Clarity

7

OLIAS

I'm not sure how long I've been here. But I found myself upstairs in one of the vacant rooms with my hands buried into her brown hair— Brown hair? No, this is blonde. This is Jasmine under me. Not Clarity.

I open my eyes, not to a soft-featured, brown-eyed girl but to the cold, blue-eyed, topless one below me. Kill me now.

"I know I'm stunning, but are you going to fuck me, or are you gonna stare?" Jasmine annoyingly says. Her voice makes me cringe, like nails on a chalkboard. Clarity's voice is soft like clouds even when she snapped at me earlier.

What am I doing here? What if something happened to Clarity? She's never gone to a party, I'm sure, and I felt her alone like a dick.

My breath quickens at the thought of someone touching her or her being in danger. And before I even realize it, I'm sliding my jeans back on.

"Olias, what the fuck!" Jasmine shouts. Shut up, for the love of God.

I ignore her, throwing my shirt back on and opening the room door.

Walking out, I collide with someone's chest, causing me to step backward. Before I could curse the person out, I soon realized it was Michael standing in front of me. An urgent expression sits on his face.

"Dude, so glad I found you. That chick, Clarity—"

"What's wrong with her? What happened?" I exclaim, walking closer to him. My chest heaves, fuck, I'll never forgive myself if she's hurt.

But Michael shakes his head, "No, she's..." he trails off.

" What ?!" Can he spill it the hell out already?

He turns around. "Just follow me."

I huff, walking quickly behind him down the stairs to the first floor, where the music is prominent, and the drunks are in quantity. I shove people out of my way, receiving glares afterward, but I couldn't care less. My eyes scan the crowd for Clarity, my heart pounding against my rib cage so hard I think it might break through.

We reach the kitchen, which is pouring out with people cheering; the kitchen's never this crowded.

Michael turns to me, pointing inside. Tracing the path of his finger, I see exactly what everyone is cheering for—or, more so, who .

Clarity standing on the island in the center of the kitchen, her skin glossy with what I assume is alcohol or sweat as she dances to the music. Her tight dress is ridden high on her thighs, and pink panties show to all the thirsty guys in the kitchen, eyeballing her like she's a piece of meat.

She laughs, turning oblivious to it all. Her ass is covered by the thin material of her dress, showing to the crowd, her hands trace up the side of her body, with her head thrown back.She looks hot, so fucking hot. But she's not for show, and she's definitely drunk.

I push through the crowd roughly. "Get the fuck out of the way," I hiss until I reach the island table.

I climb onto the counter with Clarity, covering her with my body. "Shows fucking over. Get the fuck out of the kitchen!" I shout over the music, cupping my hand around my mouth to project my voice.

Once people see me, their eyes widen, connecting the dots between me and Clarity.

"Olias! What are you doing!" I hear Clarity ask behind me.

I glare down at a guy biting his lips as he watches Clarity, and then I snap, "What the hell did I just say?" My jaw tightens, and his eyes whip at me.

He raises his hands. "Sorry, man, I didn't know she was your girl."

"I'm not his girlfriend! I love Jonah, okay?" Her words slur into a mesh of nearly inaudible sounds. Jonah . I grind my teeth, but I don't look at her. The guy turns and walks out of the kitchen along with the crowd that Clarity’s collected.

I sigh once the kitchen is empty, dropping down and looking up at Clarity. "Get down," I say softly. "Please?"

"No," she pouts, crossing her arms. "You left me, so go back to whatever you were doing!" She nudges my shoulder with her toes.

"I shouldn't have left you. I'm sorry." I lift a hand to her leg, placing it on her smooth calf as she waddles and sways on the table. She's gonna give me a heart attack.

She looks like she's on the verge of blacking out. "How much did you drink?" Who the hell gave her the drinks? I was gone for not even fifteen minutes, and she’s already out of it. She’s either the lightest fucking drinker there is or drank something she wasn’t supposed to. Either way, I have to get her out of here.

"What do you care? You probably were with that pr-pretty girl, so why don't you return to her." Her words slur together, but I somehow manage to understand what she's saying. Is she talking about Jasmine? She can't be.

