Jahseh yearns.
Oh, how he yearns.
His hours drone on like days, his days drone on like weeks, his weeks drone on like months. Seconds exceed themselves, and yet taunt him with their unchanging tick, every beat closer to 59. He'd never experienced anything like it. He knows pain better than he knows himself, but his heart has never ached as it does now. An ardent, wrenching ache, that kneads and ploughs at his stomach like dough. He couldn't shut it up for anything, he seeks barren distractions in his work and in the gym and driving forlorn laps about Abbey Woodâdespite his own home sitting thirty odd minutes awayâbut all to no avail. Time creeps on with or without him, while he relives that dreadful evening outside The Birchwood, over and over and over again.
Throat soldered shut and set bitterly alight as Eve serves him her heart on a silver platter. The words he ought to say to her caught behind the chasmal web of lies he'd only ever used to deceive himself, the words he'd barbed to slice right through her. The look on her face. The ghost of it that'd stalked him like a shadow ever since. Upon his shoulder, within his peripheral, alongside him as he lay awake at night. Too scared to close his eyes and see it all the clearer.
In all his back and forth, to know her or not to know her, to let her in or not to let her in, to love her or not to love her, he'd only gone and let her get so close. He'd only urged himself well into her path, yet when she fell he refused to catch her. But he let her get so close. So close he could taste her on the tip of his tongue, and hear her voice with every passing gale. The sound of his name from between her lips echoes in his ears, as if she's calling out to him from wherever she happens to be. As if she's right beside him. And then he feels the heat of her breaths snug around his lobes, and it startles him from his figment every time. He's never wanted anyone so badly.
"You've proper fucked it."
Sullivan and Kamale sit across from him now. They're paired in their folded expressions, something adjacent to disturbed but upon Sul, ultimately disappointed. And concerned.
Kamale tries with all his might to do well out of his mundane task, honed onto the label printer shoved into his hands as if there's anything even remotely as curious about its 5 by 2 screen, yet every time his focus falters and Jahseh meets his eye, the air in that room heavies itself. Very soon, he's sure he'll give in to the bulk and flatten beneath the tension.
Jahseh looks like shit. And coming from Kamale, he felt that should mean something.
"Sul."
"Hm?"
"Fuck off."
Despite the fist he's inclined to send into the middle of his brother's chest, Sullivan can only sigh. "It's been a week. You wanna speak on it or not?"
"Not."
"Speak on what?" Kamale asks. Jahseh lifts his head to scowl him back into his rightful place, and then lets it fall back again. Like it's too heavy for his neck, or someone'd swapped his brain for a brick. Perhaps that'd explain his stupidity.
Sul frowns, "Have you even seen her?"
"Seen who?"
"Why do you keep talking?" Jahseh's face pinches, as if there's some real dither to his words.
"Ease up," Sullivan tuts. "Help me understand what the fuck's gone on. You look sickly and Eve's all mopey. Why won't yous just squash it?"
"You broke up with Eve?" Kamale's eyes widen a tad, although he's oblivious to take heed of Jahseh's kissed teeth and everlasting screw. "Makes sense."
"Get out."
A huff thrusts itself from flared nostrils as Kamale ultimately finds it wise to comply. He stalks out of the room, the brothers watch him go. Jahseh doesn't feel at all bad about it, he's too busy feeling other things.
He wishes he could go back and stop her before she got so far, before the words could take form in her head and her heart. He wishes he never knew them. Yet at one time or another, he catches himself reeling in their solace. Her doe eyed confession and the rasp with which she'd confessed it. It felt like a kiss. She sees something in him worth liking, worth risking herself for. She'd all but thrown herself in front of a train, which is the real sting of it, perhaps. Because she'd never expected he'd let it hit her, yet he did. And the wreck had wrecked her sorely, to lick her own wounds and pick herself back up.
He wishes she'd never said it at all.
"She's... I can't fucking stand that girl. I just want her out my head."
Sullivan tilts, "Who? Eve?"
"Yes, Eve. Look what she's doing. Why would she tell me all that?"
"All whaâhold on," Sullivan uprights himself in his seat. "Are you taking the piss? You're dying 'cause she told you she likes you? That's what you're going on like this for?"
He'd laugh, if not for the cramp he's sure would take to his entire chest. Only because he'd foraged for a word to describe the feeling and his brother had done just thatâhe's dying from the inside out. It's pathetic and pitiful, yet there's nothing in or out of Sullivan that even kindly favours pity.
"She... I can't... I'm not going there with her. She don't know anything," Jahseh trips over his lines like he's fighting for his life to get them out, but all his rehearsed slants make a let less sense aloud than they do in his head.
"You follow that girl everywhere like a weirdo, she's only gone and done what you wasn't man enough to and you've, what, told her to fuck off? You deaded it? What?"
Jahseh ignores him, so Sullivan drives the toe of his steel-capped boot into his ankle.
"What theâ"
"You're such a prick, it's shocking to me. Grow the fuck up, Jah."
There's a bite to Sullivan's tone now, and Jahseh hasn't the stomach for it. He takes no wisdom from his brother's advice, only a shitload of audacity that he struggles to believe he has the nerve for.
"She don't know! She don't even fucking know!"
"So tell her, what the fuck?"
"Tell her what? Huh?"
"Everything!"
Jahseh stares at him a momentâhe can't recall a time he's ever wanted to throttle him so badly.
"Oh, just fuck off, Sul. You grow up. She don't even get what she's asking me for. Not everyone's like you and Morgan. You think I can tell her everything and she'll still be here?"
"She ain't here, d'you get it? You did all this 'cause you're shook she's gonna fuck off, but she's fucked off anyway."
And he's right.
He'd lost her at the hands of his fear of losing her. Jahseh figured he's better off burning the bridge himself than holding a candle to it and praying it won't catch alight. He figured it'd hurt a whole lot less, yet the untold possibilities are like poison to his sound mind, unsound since that dreadful evening. But if he's fated to hurt, better it this way, right?
"Yeah, well... Let it be like that, then."
"You're in love with this girl and you're gonna bin it off for nothing. And when she fucks off to someone else, I ain't gonna feel sorry for you, y'know. 'Cause this is all you. Know that."
"You want her to make peace with something I can't even speak on. Something we don't even speak on to each other. You know how much blood I got on my hands?"
Sullivan exhales. His sorry for his brother is rivalled by his sorry for the shell of Eve he'd been unfortunate to witness in passing the past week. Floating in and out of her flat and to and from The Link, with a dimmer spark and a dimmer smile. The cards they'd been dealt are tricky but by no means impossible, but he can't make his brother see that, especially if he doesn't want to. He's the only one who doesn't see that. It's beyond disheartening. And from the other side of Jahseh's closed door, where Kamale lingers with his ear pressed flat against its oakwood, he stirs disheartened by it too.
"Jah," Sul calls. Jahseh runs a sorrier hand down his sorrier face. To love her or not to love herâhe'd woefully chosen not to.
"It's whatever, man. Let her hate me."
Oh, how he yearns.
Three things I write best:
1) A crashout
2) Jealousy
3) A man that YEARNS!
Crashout incoming, these next two chapters are gonna be a bit hot.
Jahseh's head is spun! He misses that girl bad. Thoughts?
Thoughts on Sul too? He was not having it at all, LOL. I just need him to slap Jahseh one time for my Eve.
Thoughts and feels?
See ya soon x