Dying to Forget by Trish Marie Dawson Page A

still chewing his food and walks across the room to turn on his radio. Punching In A Dream is just ending and I tap my missing hands on my missing knees. I love this song.
    After dinner Sloan washes his dishes and though I encourage him to wipe them off and put them away, he leaves them out to air dry on a large hand towel instead. So I move on to the next chore. It takes a half hour of my nagging to convince him to do laundry but eventually he caves and drops his nearly full bottle of laundry soap on the top of the heaping hamper with obvious displeasure.
    The laundry room is a short walk downstairs and across the courtyard. Thankfully it’s empty when he enters, because there are only two sets of machines. He over-loads one of the washers and doesn’t bother to separate the colors and I try hard not to complain…he IS doing his laundry after-all. Plus, he has his iPod going, so I get to lose myself in music while he works.
    Just as Sloan slams the washer lid down, a woman in her thirties comes into the small room and thumps her laundry basket onto the counter. A young boy about five years old is entwined around her legs, obviously shy around Sloan.
    “Are you using both machines?” She asks him with a smile.
    “Oh, no. This one’s free.”
    He gestures to the empty washer and steps aside so she can dump her clothes into it. The boy is still wrapped tightly around her but sends a quick smirk in Sloan’s direction. I feel a stirring in him as he watches the pair.
    “Thanks!” She says before leaving the room as her boy runs into the corner of the courtyard. A plastic truck is waiting for him in the dirt border of a flower bed.
    Sloan watches them through the window for a few minutes and I know he is thinking about his mother. He misses her but he’s also very angry with her still. She abandoned him in a sense, left him when he needed her most.
    No wonder you have no functional female relationships.
    He snorts, as if thinking of something funny but I can’t catch what it is. Eventually he turns away from the window with the view of the mom who is sitting near her son as he plays with his dump truck…carefully maneuvering around the planted Gerbera Daisies so as not to disturb them. Sloan finds an old magazine to flip through and when the buzzer on the washer goes off, he hops down from the counter and tosses his clothes into the dryer.
    It will be at least an hour before they are dry, so we head back up the stairs to the second floor of the complex. Of course Sloan plops down onto the couch and turns on the TV. I wait until he’s completely engrossed in a restaurant makeover show before I start my borage of questions.
    Who are your friends?
    What are your passions?
    Can you ever forgive yourself for Mick’s death?
    Why the gun, Sloan?
    I wait patiently as his mind ponders through the answers slowly. Friends…he trusts no one. Very Mulder of him, but I get it. Passions – that’s difficult…he remembers taking guitar classes when he was younger but after Mick…well, everything sort of stopped after the accident. Other than random sex with strangers, he hasn’t had much of a passion in years. But he likes nature, he likes being outdoors…which is why he doesn’t mind using the bike as his main form of transportation. His mind skims directly over the topic of forgiveness without pause. The gun…he spends a considerable amount of time pondering this question. I’ve heard the same commercial for toilet bowl cleaner three times before he’s done.
    You need to get rid of the gun, Sloan.
    “No, not yet.”
    If you keep it, you won’t heal. You have to let it go.
    “There’s nothing to let go of. No one needs me here.”
    And there it is. The real reason…he feels abandoned, needed by no one… alone .
    That’s not true. I’m sure it’s not.
    “There’s nothing for me here. No one.”
    You have me, I’m here with you.
    He drags his shaky hands down his face and sighs heavily. “This talking to