I shake my head, taking her soft hand that’s searching for something stable to hold onto. "I'm with a prettier girl right now."

She looks down, her body stiffening. Her hair falls around her face like a fence as she gazes at me and then starts to cry.

What the… "Why are you crying ?"

She shrugs. "I don't know." And cries harder.

I shake my head. “C’mon, Clare, get down." I pull her down towards me and notice she's barefoot. Where the fuck are her shoes? Need to make a mental note to never leave her by herself again. She clearly needs to be monitored like a damn toddler if she has an ounce of alcohol.

She bends over, and I pull her dress down her thighs before she sits on the edge of the table. Slipping my hands under her knees and back, I pick her up bridal style and leave the kitchen.

Her head rests on my chest, and so does her hand as her breath hitches from her silent cries.

"Newlyweds over here?" Kyle shouts as I pass the couches in the living room where Michael and Tanner sit alongside him. They raise their cups and cheer with laughter. I scowl at them all and make my way out of the house.

"A wild one you got there," the guy at the door who gave Clarity her first shot says.

I ignore him, along with the nerve to punch him, too. Making my way to the car, I sit Clarity on my hood to fish out my car keys in my pants pocket.I eye Clarity as she lifts her hands to rub her eyes and sniffs. Her large eyes shift up to mine. Even when she's wasted, she looks good. I clear my throat, look away, and unlock my car.

I go to pick her up. "I can walk," she nearly whispers, wrapping an arm around my neck.

"You have no shoes …"

"Or socks," I add.

She looks down at her feet as if she didn't realize it. She snaps her head back up to me. "I loved those shoes, Olias." She looks like she might cry again.

Christ .

Pressing my groin against her knees, I bring my finger to her dipping chin and lift her head to look at me. Her nose is bright red, tears spilling from her eyes once again. She's a terrible drunk, that's for sure. Her long eyelashes are wet. They look like the lashes other girls might dream of.

"I'll get your shoes back, Lord. Just stop crying. I don't like it when you cry." Those shoes are long gone now, either lost or in the trash. But I won't tell her that. I bring my thumb from her chin to under her eye and wipe tears away. I’ll buy them back. I’ll get two pairs if she wants them.

The day I met her, she was crying, moments away from doing what I planned to do that day

I owe this woman my life.

She nods. "I'm glad you're my friend. I didn't mean to yell at you earlier."

I drop my hand, swallowing, my jaw tightening as I go to pick her up again.

Friend.

Right, we’re friends. What else did I expect her to call us?

" It's fine," the words barely escape my tight throat.

I place her in the back seat of my car, trying not to think about how tight or short her dress is. "You better not get sick in my car, or I'm leaving you on the curb.”

No, I won't.

She gives me a thumbs down, and her head falls back into my seat. I covered her with the coat she had left in my car, and she closed her eyes.

The whole ride back to my place was filled with my eyes darting toward the rearview mirror to see her sleeping.It took two times as long to get to my building since I was driving slowly, making sure the car didn’t bump harshly and wake her up.

Getting out of the car, I slide her purse on my arm and pick her up slowly, carrying her upstairs.

She blinks awake as I open the door to my apartment, struggling to do so with her in both my hands. Then, she looks up from my chest as I walk inside and shut the door with my foot.

"Olias..." she whispers.

"Hm?"

"I feel sic-"

Before the words could fully even leave her mouth, warm vomit spews onto my chest, dressing my shirts and her dress in a brown chunky liquid.

"Clare! Fuck ," I gasp, telling myself not to drop her as a reflex.

I race to the bathroom with her in my hands, placing her on the ground beside the toilet, where she continues to throw up the alcohol she consumed tonight and any trace of food.

Stressing, I run the water in the sink, pulling my dirty dress shirt and crew neck off and throwing it in the sink. It smells like someone died in here. This woman really just threw up on me.

The gags from Clarity fills the bathroom, and I can't help but feel terrible. I shouldn't have left her. This is my fault. I knew she was inexperience and I let my head get to me. Like I always do. She trusted me enough to come with me, someone she only met a recently, to be there for her and I wasn’t. Maybe I can’t be. I can’t even be there for myself most of the time. But I want to try for her. If there’s one strange thing I want to do before I’m finished in this world, it’s to make sure this girl is taken cared of.

