Prank Me Love

Please, Don't Hurt Yourself Like This

"He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." 

― lines from the novel "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte   

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:

"Honey?"

I was woken up by the constant tapping on my shoulder. I moved and squinted through the sunny light invading my sight, only to see dad's blurry wrinkled face looking down at me with worried eyes. 

"Why did you sleep here, Shai?" he asks me from where he stood in front of the couch, near my knees. I slowly moved to get up and groggily focus on my vision.

I look around the living room, finding myself half-lying on the couch with the blanket I had used to cover James last night, wrapped around me. James is nowhere to be found at this moment and I briefly tried to recall how I ended up sleeping in the place where he did.

"Honey, why are you here?" dad asks me again through my silence. 

"I..." I looked up to see his face, distracted by the sudden confusion of James' absence. However, I considered not telling dad the truth. "I was waiting for you, and I think I've overslept."

"Here?" he frowns.

"Yeah."

"Come on," he says then, gesturing me to get up, accepting my excuse, "Let's have some breakfast then."

I nod at him and do what he told me so. We walk to the kitchen and silently went through the meal with no other words. Halfway through the end of it, I decided to talk to dad about something.

"I don't see mom recently... Where is she?" I ask him with a steady stare, trying to gouge some reaction out of him.

But as calmly as he did, he answers me with a sincere blank face, "She's out of town for work. Haven't I told you about that?"

"No, you didn't." I simply tell him.

"Oh, well. I must have forgotten then."

"When will she come back?" 

"Next week," Dad answers with a tone of finality. He quickly returns his attention back to the newspaper he's been reading and obviously shutting me out of my questions. But I knew he was already keeping something from me... I could feel it. 

Yet I still don't know how I could get that secret out of him.

"Where's James though? He's been missing recently as well." Dad changes the subject after a moment, catching me off guard. I nervously tried to come up with a laid-back reply as fast as I could.

"He's too busy with college," I hastily say, avoiding to look at dad's face so he won't know I'm lying. "We haven't really hung-out that much lately."

"And you drive Belle to school now?"

Dad was mostly absent this past week to even notice I did drive Belle every day to school since James began attending the community college.

"I do," I say, "And also... I had an interesting meeting the other day."

Dad was still looking down on what he's reading and seems to be not interested in what I am telling him, but I still went on.

"I finally met Mr. Phillip Hoult."

For some reason, those words have caught dad's attention as soon as I said it. He looks up to me with a mixture of surprise and uncertainty, as if he had just heard something outrageous.

"Who did you say you've met again?" he asks in a slow manner, sounding very stern.

"Mr. Phillip Hoult," I tell him back with an innocent face. "James' dad?"

"Honey..." dad's eyes widened as he leans back to his seat, flustered with a worried look on his face, "I think you've mistaken Mr. Hoult for someone else..."

"What do you mean?" I frown at him, feeling entirely confused, "He told me he's James' dad."

"He did?" dad interjects back.

"Well, he didn't directly say it but he basically implied he's his dad. They looked very much alike. He's like an older version of James."

Dad seems to remain silent after I spoke and I watch him look at me with a strange reaction. I am very sure that, that man was James' dad, but now I feel like I've been blindsided somehow.

"He's not Mr. Phillip Hoult, honey." dad says after a minute, sounding very hollowed and dejected. And I didn't quite understand what he meant by that, so I grasp on to what I was very sure of.

"What do you mean he's not? He surely looks exactly like James. You said Mr. Phillip was--"

"Mr. Hoult died, honey," Dad's shocking words drowned me into a much deeper state of shock and confusion. "He died six months ago."

I froze, feeling dumbstruck. 

Dumbfounded. 

Speechless of what dad had just revealed to me. It couldn't be true. And if not because of the sudden ringing of the telephone from the living room, my surprise would have ended in a bigger set of questions. Dad quickly excuses himself to answer the person who's calling while I remained seated at the dining table, still in disarray and anxiety.

