Changes, Part 12 (You & Me Series)
Title: Changes, Part 12/? (You & Me-Series)
Author: soulmatejunkee
Fandom: Queer as Folk US
Pairing: Brian/Justin
Timeline: Post 5.13; POV's
Word Count: 2.614
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything. It’s all CowLip and Showtime.
Beta: My lovely mander3_swish - thank you :)
As always: Every comment is welcome. I Love to read what you think. Thanks!
01. Listen to me
02. Trust me
03. Babylon Part 1 | Part 2
04. Find a way Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
05. ...remember what's missing?
06. The Party
07. Thanksgiving 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
08. 1 wedding, 4 rings... 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12
09. The first Webcam Sex Chat
10. The first call
11. Expectations - Happy Valentine | Revenge
12. March 18th 2006
13. Aftermath - 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
14. Be careful what you wish for
15. Changes - 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12
Brian's POV
The whole thing was just surreal.
I had no idea how to feel. Sad? Relieved? Shocked? I hadn’t seen my mother in years; I hadn’t talked to her and now she was dead. Just dead. Gone for good. I also had no idea what Claire expected me to say or do.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. It was a stupid thing to say, but she caught me off guard.
“You’re sorry to hear that?” She shook her head. “You’re such a selfish bastard! Where have you been the last several years?”
“I was right here, and she knew where to find me.” It was easy for me to keep up with her hateful look; I never had a problem standing up to my older sister. We’ve never been that close. Maybe we were closer when we were kids, but the older we got, the more we drifted apart. She was a master of ignorance as she always acted as if nothing happened. Every time our father came home drunk and started to yell and then ended up beating the shit out of me or my mother, she never acted on it. She never asked if we were okay. She ignored it the way my mother did. That was probably the reason why they were close, they just didn’t talk about it.
Claire crossed her arms and looked at me as if I were the devil-incarnate. “What was she supposed to do? She knew you didn’t want to see her. Do you have any idea how hard that was for her?”
I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Oh please!“
“She was sick Brian, very sick. Two years ago they diagnosed her with breast cancer, and she went through a hard time. She could’ve needed you! I would’ve needed you!”
I couldn’t help myself… I had to laugh. It wasn’t funny actually, but it was kinda ironic. I wondered if my mother had found a good reason for god to give her cancer since it couldn’t be a punishment, could it? “She needed me… what for? To blame her sickness on me?”
Claire closed her eyes briefly. “Three weeks ago they also diagnosed her with cirrhosis of the liver that was caused by her drinking. She died last Sunday.”
I just looked at her for a few seconds. “You needed eight days to figure out how to find me and yet you have the nerve to blame me for not being there?”
“I tried to reach you,” she defended herself. “It’s not like you informed me that you had moved and started your own company.”
“Mom knew where to find me. So don’t act as if she would’ve cried her eyes out because her gay bastard wasn’t there for her.” Of course I had never told my mother about the house, but she knew about Kinnetik so it was obvious that they either never talked about me or that my mother never told her how to reach me. But yes, I could imagine that both of them somehow expected me to just show up because, after all, we were family.
“Anyway,” Claire shrugged. “I won’t pay for the funeral by myself. I don’t have the money for it and she had nothing saved.”
“When’s the funeral?” I asked.
“It was last Friday.”
What the fuck? I frowned. “You already buried her?”
“That’s how it works, Brian. Someone dies and you bury him.”
“And then you thought, oh well, wait, I still have a brother who was always able to make some money. I have to find him so that I can blame him for being a selfish bastard because he wasn’t there and let him pay for it.” I felt betrayed. I had no problems paying for the fucking funeral, I also didn’t need to listen to the priest to tell me what a wonderful child of god my mother had been over the years and that god would take care of her soul… but fuck, she had been my mother and… she was dead and I seemed to be the last person informed.
Claire seemed totally unimpressed. She was still standing in front of my desk, her eyes full of disgust. “I’m going to sell the house. Maybe it will pay out what she’s cost me for the last few years. You should get your stuff out of there otherwise it’s gonna be tossed.”
“There is nothing there I want.”
