Unloved (The Unlucky Ones #2)

by Marley Valentine

Because people lie and people leave. People always leave. People always leave me.

I should’ve touched him. Not just today, but every day. I should’ve told him how I feel. I should’ve. I should’ve. I should’ve.

“Sammy,” he says again, his voice a little more steady. “I don’t think…” He momentarily squeezes his eyes shut before looking at me again. “Sammy, I can’t hear anything.”

It’s been four years of pretty much radio silence between the two of us. No visits on the holidays, no weekly FaceTime calls, no daily texts. He’d tell you he’s giving me space after knowing how much he hurt me by leaving, and I would say he just flat out abandoned me. Potato, potahto.

Shifting my body in frustration, I try to turn over, but pain courses through me, my shoulder and elbow throbbing in protest. I grunt as every bone and muscle aches, but instead of hearing the sound echo around the room, I feel the rumble at the back of my throat and the clench of my jaw, but I don’t hear anything.

We’ve been best friends since our first day of college, and I think I was already in love with him on the second. It’s stupid and going absolutely nowhere, but I can’t shake it. I know he doesn’t feel the same, because he told me exactly that, but my heart feels safer being caught up in his unrequited love than ever giving it to someone else.

I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to run the risk of needing my brother. I want to hold on to my anger toward him, because that is the only thing I want to feel.

I’m overwhelmingly tired, my mind and body on the verge of complete exhaustion, but I’m too scared to sleep. The quiet is too much. I can’t hear anything, my anxiety is on high alert, and my mind cannot accept the fact that I can’t hear those small little squeaks and creaks that urge you to wake up when something is going on around you. I don’t want to think about this being permanent. I don’t want to think that thought into existence, but doing that requires even a sliver of hope. And that is something I don’t have.

I don’t want his stupid apology. I don’t want his pity visit. There isn’t a single thing I want from him, except for him to stay gone. Because if Frankie is gone, then it means there’s nothing wrong. But Frankie’s here, with his stupid apology and pity visit. Frankie’s here… and everything is wrong.

I need to know that everybody has an ugly side, because the happy ever after feels so fucking out of reach, I can’t relate. But being on death’s door… I can relate to that.

“The truth is, there is no magic fix,” she says. “And the definition of happy is different for everyone. Do I believe being sober will make you happier? Controversial take? No, I don’t. But do I believe that your addiction is robbing you of all the ways you could be happy? Absolutely.”

I am Samuel Hart, in love with his best friend, living in denial and so fucking full of regret.

When we were reunited in the group home, I’d tried so hard to be the brother with no baggage, like everything before that moment to ever happen to me, never existed. Worried that if I was too much, Frankie would put me in the “too hard” basket. He was my saving grace. He was my one-way ticket out of hell.

He shrugs nonchalantly, like even if the answer is yes he wouldn’t care, and I hate that. I hate that he’s so secure and so stable that nothing shakes him.

“What am I mad at?” I roar. “Do you know what it’s like to feel yourself boil over in anger and to know you’re screaming and not be able to hear it? Do you know what it’s like to wake up from a concussion and realize you can’t hear a single fucking thing? “And not only am I deaf, but it’s also genetic and nobody knew because nobody gave a shit.” I grab the Jell-O cup that’s been sitting on the tray and throw it across the room, causing it to splatter against the wall. “Because once again, nobody gave a fuck about me.” I slump against the pillow in defeat and throw my arm over my eyes, my breathing shallow and labored. “I can’t do this, Frankie,” I say, the words catching on a sob. “I can’t fucking do this.”

I know well enough it’s all a front, and for every photo where someone is smiling and living their very best lives, there is a version of them that is imperfect and sometimes struggling. I know that, but I still crave the normalcy of it all. I don’t want to stand out or be different; I want to blend in with the crowd any way I can.

I leave out the part where I deserved to die, and that almost every day since, I’ve woken up wishing he finished the job.

“My dad pays for everything so when I die from an overdose, nobody can look at him and say he didn’t do everything he could to help me.”

“And your sister?” Somehow he knows the answer, but I speak into my phone and send it to him anyway. “I’m not allowed to have a relationship with her.”

On one hand, hope keeps you going, but on the other, nothing hurts more than the loss of it.

“You’re just so in sync with each other,” I admit. “And your eyes do this thing where you follow the other’s every move.” His lips lift in a smirk at my words, and I find my own mouth mirroring his.“You’re totally in love with him aren’t you?” This time when the car stops, the look in his eyes and the smile, wide across his face, actually take my breath away. “I’ve never told anyone that before,” he breathes out, like he’s relieved to share his secret. “I hate to burst your bubble, but you didn’t tell me, I guessed.” Playfully, he shoves my arm. “Shut up.”

It always seems like an expectation that in order to move forward, you need to split yourself open and let yourself bleed for others to acknowledge your suffering.

