Fractured from the Fall

Falling Apart

"Come on Grant, you've had enough," she said more sternly.

He pulled the flask from his lips and again wiped his face with his sleeve. With how much he was swaying back and forth, he could barely manage to get the liquor in his mouth.

"I've had enough?" he laughed maniacally.  "I've had enough?" he repeated, but this time his sinister laugh was gone and was replaced with anger. "What are you, my mother?"

It was like a flip had switched from vulnerability to anger in a split second and Lily realized she wasn't talking to Grant anymore. The boy who stood before her was a drunken sad hurt shell of who he used to be. She barely recognized him. He was mean Grant now. It was a side of him she'd never seen before and while it hurt her to see him this way, she wasn't going to tolerate being spoken to that way.

"Don't be a jerk Grant. I'm trying to help. You're wasted. You're gonna regret this."

"I'm wasted? I'M wasted. Ha!" he mocked her. "That's rich, coming from the queen of the keg stand."

Lily was shocked by his comment. He'd never spoken to her like this before. This was a Grant she didn't recognize, or maybe she just hadn't been paying attention. Maybe this was who Grant was now, but she'd been too blinded by her feelings for Ford to notice that he was unraveling.

"I'm not the enemy Grant. I'm trying to help."

"Oh yeah. How? By bringing me my homework and snuggling on the couch. We've barely kissed in the last couple months. What kind of a girlfriend are you? I get more action from my sister!"

Lily let out an audible gasp and then fell silent. It was true, but it was cruel. Grant wasn't himself, and as mad as she was at him for how he was speaking to her, she knew she couldn't say anything. She deserved to be on the receiving end of his wrath. She deserved a lot worse. Grant didn't need to know about her betrayal in order to make Lily feel like shit. She'd been beating herself up for months.

She stood there quietly, holding back tears, not over what he had said, but over his demise. It pained her to see him this way. He was at the top of his game, the king of the world. He had fallen so fast and it was a long hard fall from the top. 

Grant was losing his temper in a way she'd never seen before, a way that scared her. It must have scared him too, because he immediately hung his head down in shame. He saw the hurt in Lily's eyes and it quickly quelled his anger. He dropped to his knees, releasing the now empty flask as it fell to the ground. He cradled his head in his hands. She'd never seen him so weak and so vulnerable. It crushed her.

She approached him slowly and knelt down next to him, placing her hand upon his back. She rubbed him gently.

"I'm sorry," he said, looking up at her with eyes rimmed in red.

Lily had never seen him cry. Come to think of it, she'd never seen him with any emotion other than happy or at the very worst, stoic.

"It's okay," she said, pulling him towards her.

He collapsed into her lap.

"It's okay," she repeated, stroking his hair. She felt his body relax into hers.

A snowflake fell from the sky and then another and another, but Lily didn't budge. She sat there holding him in the middle of the 50 yard line. It was the closest she'd felt to him in a very long time, maybe the closest she'd ever felt in their entire relationship. In that moment, she realized that maybe their relationship fizzled because he'd never fully let her in, but neither had she. It was all surface level, and things on the surface have a way cracking.