Chapter 17 #2
In every picture someone had taken of him and Lara, she was grinning, and you could see how exhausted yet grateful he was for the time he had with his daughter.
Whether it was in the little paddling pool, where he was wearing only summer shorts and a light blue T-shirt, his skin bronzed by the sun, his hair even lighter than it was now.
Or whether it was with a teenage Lara in front of a Christmas tree, where she pressed a kiss on his cheek and wouldn't let him out of her Lara stranglehold.
In every picture, I lost myself in the details of his body, discovering new angles from which I would love to see him in reality, to compare how much he had changed.
In the dining room, I finally found what I was looking for. My brown leather bag was leaning in the corner next to a tattered pillow, and I grinned at Streusel, who ran up to me and immediately wallowed in the cotton batting.
No wonder Davian always eyed him so suspiciously. Before we had even met, Lara had told me that the dog was always up to mischief and that her father had a hard time dealing with him.
I took my manuscript and one of my black notebooks out of my bag, pulled out one of my fountain pens, and began to calm all the chaos in my head.
The words simply flowed out of me. So that I only noticed when I heard a creaking sound and looked up in alarm that countless written pages – fortunately numbered – as well as some failed attempts in the form of crumpled pages were lining the table.
However, my gaze darted further to the doorway, where a man was standing, dressed in dark gray sweatpants and a dark blue T-shirt.
Sweet Heat Lightning
Gregory Alan Isakov
Davian's hair was completely disheveled, but he seemed wide awake.
My heart began to race.
It was that fuck look. That what is she doing here look.
It was his house. I was the intruder.
I immediately got up, but he raised both hands.
“No,” he blurted out. “Please.” He lowered his voice, cleared his throat. “Stay.”
Confused, I searched for signs that would confirm that this was the last thing he wanted.
“Are you sure?”
He lowered his arms.
“Absolutely sure.”
I looked at my hands, which were now covered in ink stains from what I had written. Dried blood was stuck to my right thumb.
“Do you drink tea?”
Our eyes met again.
“Yes...”
As soon as I had answered, he disappeared from the doorway, leaving me with a thousand questions and that pleasant feeling in my stomach, before returning ten minutes later with two cups, placing one of them in front of me before sitting down opposite me.
“Thanks.”
He smiled slightly, looked at his cup, and played with the tea bag tag.
“Can't sleep either?”
He looked up, leaned back, and ran his fingers through his hair.
This wasn't a good idea. And yet we were both here voluntarily. In the middle of the night. In his dining room.
Euphoria began to spread through me, but it quickly turned into a feeling of shame.
“It's become a stupid habit of mine to wake up at three in the morning and need something to drink.”
I understood him immediately.
“From your old writing routine?”
He stared at me, chuckled softly, and finally nodded.
“You seem to be a night owl too.”
I smiled and shook my head. “Only occasionally. I usually write in the morning, right after I get up. But when I can’t sleep, this helps.”
I pointed to the sheets of paper in front of me, feeling proud of the progress I was making on my project and that I had someone who knew about it and didn't judge me, who even understood me and spoke the same language as me.
I gave Davian a challenging look.
“Would you like to write with me?”
He hesitated, and I knew I had gone too far.
He had stopped writing. This is provocative and stupid, Quill.
“What are you working on?” he dodged my offer.
When you asked an author what they were working on, you either encountered an overwhelmed wordsmith who suddenly couldn't form sentences anymore; an insecure sinner who had already been judged or mocked by others; or an imaginative child who had created worlds of words and was eagerly waiting to drag someone into their wonderland.
Since I had already overcome the sinner phase and could somewhat put into words what my books were about, only the latter remained.
Davian had awakened my inner child. And the fact that he was an author meant I didn't even hesitate before I started bubbling away, trying not to spoil anything for him, which was like walking a tightrope.
“...which is also why I enrolled at Maplecrest. The people there scream drama. The professors alone.”
He listened to me attentively, a smile on his lips, and I found it increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that he hadn't taken his eyes off me once.
At some point, I forced myself to stop talking.
The last thing I wanted was to overwhelm him. In the end, he found the whole idea ridiculous. But I was open to criticism. Especially from someone who also wrote.