“Yeah, I thought so. The second you left for college you started to act as if you didn’t have a family. I’m sorry your plan didn’t work.”
“Fuck off.”
“She was your mother, too. It’s your responsibility, too. I took care of her all these years; you never showed up to be there for her. Paying for her funeral is the least you can do for her. And for me.”
“I said, fuck off.”
Debbie's POV
When that woman showed up at the diner and told me she was looking out for Brian Kinney I needed a minute to recognize her. It’s been a little while since I had seen her, and she was definitely not a person I ever wanted to see again. She was unfriendly and her eyes were totally cold.
But what choice did I have when she told me that Joan Kinney had died and that she needed to inform Brian about it?
I knew that Brian and Joan didn’t have the best relationship, and I knew it was complicated. She wasn’t easy to handle and I knew she often hurt him, but as a mother, it’s impossible for me to accept that there are mothers out there who simply aren’t able to love their kids just the way they are.
Sometimes I saw her at the church and she greeted me, but we never talked... not since the last time when I told her that Brian had cancer. Their relationship didn’t change after that so I assumed that either she didn’t call him or something had gone wrong again. I never asked him and he never told me.
I always felt sorry for her. Even though she prayed to god practically all the time, she always seemed so distant to everything and everyone. She seemed unreachable.
But death was different. It was final. There’s nothing you can change anymore, nothing you can say, nothing you can do and there’s barely one person on this planet that doesn’t have any regrets. Not even Brian Kinney.
I was willing to admit that the kid had changed a lot during the last few years. He grew up a lot. He was finally able to open up to other people. He had never been a bad kid, he was just totally fucked up. There’s no kid that’s been born that way, it’s always the circumstances that makes them closed off, building walls around their heart and playing it cool all the time. Circumstances like a not-so warm and lovely childhood.
All I knew about Brian and his family and his childhood was what Michael had told me, and it was barely anything good. So I understood why Brian always pushed people away as soon as they became too close to him, I understood why he tried to keep his heart safe - it was already broken in pieces.
But even though I knew him and I understood him, or maybe because of that, I had always tried to protect him from himself because he had really bad ways of handling bad news.
Justin's POV
I finished my last project and sent it to Zack. I was now able to start working on the Rage webcomic.
I was totally excited about it. I had three weeks to create the first issue, and I thought that this was a lot of time, but I was wrong. Anyway, I talked to Michael about it and promised him that I’d show him the first draft as soon as it was ready.
I had done some comic stuff before for some of our clients, but creating Rage - able to move, to speak, to show emotions - was different. I wanted it to be perfect. It had to be perfect. So I spent seven hours creating Rage as a living figure, before I even started with J.T.
It was 7 PM when my back started to hurt from sitting in front of the computer all day so I went back to the house. Brian wasn’t home yet. I called his cell phone. It rang almost ten times before he finally answered it.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” I said while walking through the kitchen. “Still working?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, I don’t want to interrupt you. I just wanted to know if I should order some food? Do you have any idea when you’ll be home?”
Silence… a weird silence.
“Brian?”
“Yeah, look… I really have a lot of work to do for Raymon and I need to clear my head. I thought about grabbing something at the diner and going to Woody’s and Babylon.”
“Oh…” I leaned against the kitchen table, “…okay.”
“I’m going to stay at the loft tonight. It’s easier.”
“Sure.” I tried not to sound as disappointed as I was. It was just Monday night, the second night I was back home and he already needed a time out? I knew that from time to time he would take a time out to go to Babylon, to dance, to fuck… and I would deal with it, but I wasn’t expecting it to happen the first day I was back. “I could come over and we could go togeth…”
“No”, he interrupted me harsh, I almost winced. What the fuck? Had I done something wrong? His voice got softer when he continued. “I really… I just…”
“What’s wrong?” I asked. Something was wrong, obviously. When he had left the house in the morning everything had been fine. Sure he was nervous because of Raymon, but now it seemed that he was annoyed by me. “Brian?”
“Nothing’s wrong okay? I just need some time alone. I’ll see you tomorrow.“
And then he hung up on me. I stared at my cell phone. “Asshole!”
