Gerard had persuaded me to let him drive us back to his house- the house he shared with Mikey and Frank, though he assured me that no one was home. I felt a little scared. After all this time, Gerard was just gonna willingly tell me why he was so horrible. It felt like there was a catch somewhere that I was missing.

With shaking hands, Gerard opened the front door to the house and we stepped inside, still drenched from the rain. We were so gonna get sick from this. Gerard turned to face me, but never looking at my face. I could tell he was fighting with himself – letting me inside his head was gonna be a huge step for him. Slowly, he raised his hand to take hold of my wrist. I trembled inside, but I let him take me upstairs to his bedroom, “I don’t want any interruptions when I talk to you.” Was his excuse.

When he told me to sit on the bed, I froze. Had I been completely stupid to come here? Was he really gonna tell me anything? Was he just gonna take advantage of me like last time?

Gerard saw my apprehension, “What’s wrong?” He asked softly.

I blurted out without thinking, “If you’ve just brought me here for something else, Gerard, then I’m leaving right now.” They were my first words since the cemetery.

He looked from me to the bed and realized, sighing, “No. That’s not why you’re here.” Annoyance filled his voice. I exhaled, relieved, until I saw him staring at me, his eyes dark, “But if it was you wouldn’t leave… You enjoyed it far too much last time to turn away.”

I was shocked by his tone and I stuttered, “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Gerard marched towards me, and I stumbled back until I was up against a wall, my heart rate increased. Once he reached me, he pulled my legs apart and stood between them, his hands on my hips. I was frozen, scared to move, my hands were trembling. Gerard leaned forward and spoke into my ear, “If I wanted you, I’d have you.” His voice had chills running through me, “I know how your body reacted to my touch and I know how much you liked it, so don’t kid yourself if you think you’d just walk away.” He let go of me quickly, leaving me breathless, “Sit down.”

I did as I was told, though I was feeling uncomfortable from the wet clothes, but Gerard didn’t appear to care about that. He sat down at the top of his, setting a pillow against the headboard and leaned back. He removed his shoes, and prompted me to do the same. I then sat with my legs crossed at the foot of the bed, watching.

Gerard stared at me, but I couldn’t tell what he was feeling. My heart rate was in overdrive. I didn’t know what he was gonna tell me, and I was starting to wonder if I even wanted to know now.

“Samantha, when I start talking, I don’t wanna hear a word out of you. Any questions you have, you can ask when I’m finished.” I nodded and he looked away from me. He exhaled hard, before taking another breath… and starting, “When I was a kid, I was fine. I had a great family – I loved my parents very much, and Mikey and I were best friends as well as brothers. I had nothing to complain about, my upbringing was perfectly normal. I mean, I had problems with bullies in high school, but I wasn’t the only one, and I learned to deal with it well… Until tenth grade. I was sixteen and sorta seeing this girl. I really liked her, but didn’t think she liked me as much, so being the stupid kid that I was, tried everything I could to change her mind, which of course only pushed her away even more, as I wasn’t being true to who I was.”

He stopped for a moment, thinking, “When I first started seeing her, I didn’t know she was already drinking and doing drugs. It wasn’t anything that she developed a habit of, but something she liked to dabble in at parties, but if I had known about it, I would never have tried to start something with her. But by this point, I was already involved. I started going to all the parties with her, I started drinking and would occasionally smoke a joint. I just wanted her to think we had stuff in common and she would finally see me as the guy she wanted. It couldn’t last though and eventually, I caught her making out with some senior, but I decided that I actually wasn’t too upset about it. By this point, I was drinking more, and the occasional joint turned into more, though still nothing too serious.

“It was four months before my eighteenth birthday that everything changed, so fucking much.” I flinched at his harsh tone, “I developed a problem. I started missing school to get drunk and high with friends… Well, I say friends… It was during the middle of the day when I went home after partying all weekend, yet I still walked in through the front door with a bottle of vodka in my hands. I could barely see straight and I was so high. It would have been a good idea for me to just go to bed and sleep it off, wake up in the evening with a hangover, but no. I continued to drink, I smoked some more and I put on a movie. How I managed to do that without breaking anything, I’ll never know. I was completely fucked!

“The only reason I can even remember what happened that day was because it was the day my parents died.” I gasped, though I didn’t say anything. Gerard didn’t speak for a long time, and I wondered if he was even going to finish his story.

I glanced at the clock. I had been twenty minutes, and no one had said anything, but I wasn’t going to rush him. I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket, but ignored it. I had already ignored four calls while Gerard talked.

“I remember thinking I was gonna get into so much trouble,” he finally continued, “I was so drunk, so high, playing a movie at full volume, and had made so much mess trying to make something to eat. Broken eggs on the floor, bread in the microwave… It was funny at the time. But when I heard a car pull up at the house that I knew was my parents, I sobered only a little. I turned the TV off, left the food where it was and hid in the coat closet. If it wasn’t for what happened, I would have fallen asleep right there.

“My mom and dad were just talking about the usual things when they saw the mess in the kitchen. I remember my mom crying, my dad put his arms around her. Mom said something about how she wished she could help him. I didn’t who ‘him’ was at the time, but looking back on it, I realized they knew what I had been doing… There was a loud knock at the door which startled my parents and dad went to answer it. A guy pushed his way into the house with a gun. I watched all of this from the closet; not really believing was I was seeing. There was a commotion, mom screamed but she was told to shut up. This guy wanted money and a lot of it. I didn’t know what this guy was talking about, I mean, yeah our house looked pretty nice but we didn’t have money, there were times that my parents struggled to make ends meet. We aren’t a well off family, we’re… average, I suppose. This guy wanted money, but there was nothing to give him.

