literature

Everyone Else - Part 11

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Genre: drama, psychological, mature, contemporary, romance, m/m

- - -

Charlie looks at Finlay with eyes smoked red with fatigue, likely seeping excess alcohol that his body could not consume fast enough. He cannot comprehend the vision in front of him, and the task to do so is so great, he is tempted to believe him a sad, drunken apparition. They are on different planes of existence altogether. And how sad it is indeed to find the past at his doorstep while he's been struggling with it all these years. Charlie leans on his knees and throws up.

Finlay takes a step back and avoids the spatter. Nausea thrums and bubbles forth in the pit of Charlie's stomach as he stares at Finlay's dark leather shoes; his neck has turned to rubber, and he can't lift his head to face Finlay. His hands are shaking, and he feels like an old man. A warm pressure presses against his shoulders and he is pulled inside.

He doesn't want Finlay to see him, even less like this. So he does what he knows best and starts to push Finlay away. But the man's grip is unrelenting, and clenches tighter around him, refusing to let go. Before he knows it, he's already sitting back in the sofa he had just left.

"Easy, there," his voice says, gravelly and steady, unlike the fired up seventeen year old him that Charlie knew.

Charlie bats him away with a determined, but ultimately limp hand. "I think…" he says, averting his gaze like a guilty child. "I think y'should go now."

An incredulous, almost stunned silence trails behind those words like their own hollowed out echo. Charlie finally looks up at Finlay and is shocked by his reaction. The tears that imbue his eyes are like flames; it's all the hurt and sadness he would have never thought Finlay to possess. He simply never thought Finlay could be like him, too.

"All these years…," Finlay says, his voice crackling, "I've been left wondering on my own what I'd done for you to leave. All I've ever done is love you on my own."

Charlie clenches his jaw, resenting the accusation. "You say you love me… But have you ever wondered how I felt? You'll excuse me if I can't flip a switch and start acting like everything's okay. And even so… Who says you'll always have these feelings?"

The truth is he's scared. He doesn't want him to realise how desperate he really is. He's always been sure he could handle everything himself, to be a capable and independent person from a young age so he wouldn't be helpless when people abandoned him. He refuses to be like his mother – fragile, always trying to be liked by others, and frustrated and helplessly angry when no one responds. So he pushes people away before they can push him. But this… he can't handle this, and it scares him. Does Finlay genuinely care about him, or is he just going along with it, like so many others? He's come to know the loneliness of loving someone, as well as the despair of that person being a man. He doesn't want to know any more. And at the same time, he wants to just be happy and go with it, but he doesn't, and he realises the only person he's got to blame is himself.

"So you would refuse to try rather than be rejected?" Finlay says. "It's been fifteen years and I'm still here. You still don't trust me?"

"Where've you been all this time?"

Why weren't you here with me?

"Where was I supposed to go? You left me!"

And so we continue to live in our own cages of despair. Our own little cages that no one else can enter. We can't understand each other, Charlie thinks. How can anyone really, truly, know what another person is thinking if they themselves are lost?

"Um, no, wait…" Charlie dips his forehead shining with sweat into his palm. "That is… Please continue to love me." He sinks further into the sofa, hoping to fall through it.

Finlay looks at him, the fire in his eyes dull and low now, and strokes a few hairs out of Charlie's eyes. "That's a selfish thing to ask," he says. It burns wherever he touches. Finlay gets up and heads toward the door, his broad back escaping Charlie's reach. His skin suddenly feels cold.

"I'll be at my brother's house for three more days," he says as he readjusts his jacket. "I, too, need to move on. Come find me when you've decided. Oh, and Charlie."

Charlie looks at him with paralytic eyes.

"Happy New Year."

The door slams shut while Charlie stares after him for a while until he peels himself out of the chair to lock it.

Why are his feelings so strong? he thinks. He never hesitates. And even now he can't tell what that man is thinking. Charlie passes a hand through oil-slick hair and drags it across the messy stubble he's forgotten about. Funny how he didn't have to worry about being clean shaven when he was seventeen. He certainly doesn't feel any younger.

The next morning, he analyses every line and crevice of his face in the bathroom mirror as if trying to find meaning in an obscure work of art. Words fail him at the loss he feels waking up and realising his youth is gone along with all its potentials and nothing will ever bring it back. He remembers how foolish he was thinking he would live forever, and it is heartbreaking in hindsight. It's as if he had closed his eyes at seventeen and when he opened them, he was suddenly thirty seven.