Brian's POV
It had been a while since I was at the loft. It felt cold and uncomfortable, and I wondered when that had happened. I listened to Claire’s messages; two messages by the way, only two. I was waiting for the moment for it to sink in that my mother was dead.
I sat on the sofa and winced when my cell phone rang and looked at the ID. It was Justin. I stared at the phone for a while before I finally answered.
“Hey.”
“Hey. Still working?” He sounded happy, of course he did, why shouldn’t he?
“Yeah,” I lied to him.
“Okay, I don’t want to interrupt you. I just wanted to know if I should order some food? Do you have any idea when you’ll be home?”
I couldn’t take it, him, his voice, this… everything. He was waiting for me. Why the fuck was he waiting for me? Why couldn’t he just be in New York becoming a famous artist and not giving a shit about me?
“Brian?”
I swallowed. “Yeah, look… I really have a lot of work to do for Raymon and I need to clear my head. I thought about grabbing something at the diner and going to Woody’s and Babylon.”
“Oh... okay.”
That hadn’t been the answer he wanted to hear. He was disappointed. I disappointed him. That seemed to be my life’s mission.
“I’m going to stay at the loft tonight. It’s easier,” I said, and yes, I thought about going to Babylon, getting high, and finding a stupid trick I could just fuck to get my fucking head clear - free of all the bullshit!
“Sure.”
It was his second night home, and even though he had told me that he didn’t have a problem with me fucking around or going out, I knew he actually did. He wouldn’t show it… at least for a while, but then he would and then we would end up exactly where we had been before. He would realize that I was nothing more but a fucked up asshole and he would leave.
“I could come over and we could go togeth…”
“No”, I interrupted him and closed my eyes when I realized that my voice sounded very harsh, way too harsh. “I really… I just…”
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Fuck! Fuck this! All of it! Fuck Babylon, fuck Woody’s, fuck the loft, my sister, my mother, fuck it all! I wished I could just disappear!
“Brian?”
“Nothing’s wrong okay?” I tried to not sound annoyed, but it didn’t work and I knew it was not fair, but I was angry, I was pissed off. “I just need some time alone. I’ll see you tomorrow.“
I hung up on him and started at my cell phone again. Then I heard a knock on the door right before it opened.
“I knew I would find you here.”
I nodded and looked down. I didn’t want to see anyone, but I knew it was pointless to try to get rid off Debbie so I didn’t even try. She got in and placed herself beside me and then we sat there in silence for a few seconds.
“Nothing to smoke?” she asked.
I laughed and shook my head. “Already done, didn’t help.”
“Maybe it would’ve helped me.”
“If I would’ve known that you would show up, I would’ve got some more pot.”
“That’s not why I’m here, but it probably would’ve helped,” she said and took my hand. “Listen, I don’t want to tell you how to feel and what to do. I know that you sometimes tend to handle things in a way that isn’t good for you. Like sitting here alone when you don’t have to be alone and shouldn’t be alone either.”
I continued to stare at the floor, but then I felt her hand on my cheek. She turned my head so that I had to look at her. She had this mommy-look, the one I always wanted to see in my mothers eyes, but never saw there, not once.
“Don’t cut him out. Don’t push him away. Let him in.”
She kissed me and then she pulled me down into a hug. And I let her, just for a while.
“You don’t need to be strong all the time,” she said. “It’s unhealthy, can cause stomach ulcers, and you’re way too young for that.”
I had to laugh, just a little, but kept enjoying her hug.
“When’s the funeral?” she asked. “We won’t let you go there alone.”
“The funeral was last Friday.”
She took my face in her hands and looked me straight in the eyes. “She didn’t even give you the chance to say goodbye to your mother?”
I just shrugged. I had no idea if I would’ve gone to see my mother before she died. I hadn’t done that with my father either. There was absolutely nothing left to say between us. “We’ve never had a happy visit so why would there be a nice goodbye?”
Debbie stroked my cheek. “Don’t stay here alone. Come over to my house or go to Michael’s or go home. But don’t stay alone. Don’t seal yourself off and don’t start to rebuild these fucking walls again.”
I could see in her eyes that she was very serious and that she was really worried about me. I couldn’t explain it, that feeling. It felt safe and warm and honest. And so I just nodded.