“My dad tried to stop him from threatening my mom, which got him a blow to the back of the head. My dad fell. I didn’t know if he was okay. My mom just trembled in the corner; she didn’t know what to do with herself. She screamed at him that there was no money. The guy hit her, too. She fell. The guy picked up some things he thought was of some value and left. I was shaking by this point, I was a mess. I tried to get up, calling out for my parents, hoping they’d answer. But I hit my head on something in the closet and I passed out.”

Gerard stopped for a moment and covered his face with his hands, but he wasn’t crying, “When I woke up, my head hurt. I mean, it really hurt. I had suffered from many hangovers in the past, but this was something else. Maybe because I hit my head, I don’t know, but everything I did made it worse, even breathing was too loud. I wondered why I was in the coat closet and struggled to get out of it; I didn’t want to hit my head again. I saw that the entire house was clean, so clean. The kitchen looked as if no one had ever cooked in it. All that mess I made was gone. I thought I had dreamt everything, and that my parents were actually alright. I didn’t think anything else of it. After I had cleaned myself up, there was a knock at the door – a soft knock. I almost didn’t hear it. It was a police officer. He told me that my parents had been involved in a car accident and had died from their injuries. I don’t remember anything else he told me. I remember after he left, I looked around the living room and things were missing. This only confirmed that what I had seen earlier wasn’t a dream… But I didn’t understand; a guy had come here for money and hurt my parents, but then all of a sudden they ended up in a car crash!” He was angry now, but this time I didn’t flinch.

“When Mikey came home, I didn’t know what to do. He had been at a friend’s house – Frank’s house – so the officer hadn’t informed him of the news. It was MY job to do it! Mikey was fourteen at the time, how could I tell my little brother his parents were murdered in his home? So I told him what the officer had told me… I lied to my little brother to protect him. He was devastated, of course. If he knew the truth, it would break him. To this day, he still doesn’t know. You’re the only other person in the world that knows, Samantha. And I’m only telling you because it’s to do with you.”

I furrowed my eyebrows, confused and hurt, “What?” What did I have to do with Gerard’s parent’s death?

I thought he ignored me, and continued with his story, “It was a few months later, and I was still a mess. I had recently turned eighteen and using any excuse to drink and get high. I had recently turned to cocaine. I was blaming myself for my parents dying. If I wasn’t so fucked up, I probably could have helped them. I have to forever live with the fact that my parents were disappointed in me for being fucked up, and live with the fact that it’s because I was fucked up that they died and this guy had gotten away with it… Almost.

“I was on my way to visit my grandma, and I saw a familiar face. It was that guy, the bastard that killed my parents! I parked my car and ran directly to him, pulling him into a nearby alley. I started yelling at him that I knew who he was and what he did and that he wouldn’t get away with it. He thought I was talking shit but I could see he was scared. He started telling me that I was just a drunk kid who didn’t know what he was talking about, and then he ran off. He jumped into his car. When I later watched the news, he had died in a head on collision with a truck. I cried when I heard. Mikey and my grandma just thought it brought back memories of when my parents had died, but still I only knew the truth.”

I still didn’t understand what any of this had to do with me, “How am I involved in this? You say it like it’s my fault all this has happened, but I was only a child at the time.” My voice kept breaking, tears in my eyes. What was going on?

“Damn it, Samantha! Shut up! I was getting to that,” he shouted, “I watched the news and they said that the guy’s name was Timothy Willis.” I gasped when I heard the name, “Sound familiar?” He asked, knowing the answer.

I covered my mouth with my hand as I started crying. This couldn’t possibly be true, could it? Had my uncle really killed Gerard’s parents? I felt sick, “You’re lying.”

“You wanna know why you think I hate you so much, Samantha, well here it is! Yes, it was your uncle that killed my parents. And the cherry on top of the cake? Although your parents didn’t know what this guy was gonna do, and they were not involved in any way… They tried to cover it up when they found out!”

“YOU’RE LYING!” I screamed. There is no way this is true. How dare he say these cruel things? “You really hate me that much, Gerard? That you would lie about my parents? What is wrong with you?”

I tried to get up and leave, but Gerard stopped me. He climbed across the bed and wrapped his arms around me, holding me still. I cried against his shoulder, trying to get free, but he was too strong. He talked softly, “I’m not lying, Samantha. I can be a pretty sick guy, but this IS the truth… I’m sorry that this has hurt you, but it was time you knew.” I cried more, knowing in my heart at last that it was all true. What was I going to do now? How could I live in the same house as them? How could I even look at them?

Gerard pulled me onto his lap and stroked my hair while my tears slowed to a stop. Everything had changed now. Where do I go from here? Where do Gerard and I go from here? It’s impossible for our ‘relationship’ with each other to be as it was now I knew this.

“I don’t hate you, Samantha… I never hated you. I just hate your family, and I took it out on you… I’m sorry.”

He held me for the longest time until I heard someone come home. Gerard told me it was Mikey. I lifted my head, “Gerard, you need to tell Mikey the truth.” He shook his head and I sat up and held his hand with mine, “He deserves to know what really happened. He’s your brother.” We stared into each other eyes, mine trying to convince him that this was the right thing to do.

Eventually, he nodded and got up off the bed, leaving his room.

Notes

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