I don’t want to argue with him any more than I like to see him struggle to adjust, so I have to trust he knows what his limits are and when he’s reached them. Slowly shifting our focus, I follow his lead and look around for Rhys, but he’s nowhere to be found. But when I look at Lennox again, his expression has changed from panicked to a little bit sheepish. His hand is still in mine, so I squeeze it expectantly. “Okay, there’s a good chance he’s already left.” Confused, I raise my free hand, in a what the fuck are you talking about gesture, and Lennox laughs. Loud and unexpectedly. Even though I have no idea what’s so funny, his laughing is contagious and I can’t help but join in. When he finally manages to catch a breath, he sighs, a smile still lingering on his face. “One minute I’m panicking, and the next you’re talking to me in facial expressions and shrugs, and I understood every one,” he explains, his voice holding a little bit of incredulity. “I didn’t expect that. Just caught me off guard, that’s all.”

I want to kiss him. I want to cradle his face in my hands and finally press my lips to his. I want to finally tell him how I feel about him, without saying anything at all.

I’m about to relay another message to Lennox when he just shakes his head at me. “I don’t know how I know, but to answer your question, I don’t think he’s left yet.” I speak into the phone anyway, our smiles matching. “So, you just know what I think now?” “Apparently.”

Right now I’m in limbo, my head in Samuel’s lap, and I don’t want to move. I don’t want to face reality or try to work out my future. I just want to be here, where it’s safe. Where I know he will keep me safe.

If losing my hearing has taught me anything, it’s that change holds all the power. Change is the pinnacle of my fear, my truth, and my pain, but I also know that with change there is hope. But hope just feels a little too hard to find these days.

Firstly, I just want to remind you, you don’t need to make anyone feel comfortable when deciding on which way to communicate. You don’t need to make your hearing loss easier on somebody else.

There were many things I hated about being a kid in the foster system, but this right here is the biggest blow of them all. To not know your family’s medical history and be completely blindsided by the discovery, makes me hate my parents even more. If there was any more proof I needed that I was brought into this world unloved and uncared for, this is it.

My thoughts are confirmed when Rhys doubles over, laughing at me. He’s breathtaking when he smiles, and the ability to bear witness to it is the only thing that soothes the sting of knowing I’ll never know what his laugh sounds like.

“I love that only you say my name that way,” I say into the speaker. “Like I’m yours.” I press send on the message, my body shaking with anxiety. I did not intend for any of this to happen, but I won’t take it back unless he wants me to. “Are you?” he asks. “Mine?” I speak my truth into the phone and send it. “I’ll be whatever you want me to be.”

Even though my gut knows he feels something for me, I really never expected him to make the leap. And Rhys… Rhys is the sun after a rainy day.

“I heard the story loud and clear,” I say. “I heard about the brother who fucked up. I heard about the brother who apologized. I heard about the brother who has a disease and is seeking help. I heard about the brother who loves his sister unconditionally.” I make sure to hold his stare. “You know what I didn’t hear about?” With unshed tears in his eyes, he expectantly waits for me to continue. “I didn’t hear anything about a brother who needs to be the family’s punching bag.”

I will never be whole. I will never be healed. I’m just Rhys the addict. I’ll never be more, and I’ll always be less.

But despite the lack of words, there is no physical distance between us. We can’t keep our hands off each other, because Samuel’s hands know what mine do. They know how Rhys feels. They know how he loves to be touched. They know what it’s like to hold him. These fingers have felt the flutter of his pulse. And his heart has beat steadily under my palm.

I grab Lennox’s hand, shaping it into a fist and then rub it clockwise over my chest. “You don’t have anything to be sorry about,” he says into our makeshift cocoon. “We just want you to be okay. But if you’re not okay, we still want to be around for that too.”

Our voices bounce off the walls as the sound of skin slapping skin creates an erotic symphony. The three of us in perfect synchronicity. And it’s not just sex. It’s the way we feed off each other, the way we bleed for each other. It’s the perfection from the very beginning of seeing someone for the very first time and not needing any reason or any rhyme to know in the marrow of your bones that they were made for you. It’s the heartache. It’s the tragedy. It’s the downfall. Mine is theirs and theirs is mine. I reach around and squeeze Lennox’s leg, letting him know I’m too close to crawl my way back.

I know I’m only twenty-two, but the one thing foster care did teach me was the difference between a house and a home. I’ve lived in a lot of houses. Came and went. Hated and loved. But Samuel and Rhys? They are unequivocally my home. I’ve never felt more settled, more supported, and more me than I do with them. Sometimes I think I may have lost my hearing, but I gained them, and there is no sound in the world that I need more than I need them.

This time I’m the one who follows it up with the sign, making sure Rhys feels it, making sure he knows that my love for him is unconditional. That my love for him is everywhere and in everything. It’s as permanent as his pulse, beating every second of every day. The three of us love differently. The way we show love and the way we receive it. But it’s the presence of love in its entirety that makes any of this possible at all.

There is no happy medium. There is just happy. Find it. Be it.

“I love you,” he says, reading off the screen. “I love you both. I love you individually. I love us all together. All my todays are for you, and all my tomorrows are because of you.”

“I’ll love you when it’s desperate and dire. I’ll love you when it’s beautiful and boring. I’ll love you from this breath to the next, and for every breath after.”