Mr. Phillip is already dead? I began reclaiming my thoughts. I took a deep breath and think again. If he's really dead, then who was that man I met the other day? Why does he look a lot like James? Who was he and why did he look so familiar?

I'm so confused and overflowed with too much revelation of things that I feel like I'm about to explode. Now, I just want to drive away and forget all of this. Only if I could.

And suddenly, like a light bulb, blinking brightly inside my head, I found a way out. I could be in a place to shut these confusions out and lucky I was... I already knew where I'd find it. 

Driving Belle towards that favorite spot makes me think back to the days James used to drive me there. I feel a bit nostalgic like it was as if the wind had swung me over here and every feeling I have right now is all blended and mixed. I terribly miss James and I truly wanted to understand him... But he doesn't want me to get in.

I do want him to let me in of that mysterious mind he has.

Dad didn't question me further when I told him I wanted to get out after having breakfast. He gave me this kind of look instead as if he knew what I was thinking and he completely gives me the space I wanted. But to be honest, I don't really think this is what I wanted... Maybe I do needed space, but still, I prefer answers more than anything now. I need the disclosure, the truth and most of all, I need James to be honest with me.

He seems to be keeping a lot of things within him. I don't know if I could still tolerate that kind of hiding in our relationship--since it is already tearing us apart. I wish he could just trust me enough to give me an inch to peek into his head so I could also see what was it that bothers him a lot.

I wonder if he really loves me. These things make me doubt his feelings for me...

Because it definitely hurts my heart to feel like this. It's as if he had never really trusted me that enough. And I was just pushing too much to break his walls, even when he doesn't want me to.

And it sounds so unfair. Because I was the only one who was trying to fight for him. For us.

I subconsciously turn on the radio to calm my nerves and forget about my sadness for a second. Some indie song instantly plays on the speakers, caving my car in a steady rhythm. I didn't really know the song but for some reason, I kind of mumbled dumbly all throughout the whole lyrics of it. I feel like it was meant for me to hear it. The song was about a person who feels so lost and dejected. And it was exactly what I am right now. Lost.

Sadness wrapped me into a tight cocoon as I drive the road in thick and heavy emotions. In the midst of all my singing, I eventually gave up. My eyes watered down and I began crying hard again. But this time, it wasn't because I was so confused...

This time, it was because I was beginning to give up. Yet, the harder I try to even convince myself that giving up is the most rational thing to do, the more my heart still won't give away. It still wants to hope and hold onto that tiny little piece of string that is currently tying me to James while we slowly dissolve apart... 

I really love him so much it's killing me. And this kind of love might shatter my heart so terribly if I lose him this way.

FLASH BACK

"You do know that isn't gonna help, right?"

A male voice distracted me from staring at a tree across the house and I turn to squint my eyes up to a shadowed face looking down above me. The guy blocks the intense brightness of the sun blaring up high, and I have to crane my neck and adjust my vision so I could see his face clearly.

"Who are you?" I ask him, failing to hide the soft hiccup that had come out of my mouth as I speak after crying so hard. I didn't have to feel embarrassed, though. He surely has seen me crying already, so what's the point of hiding anyway?

"I live in the neighborhood," he smugly says back, as if that was something I should know about, "We just moved here yesterday." he pauses and I squinted more but I still couldn't get a better view of his face.

"So, you serious about that?" he suddenly asks me, looking at something down on my chest.

I also looked to that area he's staring at and realize that I was holding a butterfly knife in between of my hands--though it was more like gripping it so hard that my knuckles had turned white. But looking down at the butterfly knife also made the tears come back again as I terribly sob and cried harder. The knife reminded me of Peter. The Peter I had lost.

The Peter who had taken my heart with him.

He had loved this knife since he was seven... It was a gift from his grandfather. And he had given it to me last October. A month before he left.

"s**t," I hear the guy mutters as he moves from my peripheral vision and instantly sits down beside me on the top of the stairs of our front porch.

