Daryl

Twenty years old

The buzz was fading and I was crashing hard. The anger ignited my veins, spreading rapidly throughout my entire being, even though I knew I had no right to even feel that way. Charlie looked back at me. She was looking at me with an expression I never thought I'd see. I could tell she wanted to cry and I was the one who was making her feel that way. 'Then stop it, you fuckin' idiot!' A sober voice in the back of my mind was shouting at me. I ignored it.

"I think all this time you were my friend because you felt bad for me. That was it, wasn't it?" I spat the words at her like acid.

She recoiled, the look on her face falling and I knew I had done it. I had broken her. "Yes, Daryl. That's exactly it." She said, her words so quiet I could barely hear them. She turned her back and began walking down the driveway.

"That's right, Charlie! Walk away, run as far away from me as you can get. Just like you always wanted!" I yelled after her retreating back.

"Go to hell, Dixon!"

Her words stung hard than I thought they would. In just a matter of minutes, I had somehow managed to let my selfishness get the best of me and run off one of the only people who ever really gave a damn about me. I ran my hands through my hair, tugging hard at the strands. I was pissed off at her for leaving, but I was more pissed off at myself for feeling that way. I knew better than anyone I was wrong. I knew why she needed to run off, but it felt like she was leaving me here to rot. Charlie was better than this place. I had known that the entire time I knew her. She was too smart, too god damn beautiful. She deserved more than this and she sure as hell deserved better than me as a friend or anything else. I wanted more than anything to just feel happy for her like a normal person. Instead, al I felt was a toxic jealousy mixed in with the sinking feeling that I had just ruined things between us for good.

When I glanced up again, she was gone, already disappeared onto the road and out of sight. I felt the urge to go after her, to run down the driveway and pull her back. To stop her and tell her the real reason why I hated that she was leaving me behind. I wished my mouth hadn't gotten the best of me. The very last thing I wanted was her leaving and taking with her the notion that I wanted her out of my life for good. Yet I had done a damn good job of making it seem that way. I waited for my feet to move, but I stayed still, staring down the darkened driveway. I was too damn stubborn for my own good sometimes, and I knew I would never run after her no matter how badly I wanted to. I couldn't go tell her that I hadn't meant a single word that had come out of my mouth. I was no good at sorrys.

Charlie had told me at the beginning of the summer she was leaving. We didn't talk much about it and I think that was because neither of us wanted to think about it. But when I pictured her leaving, it had happened in my head much differently. The things I had said to her now had fallen off my tongue so venomously when all I really wanted to tell her was..well, it was something I didn't know if I'd ever have the guts to say out loud.

I turned back around and kicked furiously at the tire of the rusted old truck in the driveway. "Fuck! God fuckin' damn it!" I hurled the words into the air, though there was no one even there to hear them. I aimed a few more kicks at the truck before I felt my foot start to go numb. I limped around to the back of the truck, slouching against the tailgate.

"What the hell is goin' on out here?" Merle's voice suddenly rang out. I glanced over my shoulder to see him emerging from the garage and heading towards me.

"None of yer' god damn business." I muttered savagely.

"Is that so? Why the fuck are you beatin' the hell outta my poor truck, you moron? What? Ya' had a little lover's spat with the princess?" Merle said. "Why don't you grow a pair and git' the fuck over it!"

"Shut the hell up!"

"Why, watcha gon' do 'bout it?" Merle challenged, egging me on.

"I said shut the fuck up, Merle!" I repeated. I shoved him backwards and he stumbled a few steps, laughing.

"That's more like it. I knew you wasn't all pussy." He grinned.

I ignored him, turning my back and glowering.

"Lemme guess…yer' all bent outta shape cause Miss Charlie is leavin' and ain't takin' ya with her. And she's gonna forget all 'bout you once she meets some hotshot city slicker. Am I right?" He asked gloatingly. I heard him pop open a can of beer and take a swig.

"Somethin' like that." I mumbled.

"You'll git over it. Give it a week or two and you'll be over her, too." He said. "And ya know the best way to git over one chick is to get under another one." He clapped hand onto my shoulder. "So how's about we go out and find some broad to git' ya' laid, huh?"

"No thanks." I shrugged his hand off my shoulder and headed down to the edge of the driveway, leaving him alone. I wasn't in the mood to deal with Merle and his asshole comments or his damn idiotic ideas. None of that was helpful and all it did was piss me off more.

I reached the end of the gravel driveway and swung left, heading away from home and away from Charlie's house, where she was no doubt holed up in her bedroom crying about what a jackass I was. Worst of all, she would probably never speak to me again, which I wasn't quite sure I could handle. My entire life Charlie had been there. Through absolutely everything she had been the one constant, unwavering figure. And now, I'd never get the nerve to tell that girl how much she meant to me. Once again, I had ruined everything and now I was going to be forced to watch yet another person I cared too much about walk out of my life for good. All because I was too chicken shit to man up and tell her what I had really wanted to say and why I was so broken up about her leaving.

The idea of saying anything like that at all scared the crap out of me, which was why it had been so much easier to just get angry and push her away instead of telling her the truth. I had done the exact opposite of what I had meant to. Who was I kidding, though? Charlie WAS too good for me. Even if I had managed to get the words out, what were the chances of her feeling the same way? She was too good for me. I had always thought so and I knew everybody else in this god forsaken town did too. I heard the way they talked and muttered when they saw us together. They were always wondering what a girl like her would be doing hanging around a backwoods, fucked up redneck like me. They were right. What did I have to offer her? Nothing.

I kept walking, not really thinking much about where my feet were carrying me and in what direction I was headed. All I wanted to do was to get as far away from everything as I possibly could. Maybe if I walked far enough, I'd be able to ditch all those uncomfortable, aching feelings that had gotten me into this mess in the first place. Feelings. Merle would beat the shit out of me if he knew I was thinking about things like that. Yet what the hell was I supposed to do? I tried hard to ignore them. I tried to pass them off as something else, anything else. But it was pretty hard when suddenly all I could do when Charlie showed up was think about how damn pretty she was, especially when I made her laugh. It turned my stomach, giving me an uneasy, nervous feeling I had never felt before. I would have given anything to go back to thinking about her as just the girl that lived next door, just someone to hang around and crack jokes with and nothing more.

It all made me feel like a god damn moron. Maybe Merle was right and I was going too soft. Or maybe it was just my own fault that everybody was always leaving. At some point or another they always left. I guess there was just something about me that made people want to get away from as me as far as they could. The last person I had ever expected to drive off, though, was Charlie. The thought of not having her in my life at all anymore, though, made me feel sick to my stomach in a way I never thought I would. I kicked at a rock in my path, watching it coast off into the distance. God damn that girl. This was all her fault. She made me love her and now that feeling was going to tear me apart from the inside out.