“Please take care of yourself.”
TBC
Author: soulmatejunkee
Fandom: Queer as Folk US
Pairing: Brian/Justin
Timeline: Post 5.13; POV's
Word Count: 2.614
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything. It’s all CowLip and Showtime.
Beta: My lovely mander3_swish - thank you :)
As always: Every comment is welcome. I Love to read what you think. Thanks!
01. Listen to me
02. Trust me
03. Babylon Part 1 | Part 2
04. Find a way Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
05. ...remember what's missing?
06. The Party
07. Thanksgiving 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
08. 1 wedding, 4 rings... 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12
09. The first Webcam Sex Chat
10. The first call
11. Expectations - Happy Valentine | Revenge
12. March 18th 2006
13. Aftermath - 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
14. Be careful what you wish for
15. Changes - 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12
Brian's POV
The whole thing was just surreal.
I had no idea how to feel. Sad? Relieved? Shocked? I hadn’t seen my mother in years; I hadn’t talked to her and now she was dead. Just dead. Gone for good. I also had no idea what Claire expected me to say or do.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. It was a stupid thing to say, but she caught me off guard.
“You’re sorry to hear that?” She shook her head. “You’re such a selfish bastard! Where have you been the last several years?”
“I was right here, and she knew where to find me.” It was easy for me to keep up with her hateful look; I never had a problem standing up to my older sister. We’ve never been that close. Maybe we were closer when we were kids, but the older we got, the more we drifted apart. She was a master of ignorance as she always acted as if nothing happened. Every time our father came home drunk and started to yell and then ended up beating the shit out of me or my mother, she never acted on it. She never asked if we were okay. She ignored it the way my mother did. That was probably the reason why they were close, they just didn’t talk about it.
Claire crossed her arms and looked at me as if I were the devil-incarnate. “What was she supposed to do? She knew you didn’t want to see her. Do you have any idea how hard that was for her?”
I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Oh please!“
“She was sick Brian, very sick. Two years ago they diagnosed her with breast cancer, and she went through a hard time. She could’ve needed you! I would’ve needed you!”
I couldn’t help myself… I had to laugh. It wasn’t funny actually, but it was kinda ironic. I wondered if my mother had found a good reason for god to give her cancer since it couldn’t be a punishment, could it? “She needed me… what for? To blame her sickness on me?”
Claire closed her eyes briefly. “Three weeks ago they also diagnosed her with cirrhosis of the liver that was caused by her drinking. She died last Sunday.”
I just looked at her for a few seconds. “You needed eight days to figure out how to find me and yet you have the nerve to blame me for not being there?”
“I tried to reach you,” she defended herself. “It’s not like you informed me that you had moved and started your own company.”
“Mom knew where to find me. So don’t act as if she would’ve cried her eyes out because her gay bastard wasn’t there for her.” Of course I had never told my mother about the house, but she knew about Kinnetik so it was obvious that they either never talked about me or that my mother never told her how to reach me. But yes, I could imagine that both of them somehow expected me to just show up because, after all, we were family.
“Anyway,” Claire shrugged. “I won’t pay for the funeral by myself. I don’t have the money for it and she had nothing saved.”
“When’s the funeral?” I asked.
“It was last Friday.”
What the fuck? I frowned. “You already buried her?”
“That’s how it works, Brian. Someone dies and you bury him.”
“And then you thought, oh well, wait, I still have a brother who was always able to make some money. I have to find him so that I can blame him for being a selfish bastard because he wasn’t there and let him pay for it.” I felt betrayed. I had no problems paying for the fucking funeral, I also didn’t need to listen to the priest to tell me what a wonderful child of god my mother had been over the years and that god would take care of her soul… but fuck, she had been my mother and… she was dead and I seemed to be the last person informed.
Claire seemed totally unimpressed. She was still standing in front of my desk, her eyes full of disgust. “I’m going to sell the house. Maybe it will pay out what she’s cost me for the last few years. You should get your stuff out of there otherwise it’s gonna be tossed.”
“There is nothing there I want.”
“Yeah, I thought so. The second you left for college you started to act as if you didn’t have a family. I’m sorry your plan didn’t work.”