"You won't do it, right?" he asks me, and something by the way he sounded warmed my chest for some unknown reason.

"What are you talking about?" I counter back, scowling as I stare down on my knees, with the knife still clutched tightly between my pale hands.

"You won't commit the big S?"

The question had caught me off guard that I instantly found myself laughing uncontrollably at what he had just said. It was unexpected. I laughed for so long, so loud that I had almost forgotten all about my sorrow and why I was crying for a minute. Then by the end of it, I found myself staring back to a pair of deep brown eyes gazing intently at me with an intensity that made me want to crawl back and hide my blush.

"Don't do it, okay?" he says when I paused and turned silent. He looks at me with that kind of expression that had suddenly weaken my bones and made my heart skip a beat. I just stare at him for a long while before finally speaking back.

"I won't," I softly reply to him, entirely hypnotized by those eyes, and I hold his stare with my eyes. Then I made an effort to smile back.

"Good," the guy grins, his eyes crinkle, and I know I shouldn't but I felt swooned by his gorgeous face. "It'll break my heart if you do."

It wasn't what any guy would have said to some girl like me... It wasn't totally something we should have talked about after just being acquainted. But the guy was smiling and I was smiling back as well. So, it wasn't entirely a bad meeting after all. If anything else, it was very cute. And that moment would have never be beaten by any romantic movie scene I've watched... It was totally a moment that feels normal but incredibly enchanting.

It was the moment I met the most perfect guy... After losing one yesterday.

The ringing of my phone woke me up from my short slumber as I move to pick it out from my front pocket. I saw the reminder of time on the blinking screen and figured that I had slept for almost two hours on the back trunk of my Belle. I quickly answered the number after the third ring, knowing this person who is calling is someone I wanted to talk to as well.

"James? Where are you?" I worriedly ask through the receiver but all I heard was a faint heavy breathing and soft traffic noises from the other line.

"P-princess..." I groggy voice replies back to me and I frown, "Come... pi...pick me up... P-p-please?"

He sounded in trouble and... insanely drunk.

"You've been drinking?" I chide back.

James' bitter chuckles greeted my snide remark and I try to keep my temper down as I deeply take a breath.

"Where are you?" I asked him instead.

"Some bar..."

He's at Annex.

"I'll be there, just don't move and make more trouble," I tell him and quickly hang up, only to dash towards the driver's side of my truck to drive to where he is.

James is getting more and more succumbed by this darkness that is swallowing him and if he won't let me bring him to the light, I don't what else to do to help him anymore.

I couldn't watch him hurt himself like this... I couldn't anymore. It's breaking me too.

By the time I had parked by the sidewalk near the bar, I already saw James' familiar figure, sitting down near a lamp post. I quickly approached him and crouched down to help him stand.

"Pri...n...ces...s..." he drunkenly states, as he sways side by side only to lean his weight at me when he couldn't hold his balance. I took a step back to carry the both of us and slowly walk him towards the truck.

Once I had finally settled him inside, I waste no time moving to the driver's side to drive us back home. I glance at him every now and then all throughout our trip to check if he's okay or if he needed to drink or piss or vomit. I was worrying so much, trying to hold back my emotions at watching him suffer like this.

He's already ruining his life and it's killing me.

"What are you doing, James?" I softly ask to the silence between us.

After a moment, I saw him move and shifts on his seat, leaning his head against the window. He puffs off a breath and sighs. I turn to look at him for a second and I suddenly feel his hand touching the top of mine that was holding the console.

"Don't leave me, Shai," I hear his faint voice through the low hum of the engine. He sounded tortured and far. "Remember please..."

After those words, I gulped and tried to understand what he meant by that. I had my attention focused on the road, and felt his hand slowly slipping away from mine.

The tears started to pour down by the time I had pulled up on the driveway of our house. I closed my eyes and sob softly. 

This is not going better. I don't know what to do now.

He's breaking my heart. He's breaking it all the way. 

We're ruined.