He can't help wondering about what he's missed and what has passed. What if he'd stayed in Cottonwood and let himself fall for Finlay? But loving someone like he did… it was too intimate, and made him too vulnerable. The one who falls in love first loses, right? But Finlay is ready to move on now. He wonders why he hasn't been able to do the same

-

The next day, Charlie books his plane tickets. He hasn't been back to Arizona in fifteen years. All during his flight back, a low current thrummed throughout his body, causing a mildly discomforting tingle under his skin. Through some digging, he'd found out that his father had moved out and become a mechanic in New Mexico, leaving his wife (Charlie's mother), Grace Mallory, behind. He doesn't know what happened to his siblings other than they had gone to college. He wonders if that little home he hated still housed life within its battered entrails. Is it even still standing? There's still a day left before Finlay leaves. But before he can face him, he needs to know if he can see his mother and still be able to put everything behind.

He rents a car and drives out to the edge of the town, up a winding narrow stretch of sandy tar, and parks on the side of the road, outside a jagged metal fence. It's still the tiny, dried up house he remembers it to be. His heart beats wildly with every step he takes and his skin crawls ominously as if telling him he wasn't allowed to trespass this property; he isn't wanted here. But he can't help it. He still wants to see his mother. He wants to know. It's been silently eating at him all these years. Even if he doesn't get an answer, he still wants her to know he's made a decent living, that he's worth something.

Tentatively, he rings the doorbell. After half a minute of no answering, he lifts his fist to the door and knocks meekly. All of a sudden, he feels extremely self-conscious, as if hyper aware of everything he's wearing and his own posture. He's made sure to wear a smart, charcoal suit with a white shirt; he straightens his back and pats down his overcoat and adjusts his burgundy cashmere scarf.

Furtive movement from behind a curtain window indicate someone is home. A few seconds later, the door opens slightly to reveal a creased, sharp face with a furrowed brow, squinting up at him.

"Yes?" the woman says, her voice brittle and dry. "What do you want?"

It's still her; it's the same woman, but now she seems so fragile, half-hidden by the door. Charlie tries not to stare, and forces his throat to make words.

"Good afternoon, Mrs Mallory," he says. "It's… It's been a long time. It's me… Charlie."

The woman's eyes widen and she quickly slams the door, but Charlie presses his shoulder up against it and pushes through. Hurried footsteps drum across the floorboards as the woman darts into her bedroom and locks the door.

"Ma, wait. Ma," Charlie calls after her, landing at her old wooden door whose paint has almost completely peeled away. He lifts a hand to it lays it there, splayed over the rough, uneven surface. He imagines her sitting on the edge of her bed, waiting for him to bring some black tea with honey before she would open the door, like all those other times when the door would be closed to him.

"Ma…," he says again, weakly. "I… I went to college. I got a degree an' all. I got it with me here, too; I can show it to you. I even got a job that pays good." The silence is unbearable. "Please open the door, Ma."

"Go away." The brisk response finally comes.

But the answer encourages Charlie to talk more.

"Isn't it good enough?" he says. "I stayed away for fifteen years without calling. It's only fair I get to at least talk with you. Look, I'll go make us some tea, alright? Jus' the way you like it."

As he steps away toward the kitchen, he thinks he can hear the lock click open. Absolutely nothing has changed in the last two decades; it's almost like a museum kept together by a negligent refusal to modernise. He finds the tea bags and heats up the water – at least the kettle is new. He turns to the kitchen table with fingers hooked around both mugs and finds his mother's frame skulking warily in the doorframe, eyeing him like he was some kind of predator.

Charlie puts both mugs down on the table and takes a seat. Cautiously, the woman approaches the table and sits down to blow softly at the mug with trembling lips. Charlie can't help thinking how frail she looks hunched over her mug like that, her fingers knotted and strained by taking care of the run down house on her own. Who is taking care of her now?

"You always make the best tea," she says into her mug, as if admitting defeat.

Charlie says nothing, and stirs his tea some more.

"Oh yes, you were such a good boy," she continues. "Always so quiet and hardworking. I forgot why you ever left us."

Charlie's chest constricts, and he has to tighten his grip around his mug to avoid showing anything on his face.

"You don't remember? Why I left?" He stares at her, his eyes cold and resentful. "Why you sent me away?"

