His Paper Heart ✓

•22|His New Home

"HE CALLED ME THE SICK GIRL," I say. "It's not what he said, it's how he said it. So I punched him in the nose. It hurt like hell. The swelling in my knuckle won't go down and it's been hours since I hit him. I think I broke my hand."

"Well normally, you don't punch a person in the nose with your thumb hidden away in your fist. You do that, your thumb will snap into two."

Gray adjusts his biker gloves on properly and exhales. He lands his large hand on the dinning table and exhales deeply again, scratching the side of his chin with the other hand. He doesn't look good and Gray always looks good, effortlessly. Lilac bags hang under his eyes, sitting bleary-eyed and unshaven in the dinning chair in front of me. He tries to breathe through his mouth but instead, he coughs and coughs.

"Gray, what's wrong?" I whisper, alarmed.

He coughs again. "I'm fine. . ." he mutters.

"Do you want some water?"

He shakes his head and says sourly, "Just tell me how your day went? That matters to me more. What happened after you punched him?" he rubs his eyes with the back of his hand and runs his fingers through his messy hair with a stifled groan.

"Alleya threw a rock at him and we went to her house to have dinner."

"So why did you call me to pick you up and bring you home?"

"I missed you and besides, I didn't want my mom to see my hand and elbows," I whisper. "What's wrong? Do you have a fever?"

"Yeah." he sighs. "It's called nicotine withdrawal. I'm trying to quit smoking but it's a lot harder than I thought."

"Why are you trying to quit?"

He stares at me blankly then says, "Because genius, it will kill me if I do not stop."

"No I meant, what suddenly changed your mind?"

"Not wanting to die."

"What can I do to help?"

"For starters," he pauses, "you can stop asking stupid, obvious questions."

"Geez," I whisper.

He sighs. "Sorry, I didn't—" he sighs again.

I back off my chair and walk around the table to where he's sitting. I take a seat beside him, not knowing whether to touch him or not. "I will ignore that because you're not feeling well." I rub his back repeatedly. With another flustered apology, he puts his head on my shoulder and closes his eyes. "It's okay," I say, wrapping my arm around his shoulder.

"You feel so comfortable," he mutters.

For a long while now, I have been watching him, listening to his chorused breathing as he sleeps, his head still on my shoulder. I hear counselors are good for these kind of things —battling with an addiction— but if there's one thing Gray would hate, it would be a middle-aged man or woman trying to poke inside his brain with a series of mysterious mind games and psychological screw ups which tends to drive you more nuts as he tells you how you should feel. Then again, who am I to talk when I don't understand myself how talking to a stranger can be helpful. Who am I? When I was thirteen, my parents thought best to introduce me to therapy. It was not the best feeling in the world, albeit people's heart-wrenching lyrics in the therapist's honor. I could not seem to shake the thought of him not understanding me. He just told me what he learned from his many books and sat behind his boundaries as my soul disintegrated into nothingness.

My mother plops down in the seat opposite us and snaps me back to the present. She clasps her fingers on the table and gives me a ferly look. A look I know quite well. "Well," she begins, "can I ask what's going on with Gray? He doesn't look so good."