The next morning I didn’t mind staying in the living room from very early hours after my nightmares kept me up once again. At around three am, when the house was completely quiet, I had gone downstairs without having to worry about accidentally waking Jack up. For once I didn’t have to go back later in the morning to make sure he wouldn’t become suspicious and would think I slept next to him the entire night. I didn’t have to think about it at all this time.

It was why I lying was on the couch at ten am, the TV remote in my hand, while the TV itself was on quietly. The sound was on just loud enough for me to have background noise while I watched the screen, but not loud enough for me to hear exactly what was going on. But what was the point of hearing if you weren’t actually really watching anyway? I was just sitting there to pass time, not because I actually wanted to watch TV, as evident by the fact that I kept changing the channel without checking what was on first.

There wasn’t anything productive for me to do anyway, or at least there was nothing I wanted to do. I might have still been in my pajamas, but I had already gone out for a little while at six am. That did not mean I suddenly felt up for working or anything else. The fact that I hadn’t had enough sleep the past weeks also contributed. I could physically feel myself falling asleep occasionally, only for me to shoot awake again. So, I was practically acting like a zombie in front of the TV.

I nearly forgot that somebody else still lived in the house. Nearly.

“Taco, what the hell are you doing here! You should be in the guest room keeping Ireland company!” Jack’s voice ushered, sounding like he was somewhere on the stairs, the meowing only making his presence more obvious.

“No, no. You’re going to wrong way! Upstairs not downstairs.” He panicked next and his footsteps thundered down quite loudly, probably rushing behind the sneaky little animal that rarely did what it had been instructed to do.

“Taco, you’re not making my case any be-- oh…” He suddenly came to a halt when he saw me on the couch mindlessly switching between channels endlessly.

I snorted lazily, my head rested on my arm, which was propped up on my elbow. “You would have spoiled your own secret plan there if you hadn’t spoiled it yesterday.”

“What?”

“You might want to check if I’m actually asleep next time.” I pointed out while the screen was still flashing every time a new program and description showed up.

“Oh.”

My thumb still continued to press the same two buttons over and over again. Up a channel, down a channel, up three channels, down two. Cooking shows were on for a second, only to change to some telemarketer program, only for it to go to some kids’ cartoon. I probably had gone to more channels than we even knew we had.

But Jack decided to break my routine. He was suddenly stood in front of me and snatched the remote out of my hand. Keeping hold of it, he stared me down for a little while as if expecting to get an answer to an unasked question. I just laid my head down on the pillow and watched as Discovery Channel played some crappy reality show.

“How about we go pick up your medication at the pharmacy?” He suggested with a fake smile I could see out of the corners of my eyes. If I had been him, I wouldn’t have dared to bring that subject up again. And I could tell he was a bit skeptical about it as well. His posture changed when I didn’t say anything for a while.

But I actually had a reasonable answer this time. I raised my hand over my head and pointed backward towards the kitchen. “Already done so.”

Yeah, that was right. That six am thing I did? I went to the pharmacy and got the medication that had been prescribed to me the day before. The only reason I did it was because I had nothing better to do. It meant I was going to keep myself busy for at least half an hour. There was no way in hell I actually did it because I felt like I needed those pills to make me feel better. A diagnosis that had been made this fast did not count to me, especially if I felt like it wasn’t the right one.

“Oh, wow, I’m impressed. Did you already take your dosage today?” He asked next. For some reason, it seemed like he considered that as me coming to terms with it and forgiving him for what he had done. But, boy, it was far from it. The only reason I was acting this way wasn’t just because I was sleep deprived, but also because I was still pissed as fuck.

“Yep.” I popped the ‘p’, not feeling even a little guilty for lying right to his face. Of course I didn’t take it, and I was never going to. I just knew that not having gotten them would have caused me more trouble. At least now I could fake it.

“Good.” He smiled honestly this time and picked up my feet from the couch before sitting down himself and putting my feet back on his lap.

I wasn’t going to let that happen, though. Almost immediately, I sat up straight and all the way on the other end of the couch. However, that didn’t feel like enough; just having to deal with his presence aggravated me. So, what else was there to do than to hum unemotionally in response and get up.

“Isle…” Jack sighed and tried to reach out for my hand, but I moved it away before he could grab it. “I know you might still feel like shit now, and it might even get a little worse in the beginning due to the medication, but eventually it will help a lot. Trust me, ok? I’m here for you.”

“Yeah, right,” I scoffed as I went to go upstairs. “How about we do it differently? You leave me alone and we work further from that. Ok? Ok. Cool.”

“Come on, don’t be like that.” He jumped off from the couch, but didn’t start taking steps towards me yet.

“Why don’t we just blame it all on the supposed depression I have so neither of us has to take any responsibility. A nice easy way to get out of it all, am I right?”

“I did not do it for that reason at all.”

“Oh, yeah, it’s not like you forced me to get a bullshit diagnosis not even a month after Cam died. Makes total sense!” I screamed while going up the stairs, but that didn’t mean it was over.

“Hey, I’m not the bad guy here!” Jack yelled back, no longer retaining his anger.

“Well, who is, Jack? Huh? Who the hell is!?”

Before I got another reply, I had gone into the guest room and slammed the door behind me. The sound echoed through the house, and it wouldn’t surprise me if you could hear it if you were standing outside. I made sure to lock the door this time, not wanting him to sneak inside once again. This was it.

“You’re acting like a fucking teenager!” I heard Jack bellow from the foot of the stairs.

But I didn’t dare to snap something back. I was already sitting on the floor with my back against one of the walls, tears streaming down my face. My voice was going to be way too shaky to retort something strong.

And that was how I was left all by myself while Cam’s death replayed in my mind over and over again like a never ending film created especially to torture me.

Notes

Here's that shitty writer's block chapter I was talking about before. I have a plan for three more chapters and I'll be stuck again. So.... I hope this gets better.
Anyway, it's a filler because having the next chapter right after last chapter made no sense. The problems of trying to condense the story. I can tell you already, this story is going to be way longer than I wanted it to be.
Countdown to seeing ATL live: exactly seven days.