“Fuck off.”
“She was your mother, too. It’s your responsibility, too. I took care of her all these years; you never showed up to be there for her. Paying for her funeral is the least you can do for her. And for me.”
“I said, fuck off.”
Debbie's POV
When that woman showed up at the diner and told me she was looking out for Brian Kinney I needed a minute to recognize her. It’s been a little while since I had seen her, and she was definitely not a person I ever wanted to see again. She was unfriendly and her eyes were totally cold.
But what choice did I have when she told me that Joan Kinney had died and that she needed to inform Brian about it?
I knew that Brian and Joan didn’t have the best relationship, and I knew it was complicated. She wasn’t easy to handle and I knew she often hurt him, but as a mother, it’s impossible for me to accept that there are mothers out there who simply aren’t able to love their kids just the way they are.
Sometimes I saw her at the church and she greeted me, but we never talked... not since the last time when I told her that Brian had cancer. Their relationship didn’t change after that so I assumed that either she didn’t call him or something had gone wrong again. I never asked him and he never told me.
I always felt sorry for her. Even though she prayed to god practically all the time, she always seemed so distant to everything and everyone. She seemed unreachable.
But death was different. It was final. There’s nothing you can change anymore, nothing you can say, nothing you can do and there’s barely one person on this planet that doesn’t have any regrets. Not even Brian Kinney.
I was willing to admit that the kid had changed a lot during the last few years. He grew up a lot. He was finally able to open up to other people. He had never been a bad kid, he was just totally fucked up. There’s no kid that’s been born that way, it’s always the circumstances that makes them closed off, building walls around their heart and playing it cool all the time. Circumstances like a not-so warm and lovely childhood.
All I knew about Brian and his family and his childhood was what Michael had told me, and it was barely anything good. So I understood why Brian always pushed people away as soon as they became too close to him, I understood why he tried to keep his heart safe - it was already broken in pieces.
But even though I knew him and I understood him, or maybe because of that, I had always tried to protect him from himself because he had really bad ways of handling bad news.
Justin's POV
I finished my last project and sent it to Zack. I was now able to start working on the Rage webcomic.
I was totally excited about it. I had three weeks to create the first issue, and I thought that this was a lot of time, but I was wrong. Anyway, I talked to Michael about it and promised him that I’d show him the first draft as soon as it was ready.
I had done some comic stuff before for some of our clients, but creating Rage - able to move, to speak, to show emotions - was different. I wanted it to be perfect. It had to be perfect. So I spent seven hours creating Rage as a living figure, before I even started with J.T.
It was 7 PM when my back started to hurt from sitting in front of the computer all day so I went back to the house. Brian wasn’t home yet. I called his cell phone. It rang almost ten times before he finally answered it.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” I said while walking through the kitchen. “Still working?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, I don’t want to interrupt you. I just wanted to know if I should order some food? Do you have any idea when you’ll be home?”
Silence… a weird silence.
“Brian?”
“Yeah, look… I really have a lot of work to do for Raymon and I need to clear my head. I thought about grabbing something at the diner and going to Woody’s and Babylon.”
“Oh…” I leaned against the kitchen table, “…okay.”
“I’m going to stay at the loft tonight. It’s easier.”
“Sure.” I tried not to sound as disappointed as I was. It was just Monday night, the second night I was back home and he already needed a time out? I knew that from time to time he would take a time out to go to Babylon, to dance, to fuck… and I would deal with it, but I wasn’t expecting it to happen the first day I was back. “I could come over and we could go togeth…”
“No”, he interrupted me harsh, I almost winced. What the fuck? Had I done something wrong? His voice got softer when he continued. “I really… I just…”
“What’s wrong?” I asked. Something was wrong, obviously. When he had left the house in the morning everything had been fine. Sure he was nervous because of Raymon, but now it seemed that he was annoyed by me. “Brian?”
“Nothing’s wrong okay? I just need some time alone. I’ll see you tomorrow.“
And then he hung up on me. I stared at my cell phone. “Asshole!”
Brian's POV
It had been a while since I was at the loft. It felt cold and uncomfortable, and I wondered when that had happened. I listened to Claire’s messages; two messages by the way, only two. I was waiting for the moment for it to sink in that my mother was dead.
