Page 146 of My Lovely Tragedy
“Yeah. Shit.” I tug at my hair until my scalp protests. Then, I pull harder. And I know if I wasn’t gripping so tightly, my fingers would be trembling. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not right.”
“It is what it is, B. Just tell us. We want to know. We’ve spent weeks terrified.”
I nod, blinking through the dryness burning my eyes. “Right.”They deserve the truth, but the truth…
It shatters and ruins.
And I’ve already lost enough. I can’t…
“I can’t lose you guys, too,” I rasp, watching as water pools across my eyes, rapidly blurring everything around me. The firstplinksplashes on my thumb. The second falls onto my jeans.
A hand clasps my shoulder, another around my forearm. I stiffen, but when the hand moves over my arm in a soothing up-and-down motion, I let my eyes close, relishing in the itching burn as my scabs dislodge from their clots. In the renewed sting.
“You aren’t gonna lose us, dude. We’re family.”
“Family,” I whisper. I don’t even know what that means anymore. But I do know that all families have conditions, and I’m pretty sure mine’s gonna tip the scale.
With a breath that feels so heavy withTobias,I keep my eyes scrunched to picture him in front of me. Just a repeat of when I bared it all to him. I hope they… somehow don’t hate me after.
Tobias listened to my disgusting verities andunderstood.But then again, he was alwaysmore.
“In the beginning, it was fucking great. You guys remember. Thehighof finally being noticed. Of getting a fucking record deal—it was everything we ever wanted. I rode that high for a long time, or at least, I tried to. But that second tour took it out of me. I wastired.But I still gave it everything I had because you guys deserved it all and more.
“Your passion and love for the music is what has kept me going, but I’ve been lost for such a long time. Just… burned out. And most days, just finding the energy to force myself out of bed takes everything I have, but I didn’t want you guys to know. To see me falling apart.” I pull in an unsteady breath as my legs jiggle restlessly below me. I focus on the rapid clack of my feet on the floor.
“But you saw anyway. On the days I couldn’t even roll over, let alone stand on two feet. And I’m so fucking ashamed, you have no idea.” I scoff. Drag the back of my hand over my wet nose. “God, theshame.Knowing I turned out just like my mom. That was the worst part. Worse than letting you all down. Then wanting—” I cut myself off. Sink my teeth into my tongue.
“But everyone still wantedme.The voice of the band, like I have any part in anything other than writing the songs and singing into a mic—which Benji does nearly as much as me. Their fuckingvoices.Always screaming my name and reaching out formewhenever I’d walk closer. Like they’d actually want someone like me.
“But no. I’m just a fucking vessel, and they don’t even see it. Because I stand on the stage, and they stand below, looking up. Like I’manyoneworth looking up to. All because they relate to the pain and tragedy I sing about, and they think they know… but no one really does.” I blink, seeingnothing.“No onedid.”
I tug up my sleeve, just to catch the smallest glimpse of my scars. The new ones overlaying the old. Red and raw and puffy. Perfect carves in my porcelain skin.Did you wish to die?His voice, so soft and gentle, travels through me like a slow, tender shiver. It pinpricks every hair.Tobias…I follow a horizontal line across the diameter of my wrist. Over the bruises permanently etched. Dig my nail into the divot of split skin, still healing itself back together.Why’d you do this to me?
My name swells in long intervals. Slow and foggy at first. A muffled drag. A humming vibration. Clarity.
“Brooklyn.”
I jerk up, blinking widely as I scan the room. It comes in unfamiliar flashes. But the recognition comes an instant later—and with it, disappointment and despair.
Tobias sent me away—to a home I never had and away from the only one I’ve ever known.
The one he gave me.
The one he fucking took back.
“Are you okay?” comes in a distorted wave. I turn toward the noise, blinking through the flashes.
“He looks like he’s about to throw up,” someone mutters.
“You gonna puke, dude?” I shake my head, but maybe I shouldn’t have done that. The motion rattles my brain, swelling the gurgling in my gut.
“I’m going to get a trash can.” Footsteps softly thud across the apartment. A hand slides down my back, over my spine. Back up in a gentle swipe. Nothing like Tobias’s usual pressure—and that realization is… pathetic.
Something slips between my legs, which I spread further apart to see. A plastic sack inside a small, neon green trash can stares back at me. And I laugh. It bubbles out of me, so loud it echoes throughout the room.
My chest fills with the gurgling vibration so strong, tears slip from the corners of my eyes. I double over, clutching my stomach, shoulders wracking with the force of it.
“Uh…”