His mother finally looks at him, truly looks him in the eyes ever since he has arrived. Her eyes widen and she drops her mug, spilling its hot content all over the table cloth and pushing herself away from the table.

"Oh Lord, those eyes," she says, as she gropes blindly for support.

"Ma, what is it? What's wrong?" Charlie says, unsure what to do since he assumes he is the heart of the problem.

"Keep those eyes away from me, oh Lord Jesus."

Charlie looks at her helplessly, trying to understand why he is being rejected once again.

"Why? Why are you doing this?" He swears she must be doing this deliberately just to make him anxious and doubtful. Why does she always do this? Was it so bad that she always needed to invent a spectacle to chase him away?

"Those eyes are the same from that day. Such judgment from the son of the devil! It wasn't my fault. Don't look at me with those eyes. Just don't look at me."

She tries to escape to her room again, but this time Charlie blocks the door and holds her down, looking her deep in the eye and trying to find out what she was so afraid of.

"You were there," she mutters, her small frame almost paralysed from shock. "You saw..."

"What're you…" Charlie starts.

"You may not remember it, but your eyes do," she says, her body now trembling between his hands. "Your eyes saw everything, they remember everything. And I couldn't escape them. I couldn't get rid of them. They were always there. Everywhere I turned, you were there."

Charlie lets go of his mother and the image of a coughing Claire suddenly flashes in his mind. It almost gives him a headache.

"The little whore was having relations with one of her teachers, a married man," she says, more spiteful now. "Do you know what others were saying behind my back? They were calling her a slut, and me a bad mother. But I only have good children. I'm a good mother." Her voice strains and cracks under the weight of her own hopeless conviction.

The words scratch and tear at a dark shadow in a remote corner of his mind. It's a thick, tarry wall that obstructs anything from passing through, but a small crack in its flank is now making it waver. He can see Claire arguing with their mother. Her short, auburn hair hangs loosely over her forehead, loopy earrings banging furiously against her cheeks as her jaw jumps open at shut at her mother. He's eight years old, and he must be hiding somewhere under the table since he was trying to steal some biscuits in the kitchen before his sister and mother had burst in. There is shouting and screaming, but he doesn't know about what since he is covering his ears and is trying to shut them out.

He can't remember what happened next.

The door behind him opens into his back and a young woman with coffee-coloured hair tied in a ponytail enters the room, her brow furrowed in confusion.  

She looks at him, startled. "Charlie?" she says.

Charlie barely has time to respond that his mother has already grabbed a kitchen knife and is thrusting it below his ribs. Charlie tries to distance himself, but only backs into the door and clutches at his torn skin.

"Get away from him, Colbie!" she screams, and thrusts it in a second time.

Colbie rushes to her mother and wrestles her away from Charlie, who slips and collapses on the floor.

"Ma, stop it! Stop it!" Colbie says, disarming her and putting her in a corner.

She comes back to Charlie and crouches over him, phone in hand.

"It's okay, Charlie, I'm calling an ambulance. It's okay, Charlie… Charlie, it's okay. It's okay now."

Colbie continues to repeat this as a soothing mantra while she clumsily presses a cloth to his wounds. Her voice shakes wildly as she speaks into the phone. Charlie's vision goes blurry from the pain and blood loss, or perhaps his contacts have fallen out; it's all a haze in his mind. His eyes wander over to the kitchen table and linger beneath it. There, he imagines how he used to be at that same spot as a huddled and terrified little boy, and he wonders what that little boy could be staring at so fixedly.

- - -

tbc
Part 1 citizencandy.deviantart.com/ar…
Next: fav.me/d6ivvdm

Yes. I'm still alive. I finished this instead of starting on my 15 page paper. :iconimsotiredcryplz: Worth it. So yes, there will be yet another chapter to this story. Thanks for sticking around! and being super patient
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Comments10
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ferret-assassin-nin's avatar
Wow. I read all of your chapters starting from chapter 1 and I have to say that you are amazing. I was a little worried that the characters would end up not being well-developed but as I kept reading, you revealed more layers to your characters and I became more absorbed. I love the plot twists you came up with in these last two chapters, especially at the end of this one. I can't wait to see the outcome. Poor Charlie, he just never catches a break, does he? Will Finlay and Charlie ever get together? You have to wonder. Talk about a crazy family.