He remained silent, resting his elbows on the table and his chin on his fist, smiling, and the sparkle in his cornflower-blue eyes was like that of damn stars.
“What?”
My cheeks began to work like an oven.
“Your creativity is impressive.”
Someone put coals in said oven.
“Toxic environments are often the most fertile ground for an author.”
The smile vanished from his face. He took a sip of his tea before looking at me with unmistakable concern.
“A while ago, Lara told me what happened to your mother. And...” He pursed his lips, rubbed his temple, and stared at my hand. “I wish I could at least take away this pain.”
everything i wanted
Billie Eilish
When you repress something for months, until you're not even sure if it ever existed, until it seems like an elusive fever dream, then you're not prepared for the very moment when reality crashes like a wrecking ball into the painstakingly constructed wall of denial.
The way Davian expressed his condolences broke something inside me. Something that was meant to break. I had just fought it for too long.
The tear simply escaped from my right eye.
Davian stared after it.
No. This was wrong. I couldn't do this to him. This was the wrong place to break down. And yet it was so easy for my body to let go in his presence.
I pulled back, looked away, allowing more tears to drip from my nose onto my sweatpants.
Warm parchment settled on my hand.
I looked up at Davian, who was inspecting my left hand, took it in both of his hands, and began to massage my letter-covered knuckles with his thumbs.
The moth swarm in my stomach burst into flames.
A pleasant shiver ran down my spine, but my tears, which refused to stop, won this battle.
And so, I cried, letting all the tears come, and stared at my hand with him, watching Davian leave circular patterns on my skin until an impulsive tingling sensation from every slight pressure he applied traveled up my arms.
Whatever was broken inside me, one touch from this man was enough and the thousand tiny pieces inside me wanted to put themselves back together again, even if they didn't know how. Davian regulated my inner chaos.
Crying didn't make me feel weak. Not in front of him. And even though I still felt like I was too much, he didn't let go of me. Our blue threads entwined more tightly, crawling further up each other.
And so we sat there until my whole body glowed from his touch and the lump in my chest pounded louder than the pain of that memory of a woman who had given up her little girl for alcohol.
“Even though my mother's addiction took away a large part of my childhood...” I shook my head slowly, speaking more to myself than to him. “Nothing compares to the things my father did to me.”
Alcohol was a drug that was easily underestimated.
Mama had reached a point where she had been unable to choose me.
It had torn me apart, taken away a piece of my worth that nothing in this world could ever repair.
And yet, at some point, I had come to understand that even though it had been her responsibility, it had never been her intention.
My father, on the other hand, had actively chosen to erase me emotionally and physically. He had been given the choice his whole life, and he had always chosen to pour all his venom on me.
“Did he hurt you?”
There was something tense in Davian's voice. Only now did I notice that his hands were tightening around mine and he was holding his thumb still.
“Let me put it this way.” My voice was as broken as the rest of me. “You want your child to be an artist? Throw dishes at him, but don’t give him a chance to pull the shards out of his skin.”
My smile didn't reach my eyes, felt sluggish and lifeless.
“He has...”
“No.” I shook my head hastily, focusing on his masculine hands, the veins that stood out so aesthetically under his skin. “Slaps are the only physical thing he's ever done to me. But it's not the physical things that cut deep.”
“Words.”
This man spoke the language of my soul without me ever having shown him my wonderland.
“And actions,” I whispered and nodded, shedding more tears, not knowing how to thank Davian for holding my hand despite all the things that stood between us. “My father is unpredictable.”
Why did I tell him this, even though he seemed to be friends with him without knowing it? I didn't know. There was only Davian, who understood me in a way that made me open up without hesitation.
“I don't know what he'll do next to show me how much he hates me.”
His hands literally clung to me.
“You live with him?”
I searched for the tension of his voice in his eyes and found his working jaw.
“It’s complicated.”
“Quill”
He took a deep breath, began moving his thumbs again, and I never wanted to be released from that grip, wanted to stop time, just to sit here with him at this table for all eternity, knowing my hand was safe in his.
“The offer Lara made you... I stand behind it.”
I looked up, confused.
He couldn't be serious.
“If you need a place to stay for a while…”
Immediately, I shook my head.
“I don’t want to be a burden.”