I drop beside her kneeling figure and gather her hair in my hand as she throws up, so it doesn't get dirty as well. Weirdly enough, I've never been in this situation before.

Splitting her hair into two sections, I start making a twist. I'd make a braid, but I don't know how to. It doesn't turn out the best, but it does the job of staying out of her way.

The gags and hawks of vomit slowly come to a stop several minutes later, and I reach up to grab a towel from under the sink.

"Here, take this," I say, and she lifts her head, takes the white towel, and wipes her mouth.

I stare at her, my brows connected in worry.

She stands up, and so do I, following her moves. She looks out of it, her eyes low and tired-looking. But once I see her hands grip the bottom of her dress, my eyes widen. She pulls it up her figure, and it takes all of the power in me to spin around before laying an eye on her bare body.

Heat soars through my veins, boiling my blood, and I close my eyes. "Clarity, you can't just fucking do that."

"I'm dirty. I'm taking a shower," she announces as if she's doing nothing wrong. She's still drunk. I take that into account.

"So you tell me to leave first, not get undressed in front of me." The shower starts up.

"But you're shirtless, and you don't see me being scared of your muscular tattooed chest." I look down at the few tattoos covering the top of my chest and abs. I forgot she'd never seen them before.My cheeks go warm, and my stomach twists at her compliment. Is that normal to feel? Does she even know she complimented me?

I bring my hand to the bridge of my nose. "I'm not scared of your body." The problem is I don't know if I can handle seeing your body.

I hear the shower curtain ruffle. "I'm in the shower now, you scary cat."

I sigh, turning around to see her dirty dress, underclothes, pink bra, and panties on the floor. I pick them up and throw them in the sink along with my shirt.

"Olias, do you have any more clothes I can wear?" I turn, expecting to see her head higher up, but instead, she pokes her head out towards the bottom of the tub.

"Are you sitting in the shower?"

She nods, the shower curtain close to her neck. "I felt dizzy, so I sat down."

Okay, because a bath wasn't an option...?

I close my eyes, shrugging the weird shit she does off, and leave the bathroom. "Yeah, give me a second."

"Oh, and wait!"

I turn to face her, water droplets running down her face with soaked strands of hair sticking to her cheeks. "Thank you," she murmurs.

I rub the nape of my neck. "No problem." I rip my gaze from her and go to my room.

Pushing the door open, I'm greeted by Cat. I got him around two weeks ago after hearing that having an animal helps with sadness and shit. But it didn't. I still found myself on that rooftop despite owning Cat.The guilt of almost leaving him here alone crashed down on me the moment I came back home with Clarity.

The brown little guy rubs against my leg, meowing at my return. When I got him, I didn't know what to name him, so I gave him his default name.

Cat.

I go to the dresser of clean clothes I managed to wash last week and grab a football jersey and cloth shorts. I'm not sure why I washed the jersey; I haven't played Football ever since what happened with Vanessa and my parents. But they found their way into my washing machine somehow.

I walk back to my bathroom to see Clarity in a towel, water dripping from her damp body.

My breath hitches, her back facing me as she fixes her towel in the front. It barely brushes the top of her full thighs. My eyes fall heavy looking at her until I dart my eyes away as if looking long enough will burn the thin towel away.

Clarity turns around and smiles at the sight of clean clothes. But while she thinks innocently about clothes, I'm eyeing the slit of her breast. The towel doesn't cover nearly as much as it should.

I feel myself growing in my pants, pressing against the zipper, just as it had in the car.

My breath shallows, finding it hard to rip my gaze from her curved figure.She could make a plastic bag look good on her.

She puts her hand out, and I clear my throat. "Here." She thanks me, and when she steps to grab it, I notice a discoloration on her thigh where the towel rides up.

My brows drop. "What happened there?" I question, pointing at her left upper thigh. It's barely visible, but it's definitely a bruise or something.

Her face drops as she follows my finger to her leg, "Oh...um," she starts. "I fell," she laughs briefly.

