The life and lies of Matty and I - J.Black

An illness and a breakdown

A few weeks would pass in which Veronica would leave her sister and Jake alone to work on the refurbishment of the pile of scrap they were calling motorbikes. She saw no real interest in the project, seeing it more of a waste of time and money than anything else. She also had no real urge to willingly spend more time than necessary with Bella. 

The relationship between the sisters only became more and more strained as time was progressing. It did not seem to help their relationship as Bella appeared to be getting better. And Veronica knew she was not supposed to blame her sister for being ill, she was not supposed to hold resentment against her sister for the way she was behaving because Bella was unwell. But she did, Veronica found herself struggling more and more with the way Bella was as the months continued to drag on. She found herself questioning how Bella could go outside of the house and seem not quite back to how she was beforehand, but she could appear so much better around anyone who was not family. But the moment she was home, it was like they were back at square one and nothing could be done to make things better. 

Veronica knew the likelihood that they could ever really be 'true' sisters like she had dreamed was so far out of reach now that it may have been in another galaxy. And she held a lot of blame for that upon Bella's behalf. Something she knew she should not do because it was an unrealistic standard to expect them to gel so instantly considering they had spent most of their lives raised apart. But she could see step siblings who were in no way related to one another get on better and quicker than the pair of them. And she was jealous. She was jealous of a lot of things, and the problem was that Bella was at the centre of most of it. 

That was the real reason that Veronica stayed away from the bike building, she was jealous. She was jealous of all the time the pair were spending together, this new found mutual interest they shared. Veronica was never really into mechanics or cars or bikes like Jake was and with Bella coming around and suddenly sharing this interest, Veronica knew not where she stood with Jake. He was her best friend, her rock, her everything. And the more time she spent sat stewing over the jealousy she was feeling did she realise that the boy meant a lot more to her than just being her best friend. 

And she could feel him slipping out of her hands and into those of her sister. 

That was what hurt the most. 

That she had given everything for her sister and yet Bella just seemed to keep taking from her. She had taken Veronica's reputation, she had taken her sacred time with her best friend. Heck she had taken the freedom of Veronica's teenaged years away from her the moment she had arrived and dumped Matthew on the younger girl. Sure Veronica would not take away, nor go back and change the decision she made to step up into that mother role that the young boy needed, that stable parent he needed when nobody else wanted to. But there was a part of her, that resented the fact that she even needed to do so in the first place. She loved Matthew, she loved that baby like he was her own in the first place, like she had personally grown him and given birth to him. But she still had a niggling part of her that wished that things had been different. 

Thoughts that she squashed as quickly as they came to be. But thoughts that still existed. And as she watched as Jacob pulled away from her becoming unwell, she felt as though she had once again lost out to her sister. Veronica had initially been informed that Jake had contracted Mono, the kissing disease, which had slowly been passing its way throughout the reservation of which he lived upon. Yet she had not heard from him for nearly two weeks. He had stopped responding to her text messages, no longer returned the calls she left upon his voicemail and never seemed to be around when she called his home phone. 

Once again her sister had won and she was left to pick up the pieces. 

And as she fought with herself to try to explain to the baby she called her son, just why the man he had taken to seeing as his father was no where around and was likely not going to come back in the same manner, Jacob was fighting another battle of his own.