Word Count: 997

“Do you want to talk about it?” he heard Ross’s voice ask.

This was a familiar scene.

Paris sat in the passenger seat, hunched over with his hands on either side of his head, eyes closed against everything except the pain he could never make go away.

He hated arguing with Chris. With Chris’s temper and Paris’s stubbornness, arguments had always had the potential to be bad and out of control before, but now that they weren’t as together as they used to be it was always so much worse, even if the only major blow up came from Paris instead of Chris, even if it ended without too many hard feelings between them. When the pettiness was gone and rational thought returned, there was always forgiveness—and that was, in some ways, the worst thing of all.

Paris didn’t know how to hold any of it against Chris, not like the grudges he held against other people.

He wondered if that’s what the problem was, if things would be easier if he could hold onto the anger, or if that’s what love did, if it soothed the frustrations and made forgiveness possible.

“No, I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

He shook his head but all it did was send his mind swimming in a sickening fashion, and so he stopped and sat very still in the hopes that it would go away.

He felt hot all over, and dizzy, and his stomach was flipping around like it wanted to jump right out of his gut, probably up through his throat to pass through his mouth and make a mess everywhere. He could already feel the back of his throat burning, but he couldn’t tell if it was due to a rising sickness or the thick emotions that had been coming in steady waves, forward and back and forward again, never leaving him alone long enough for him to recover.

Paris swallowed it down as best as he could, but the more he tried the worse it became.

“You sure you want me to take you back to his parents’ house?” Ross asked. “I can take you to your mom’s if you want.”

“No,” Paris said again, a little more firmly, “I don’t want to go to my mom’s.”

Maybe it was only making things more difficult by staying with Chris’s parents. Maybe there should have been a cleaner break. He could have stayed with a friend, or spent some time with his mother, or found a small place of his own, and maybe things would have been better. Maybe it would have been easier and he wouldn’t have found himself trying to hold on so tightly, unwilling to give up even when he didn’t know how to fight for it anymore. He could have taken some time to himself, used it as an opportunity to get his head on straight without surrounding himself with Chris’s family and Chris’s things.

But now… after everything… with his father gone and everything in so much upheaval, he wanted something that was familiar—not his mother’s new house that he barely even knew or a friend's place where he might not always be completely welcome. He wanted comfort and understanding. He wanted to surround himself with things that he loved and people who loved him, and try to ignore everything beyond it.

After a long day, after a fight, after a string of disappointments, he wanted to be around people who he knew still cared about him, who gave him patience and taught him hope, not alone by himself in his own place where wasting away completely would have been much easier, or feeling like a nuisance to his friends who had their own lives to live.

Maybe he was weak, or maybe somewhere inside he enjoyed the pain because he thought it was all that he deserved.

For being a terrible son, or a terrible friend, or just not being good enough for anything.

“Are you gonna be okay?” Ross asked, once they’d crossed through the gate and pulled in to the long drive up to the Gallos’ house.

Paris didn’t know how to answer the question so he just nodded his head and pretended like that was enough.

“I can walk you to the door,” his friend offered.

“No,” Paris said. He pulled his hands from his head and reached for the handle on the passenger side door, unlatching his seatbelt at the same time.

“Okay…” Ross said, sounding wary. “Then… I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Paris nodded again and spilled out of the car, dragging his bag with him. He thought he could hear Ross trying to say something else, but Paris closed the door on him and rushed up the low front steps, ascending them on wobbly legs as his head kept spinning.

The heat grew thicker, the nausea stronger.

He dropped his bag in the foyer and found one of the bathrooms on the ground floor, falling to his knees in front of the toilet without turning on the light as he began to heave.

Light footsteps tapped against the tiled floors, too light to be Beau and too indistinct to be Momma. When a figure appeared in the doorway, Paris didn’t need to look to know who it was. The voice clued him in well enough.

“Moooooom!”

Paris heaved again and heard more footsteps, the ‘click-click-click’ of heels, but everything was dark and fuzzy and he couldn’t even think of an appropriate excuse, could barely even make himself move.

Sometimes, if he listened hard enough in that moment between consciousness and unconsciousness, Paris thought he could hear his father’s gravelly voice, see his disappointed face, and Paris knew that he was failing to do what his father had told him to—he wasn’t fighting, he wasn’t trying, and he felt so close to giving up.

Defeated, Paris set his forehead against the cool rim of the toilet and waited for an end.