"Fell?" I repeat, stepping back to get a better look at the blog of blue and purple. " How ? When? Are you all right?"

She walks towards me, her hands ushering me out of the bathroom. "I'm fine. It was a stupid slip down the stairs. Can I get dressed now?"

"You slipped down the stairs, and that's the only bruise you have?"

"Yeah, the rest healed." She quickly responds, pushing her hair far over her shoulders and dropping her chin, closing the door in my face as soon as I leave the bathroom.

I shake my head, convincing myself not to bombard her with any more questions. It makes sense for her to be clumsy enough to fall down the stairs.

I open my sister's room a few feet beside the bathroom. It's been easier to do that since Clarity slept in it that night. I sit on her bed some nights when I feel like returning to that rooftop. But the closet I couldn't bring myself to open, though. This is why I keep giving Clarity my clothes. I don't think I could handle seeing her in Venessa's things. The fear of her looking too much like her stops me.

I step inside. Every time I'm in here, I feel like fucking crying. God, I should've been nicer to her. Why wasn't I nicer to her? She was my sister, and all she did was love me, and yet I treated her like she was shit.

"Your sister isn't back yet?" I turn to see Clarity fully dressed in my clothes. They're big on her, as expected.

I shake my head, forgetting I told her some stupid lie about Vanessa.

"No, she's not," I mutter as she steps in. "Are you feeling better? I can get you some Tylenol." Because God knows how many of those I take.

She nods her head. "I'm all right. My head’s still pounding a little, but the throwing up and showering helped. Did you tell your sister I said thank you, by the way?"

She's not gonna rest with the questions, is she?

I shake my head, pacing the room. "No, I forgot, actually."

Clarity sits down on the bed, cross-legged, and it creeks. "How old is she?"

Was. How old was she.

I bring my hand to my hair, gripping a patch and pulling. Maybe if I create pain, I won't resort to crying.

"Twenty-three," I answer. Or would've been a week ago. The first birthday of mine I spent without my twin. Instead, I spent the rest of our day with Clarity on a rooftop and at a coffee shop.

"And how old are you?" She questions, what a surprise.

I sigh. "Twenty-three."

I see her jaw drop through the mirror of Vanessa's desk as I pick up a bracelet from the little bracelet holder. My throat burns like I swallowed Bleach.

"You never told me you guys are twins!" Were . Her use of present tense is eating at my heart.

"That's so cool. I wish I had a twin. I wish I had any siblings in my life, actually." She laughs. Yeah, Clarity, I do now too.

I lean my hands on Vanessa's desk, dropping my head as I feel my eyes fill with tears. My throat swells, my lungs closing shut with each exhale. Fuck, I hate crying, I did enough of it for four months.

"So what is she like? You think she'd wanna be friends with me since you're pretty cool and friends with me?" Question after question. "Do you think she'll think I'm cool? Wait, do you think I'm cool? And is she in college? Is that why she's always gone?"

"Clarity!" I spin around, gripping Vanessa's charm bracelet in my hand. "Shut the hell up with the fucking questions!"

Clarity's face drops, a frown forming as she glares at me. "Why are you yelling at me? What did I do wrong?"

She brings her knees to her mouth, and I close my eyes, tears dripping down my face. I can't be mad at her. I can't yell at her as if she could possibly know.

I turn around, away from her, the sobs coming through even though my throat feels like barbed wire is wrapped around it from trying to stop the cries. The bed behind me creaks, and seconds later, as I walk to the corner of the room, I feel a hand on my wrist.

"Olias, what's wrong?" Her voice is soft, as if I didn't just yell at her for no reason. "You can talk to me, y'know. It's what friends are for."

I turn around, my hand pulling at my hair so hard I think a few might've yanked out my scalp.

Clarity looks at me with those eyes, the point of her eyebrows arching up in worry as her gaze scans my damp face in question.

I sniffle. "She's dead, Clarity," my voice cracks. "She's gone."

She softly gasps, her hands traveling up my arms, connecting behind my throat as she brings me into a bear hug. She's so small compared to me, but there's nothing more I want than her body pressed against mine right now, comfortingly.

