There's only one problem; I'm flying alone because Damien, the second person who was supposed to be on this journey with me, is dead.
He's dead. He's dead. He's dead.
It doesn't matter how many times I tell myself that he's really dead. It still doesn't sit right with me. Feel right. Or ease the never-ending pain I've felt stabbing at my insides since Daddy shot him.
My attention averts to the window as the wide, open plains and sporadic trees breeze by. Ahead there’s an empty wide stretch of road and the bus picks up speed. I look away from the window. All of the scenery is blurring together and it’s making me nauseous.
I scan the empty seats. They’re tan. Probably fake leather. I poke the seat in front of me, watching the indent from my finger as it slowly disappears. Frustrated, I roll my head back and begin tapping it against the soft head rest.
I wish there was someone to talk to.
Or look at.
I wish there was someone else on the bus to distract me.
But there isn’t. Aside from me and the driver the bus is empty.
“How much longer?” I call up from a seat three rows from the back on the right side.
The driver, a rotund man with a chubby face and a comb-over eyes me in the mirror. “About another hour.”
All the police said was that I was being sent to a place that was going to help me overcome my ‘issues’. The issues I’d accrued after Damien’s death. There was a brief moment; days after his death that I thought I might be okay. That I might be able to always remember our love, but be able to move on. But that changed the day of his funeral. When his mother threw me out of the church.
She saw me in the back of the church, in the last pew. My eyes were cast downward because I couldn’t keep the tears from falling. I didn’t even know she’d seen me until she gripped me by the elbow and hissed, “You.” Her voice was filled with pain and hate, and then she ripped me from the pew and escorted me to the double doors.
My eyes water and I let out a long breath when I think of that moment. My heart aches, rips from my chest, and falls somewhere on the bus floor. Seconds later, sobs leave my throat and I have to hug myself to keep myself from shaking.
What I wanted to scream at his mother was I loved him too.
So much.
More than she would ever know.
It wasn’t fair that I wasn’t able to properly say goodbye to him. Because now, I’ll never have closure. I’ll never be able to move on.
My sobbing escalates to the point where howls of anguish leave my throat and there’s nothing I can do to hold them back.
The bus driver hears me and asks, “Are you okay, sweetheart?”
I can’t answer him. The grief and heartbreak is swallowing me.
Consuming me.
Devouring me like a cannibal.
Then I hear something.
“Psst.”
I lift my head slowly, blinking back tears and squinting at the front of the bus. There’s no one there.
I hear the sound again.
“Psst.”
Twisting, I dig my fists into my eyes and swallow a mouthful of saliva, trying to drench the dryness in my throat. My eyes center on the last seat in the bus. Right by the emergency exit he sits. A smoldering look in his blue blue eyes.
“Damien?” I whisper. I pinch myself several times because I know I must be imagining him. Then I shut my eyes, squeezing them tightly before opening them abruptly.