Fall for Me by Claudia Burgoa
My entire worldcollapsed when I was twelve. It was a Tuesday morning. Two airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center towers. Those are the commonly known facts to outsiders. There are no mentions about Charlotte and Christopher Everhart being inside the North Tower at the time. I watched as smoke poured out of the towers while the raging fire consumed the World Trade Center. Everything was deadly quiet while I waited to hear some news about my parents. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t talk, and before I knew it, I was under the bed waiting for my brothers and my parents to come home. It was my oldest brother, Harrison, who arrived with Fitz along the way.
“Scott is at school, he’s alright, buddy.”
“Mom and Dad?”
He pressed his lips together, shaking his head. “They will always love you, Hunt.”
His words were brief, but my heart shattered into a billion pieces. I lost my balance at that moment. I became unmoored. That sense of being afloat, not being able to hit the bottom or reach the top, became a constant. After that day, I couldn’t leave my room without having a massive panic attack. I spent more time under the bed than any other place in the house. Fear that my brothers would die gripped my heart.
I started talking to myself, there’re no voices in my head. It was a way to fill the void and the silence that surrounded me after my parents died. It took six years, endless therapy sessions, and other treatments to convince me to leave my room and have somewhat of a normal life.
It’s been ten years since I looked around, searching for something or someone to fill the loneliness from my heart—the missing piece to replace the hollow space in my soul. No one is interesting enough to let into my life, past the barriers I built long ago. Feelings are messy. Relationships are messy and easy to lose. I’m afraid to lose my loved ones again. Falling in love is tempting. Loving a woman like Willow Beesley is heaven and hell. She’s the beautiful fire I want to touch even when I know the blazing flames might destroy me.
I should hide under my bed. Instead, I’m fighting for us.