I wrap my hands around her waist as my head buries into her damp hair. Her arms surround me, and the small stroke of her hand against the back of my head slows my breath. I squeeze her tightly, feeling her chest press into mine. I can faintly make out her heartbeat. Or is it my heart that's pounding? I can't tell; we're standing as if we're one.

Her hand rubs my bareback. "I'm so sorry," she whispers in my ear. Her voice also cracks, and it doesn't take me long to feel that she's crying too. I bring her tighter to me, if possible, one hand cupping the back of her head.

I lift my head from her shoulder, which seems to keep housing my tears. Then, I look her directly in her wet eyes.

"You have nothing to be sorry about. I'm sorry for yelling."

"But I kept asking questions—"

"You didn't know , Clare," I say. "How could you have known?" I bring my thumb to wipe her tears away, and that smile I missed starts to twitch into view. She brings her thumb up and wipes my wet cheek, mimicking my action.

"I have an idea," she says. "Give me your phone."

My brows pinch, but I dig into my pocket and hand her my phone. She takes it and swipes over to the camera, holding it high up in the air as she hugs my head down against hers. Is she taking a picture? Now?

"Olias, look in the camera . Don't look at me," she says, smiling.

I rip my eyes away from her perfect side profile and look at my phone.

"Smile?" She suggests. "Or not. Up to you."

I smirk.

She giggles. "Good enough, I guess."

She cheeses, then snaps a picture of us.

"There," she gives me my phone. "Whenever you have sad thoughts of her, just open that pic and talk to it like you're talking to me. If I'm not there."

Let out a breath, sniffing, I say, "For the record, she would think you're breathtakingly awesome. Those would be her exact words."

She grins brightly. "Yeah?"

I nod, my eyes not leaving her face this entire time. "Yeah, Clare. Just like I do," I add.

She sticks out her bottom lip. "You think I'm awesome?"

"Of course," I whisper. My eyes dart to her pink lips, a shade lighter due to her crying. The same color as her cheeks. Maybe that's from her crying, too. Or maybe it's because she's flustered right now. Hoping it’s the latter.

I look up at her eyes, but they're trained on my lips. Someone slap me. If she wants me to respect her relationship, she's gonna need to stop doing things like that.

"Clarity." Her eyes snap at mine and her cheeks brighten even more.

"Yes?"

"We're friends, right?”

She nods, her eyes searching mine. "Absolutely."

"Yeah?" My lip twitches.

She nods again. "Yeah, we're friends." Her throat rolls as she swallows. I know she feels it. She's not completely oblivious. She can't be. She looks like a very smart girl.

I bring my hand to her hip and feel her body hitch. Risky, I know. But I do it anyway. What's running through her pretty head? I need to know. I step closer towards her heaving chest that she's trying to control by breathing through her mouth.

It's not working for you, is it, sunshine?

I lift my hand to her chest, right above her breast and on her heart and rapid pulse. The thump of the poor organ vibrates against my palm.

"So why is your heart beating so fast?"

She gasps in slightly more, her mouth closing, and so do her eyes.She shakes her head, stepping a few feet away from my hands. Shifting on her feet, she hugs one hand across herself, holding her elbow.

Her eyes can't meet mine."I'm sort of tired. I think the alcohol is making me sick again," She lies, pulling one side of her hair behind her ear.

It's a nice try, but I'll let it go. For now, at least.

She's lucky I have morals; otherwise, I'd take her to my room and give her what she knows we both desperately want: each other.

I drop my head briefly to hide my smirk. "All right, if you need anything, just knock on my door."

I catch her swallow hard again before nodding. "If you need anything, knock on this door. And also, is it okay to sleep in here still?"

Yes, unless you want me to take you to my bed?

At least I know she ain't a mind reader or some shit; she would've left a long time ago if she was.

"Of course, nothing's changed. I don't mind, and neither would she have. I said so already."

I walk towards the door and take one last glance at her, still rooted to her same spot on the carpet, her cheeks still inflamed.

"Good night, Clarity," the words leave with a deep rasp.

She raises her hand and waves once. "Good night, Olias."