Dissonance

Copyright © 2014 by Drew Elyse

Cover Design by Sarah Hansen, Okay Creations
www.okaycreations.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduces or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owner.

All rights reserved.

Home - Phillip Phillips

Raindrop Prelude - Frederic Chopin

Hey, Soul Sister - Train

Preaching The End Of The World - Chris Cornell

Details in the Fabric - Jason Mraz

My Skin - Natalie Merchant

1, 2, 3, 4 - Plain White T’s

Falling Slowly - The Frames

Don’t Stop Believin’ - Journey

Make You Feel My Love - Bob Dylan

Overjoyed - Matchbox Twenty

Charlotte Sometimes - The Cure

Bring Your Love To Me - The Avett Brothers

Everybody Talks - Neon Trees

Demons - Imagine Dragons

Look After You - The Fray

Better Man - James Morrison

This is War - Ingrid Michaelson

Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promises - The Avett Brothers

Let Your Heart Hold Fast - Fort Atlantic

This One’s for You - Clarensau

Dust to Dust - The Civil Wars

Not With Haste - Mumford & Sons

All of Me - John Legend

For Bill,

I still miss you every day.

May

I woke to the sight of Eli sitting in a ragged-looking chair. God, I missed him. But, wait. That didn’t make sense. He was supposed to be in Seattle. Why was he here? Where was here?

The beeping and smell of antiseptic seeped into my consciousness, and it all started to become clear. I didn’t look around to confirm my suspicion, though. I was trapped by my brother’s haggard appearance. The brown hair that matched mine stood every which way, a line of unkept scruff covered his jaw, his skin was pale, but what stood out most were his eyes. His eyes were bloodshot, puffy, and weighed down by dark circles. The large, strong man he had grown into looked shattered, and it was my fault.

Neither of us spoke for a long time. My older brother, the man who had given up so much to take care of me, was hurting because of me. He was destroyed because I was such a mess.

I wanted to ask so many questions. What had gone wrong? I had not meant to end up in a hospital bed. Who had found me? My friend and neighbor, Julie, had a key. Had I called her or someone else after the alcohol had started to take effect? I didn’t remember calling anyone. I remembered the fear. I remembered the pills. I remembered the burn of the tequila in my throat. Then, nothing.

“What happened, Charlotte?”

I had no answer for him. I never had an answer for him. It was never my intention to hurt him, but the answers I could give were not going to help either of us. I was ruined, he had to know it deep down by now. How I had been broken did not matter.

A subtle shake of my head made me feel desperately sick. Eli shot out of his chair at the agony on my face.

“It’s okay, Charlotte,” he murmured to me. “It’ll be okay.”

I didn’t respond to that, either. It would not be okay. I would never be okay. I accepted that long ago. There was no point in telling him that, though. He was hurting enough, and I knew that those words were not really meant for me. Eli was suffering, and he needed that reassurance for himself.

Who was I to deny him the hope that I so wished I could take comfort in as well?

But, deep down, I knew the truth.

There was no fixing me.

June

In the aftermath of my “episode” – as the hospital-approved shrink I was forced to see in the aftermath called it – there was no avoiding the fact that Eli was going to continue to be a nervous wreck unless we lived closer to each other. The distance from his new life in Seattle to where I had stayed behind in Chicago was too much for his over-protective instincts to handle. His incessant phone calls made that clear enough. I half expected to hear a knock at the door one day and find him and Alex in the hall with all of their stuff, ready to move in and become my own personal psych watch.

Alex, who refused outright to respond to Alexandra, had been my best friend since the end of my junior year of high school. She and Eli had started dating just about a year later. I could not have been happier that the two of them were together. Both of them had wanted to move away, but they had put it off for a while to stay close to me. They had a life in Seattle now, a life that allowed them both to get away from their pasts. I hated the idea of being the thing that dragged them back, so the idea of joining them on the west coast had started to take hold. Frankly, I missed them both, and I knew it would be better for everyone if I could get Eli to calm down about me being alone. Besides, with my graduate work done, I had nothing tying me to Chicago besides a lifetime of difficult memories.

When I told my overbearing big brother of my imminent plans to move west, the joy and relief he felt was palpable, even over the phone. His excitement was enough to shake off my misgivings about the whole plan. That was until two hours later, when he called back to tell me that he had arranged a place for me to live. His best friend, Logan, who I had heard a great deal about over the last few years, apparently had an extra room. I had no intention of having a roommate. I hadn’t lived with someone else since I had moved out of the dorms. On the other hand, I knew Eli would sleep easier when I wasn’t living alone, and the last thing I wanted to do was sign a lease without seeing the place first. I could deal with having a roommate and give him the peace of mind for a while, at least until I found a decent apartment of my own.

Admittedly, I knew that moving in with Logan was more than a temporary situation in Eli’s eyes, but arguing with him about would get me nowhere. He did not want me living alone anymore, which I guess was my own fault, and he thought of this as the perfect arrangement to avoid that. I was even willing to placate him in this respect – for a while – because quite frankly, the constant concerned check-ins were irritating. Eli loves me, but being treated like a child at 24 is frustrating, regardless of how much love is involved.