasn’t about to cry in public - even though we were the only people in the pub - or even worse, in front of Haley. I hid my face in my hands and sighed. I quickly wiped away the few tears making their way down my face.
“I wouldn’t wish that on anyone… Dying alone and then lying there for six fucking days without anyone even noticing you’re gone. I just can’t stop blaming myself for not knowing how depressed he still was or for not reporting him missing or for not finding him sooner.”
At this point I couldn’t hold my tears back anymore. I hid my face in my hands again. I felt an arm, which I could only assume was Haley’s, wrap around me. I looked up to find her sitting on the armrest of my chair. She didn’t say anything for minutes; she just held me and let me cry.

Haley’s POV
Though I hated to see Alex like this, I was still positive it would help him to talk about his brother’s death. I just let him cry until he felt like he was done, not saying a word. After a few minutes he was starting to calm down. I hesitated for a moment but then planted a kiss on the top of his head. I felt him stiffen for a moment, obviously not expecting that, but he quickly relaxed again. When he had stopped crying, I let go of him. I lifted his chin so that he was looking at me.

“Don’t blame yourself for anything” I said softly, while removing my arm from around his shoulders and moving my hand to his face to wipe his tears. “It sounds like your brother didn’t want you to know. If he did, he wouldn’t have been hiding his depression so well.”
“Yeah but still, w-we shouldn’t have given up on him s-so easily. We should have m-made him get professional help or something” Alex stuttered.
“It’s always easy to say that afterwards. You couldn’t have known your brother was still struggling with his depression” I said.
“But if we would just have visited him more often…” Alex started.
“Then he would just have pretended to be fine more often” I disagreed.
“But we should’ve seen right through it. We should’ve known he wasn’t okay” Alex went on.

“Alex, blaming yourself isn’t gonna make it any easier and it doesn’t help anyone” I told him. “I blamed myself for my mum’s death for a while. I shouldn’t have been in the car with her, I might have distracted her, causing her to miss the signs of that truck about to fall down. I should’ve done something after the crash, I should’ve called an ambulance, try to do anything to get keep her heart from stopping. But Jack made me realize I couldn’t. I was only 13 years old. It was a perfectly normal reaction for a 13-year old to just be paralyzed with fear. The medics told me she probably died from the impact as soon as we hit that truck. I realized blaming myself for her death wouldn’t get me anywhere, so I stopped doing it.”

“You make it sound so easy” Alex muttered.
“Of course it’s not easy, but it’s easier than living your life blaming yourself for the death of someone you love” I answered. “And you don’t deserve to live like that Alex. I know it’s hard right now, but trust me when I say talking about it is the first step to really moving on, the first step to recovery” I told him.
A small smile formed on Alex’s face. “Thanks for being my therapist Hales.”
“That’s 100 dollars then” I joked to ease the tension, causing the smile on his face to widen.

“I don’t want to kill the moment, but we should probably be heading home since we have school tomorrow and it’s like 1 AM” I said.
Alex nodded. “You’re probably right”.
He took out his wallet, but by the time he opened it to grab money, I had already thrown a couple of dollar bills on the small table.
“Is that how this is gonna be? Both of us constantly trying to pay everything?” Alex asked.
“No, I will pay everything for now and when I’m broke I will make you pay for everything, don’t worry” I replied. “Come on.”

I got up from the armrest and waited for Alex to get up as well. As we left the pub, I felt Alex’s fingers around my hand, intertwining with mine. He seemed a bit uneasy when I looked at him, so I shot him a smile and squeezed his hand. We walked to Alex’s car hand in hand. Like a real gentleman, Alex opened the door to the passenger seat for me. I let go of his hand and got in. As soon as I sat down Alex shut the door and walked over to the driver’s side to get in. He started the car and headed for my house.
“You okay?” I asked him, after we drove in silence for a few minutes.
“I will be” he replied.
“You sure?” I asked, slightly worried.
I was now rethinking this whole ‘talk-about-your-brothers-death’-thing. Maybe it didn’t have the same effect on Alex as it did on me.
“I’m positive” he said, giving me a reassuring smile.
“Whenever you feel like you’re not okay or just need someone to talk to, you know you can call me right?” I asked.
“I know, same goes for you” he answered.

We had reached my house too quickly. Alex pulled over in front of it and then we just sat there, looking at each other, suddenly feeling awkward. I wasn’t sure if it would be okay to kiss him. I wanted to, so bad. I looked at his lips that seemed particularly kissable tonight. Alex seemed to take that as a hint and took the first step by leaning into me. I did the same and before I knew it our lips touched. Gentle and slightly awkward at first, but Alex’s kiss soon became a bit rougher. After a while I pulled away, as I was almost out of breath. We just sat there looking at each other. A smile appeared on Alex’s face and I couldn’t help but return it.
“We should do that again sometime” I said, winking.
I unbuckled my seatbelt and got ready to get out of the car. I leaned into Alex one more time to quickly kiss him on the lips.
“Goodnight Alex” I whispered. “See you tomorrow.”
“Goodnight beautiful” he answered.
We exchanged one last big smile before I got out of the car. I waited on the sidewalk until he drove away and then I went inside. For a moment I doubted if I should call Jack or Cass, until I realized it was like 1:30 AM and they were probably sound asleep. I would just fill them in tomorrow. I went straight to bed. This had been a really great night.