I sat on the sofa and winced when my cell phone rang and looked at the ID. It was Justin. I stared at the phone for a while before I finally answered.
“Hey.”
“Hey. Still working?” He sounded happy, of course he did, why shouldn’t he?
“Yeah,” I lied to him.
“Okay, I don’t want to interrupt you. I just wanted to know if I should order some food? Do you have any idea when you’ll be home?”
I couldn’t take it, him, his voice, this… everything. He was waiting for me. Why the fuck was he waiting for me? Why couldn’t he just be in New York becoming a famous artist and not giving a shit about me?
“Brian?”
I swallowed. “Yeah, look… I really have a lot of work to do for Raymon and I need to clear my head. I thought about grabbing something at the diner and going to Woody’s and Babylon.”
“Oh... okay.”
That hadn’t been the answer he wanted to hear. He was disappointed. I disappointed him. That seemed to be my life’s mission.
“I’m going to stay at the loft tonight. It’s easier,” I said, and yes, I thought about going to Babylon, getting high, and finding a stupid trick I could just fuck to get my fucking head clear - free of all the bullshit!
“Sure.”
It was his second night home, and even though he had told me that he didn’t have a problem with me fucking around or going out, I knew he actually did. He wouldn’t show it… at least for a while, but then he would and then we would end up exactly where we had been before. He would realize that I was nothing more but a fucked up asshole and he would leave.
“I could come over and we could go togeth…”
“No”, I interrupted him and closed my eyes when I realized that my voice sounded very harsh, way too harsh. “I really… I just…”
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Fuck! Fuck this! All of it! Fuck Babylon, fuck Woody’s, fuck the loft, my sister, my mother, fuck it all! I wished I could just disappear!
“Brian?”
“Nothing’s wrong okay?” I tried to not sound annoyed, but it didn’t work and I knew it was not fair, but I was angry, I was pissed off. “I just need some time alone. I’ll see you tomorrow.“
I hung up on him and started at my cell phone again. Then I heard a knock on the door right before it opened.
“I knew I would find you here.”
I nodded and looked down. I didn’t want to see anyone, but I knew it was pointless to try to get rid off Debbie so I didn’t even try. She got in and placed herself beside me and then we sat there in silence for a few seconds.
“Nothing to smoke?” she asked.
I laughed and shook my head. “Already done, didn’t help.”
“Maybe it would’ve helped me.”
“If I would’ve known that you would show up, I would’ve got some more pot.”
“That’s not why I’m here, but it probably would’ve helped,” she said and took my hand. “Listen, I don’t want to tell you how to feel and what to do. I know that you sometimes tend to handle things in a way that isn’t good for you. Like sitting here alone when you don’t have to be alone and shouldn’t be alone either.”
I continued to stare at the floor, but then I felt her hand on my cheek. She turned my head so that I had to look at her. She had this mommy-look, the one I always wanted to see in my mothers eyes, but never saw there, not once.
“Don’t cut him out. Don’t push him away. Let him in.”
She kissed me and then she pulled me down into a hug. And I let her, just for a while.
“You don’t need to be strong all the time,” she said. “It’s unhealthy, can cause stomach ulcers, and you’re way too young for that.”
I had to laugh, just a little, but kept enjoying her hug.
“When’s the funeral?” she asked. “We won’t let you go there alone.”
“The funeral was last Friday.”
She took my face in her hands and looked me straight in the eyes. “She didn’t even give you the chance to say goodbye to your mother?”
I just shrugged. I had no idea if I would’ve gone to see my mother before she died. I hadn’t done that with my father either. There was absolutely nothing left to say between us. “We’ve never had a happy visit so why would there be a nice goodbye?”
Debbie stroked my cheek. “Don’t stay here alone. Come over to my house or go to Michael’s or go home. But don’t stay alone. Don’t seal yourself off and don’t start to rebuild these fucking walls again.”
I could see in her eyes that she was very serious and that she was really worried about me. I couldn’t explain it, that feeling. It felt safe and warm and honest. And so I just nodded.
“Please take care of yourself.”
TBC