Chapter 21 #3
If I had met the young Davian at my current age back then, I was sure we would have hit it off right away too.
But me and a boy...
It was hard to put into words, but something about Davian's age had a reassuring effect on me. Something balancing.
My lifestyle was chaotic, like that of young people who were trying things out and still figuring out who they wanted to be.
Davian, on the other hand, was firmly established in his life, had gained experience, had a career behind him, had raised a child, and didn't need anyone to pay his tuition or give him a roof over his head when he made radical life decisions.
Davian felt like a stable home, something I had longed for as long as I could remember. A dangerous fact that I couldn't dwell on too much, because Davian could never become my home.
He bent his other knee, brushing mine, and I was immediately back in the present, feeling his upper arm against my shoulder, his shoulder just inches from my head.
I wanted nothing more than to sink against his shoulder, but that wasn't a good idea. Any wrong move could cause me to lose the only anchor I had left.
His knee, which was leaning against mine, made my mouth move on its own.
“How old are you, Davian?”
“What were you thinking back then on the bridge?”
Or when I slid my fingers inside you.
I swallowed, looked at him.
“Thirty-eight.”
There were more questions he wanted to ask. I could see it in the twitch of his lips, but he looked away, down at my hands.
His gaze settled on the flower I still hadn't broken.
“Is that a...”
“Tulip.” My smile returned and I looked down too. “The campus is full of them.” Slowly, I lifted the immaculately cultivated plant. “The white symbol of purity. Every day I pick one and tear off its petals. Looking for a petal that isn’t so white.”
I felt Davian’s stare on me. By now, he surely thought I had lost my mind.
“I don’t belong here, Davian.” I lowered the flower. “I don’t belong in this world.”
Whoever had kidnapped me from Wonderland had torn the wings off a fairy and placed her in a land of stone giants.
Davian's gaze bore into my side profile.
Should I not have said that?
I looked back at him, searching for sympathy, but all I found in his gaze was regret.
“Can I show you something?”
Some
Nils Frahm
Davian's office was located in the philosophy department building, right next to Monica's. And it was... beautiful.
I entered the light-filled room on the ground floor in admiration.
Daylight streamed through the huge, floor-to-ceiling arched window – decorated with sand-colored satin curtains – in front of which stood his elegant oak desk.
It was equipped with neatly arranged notebooks, two accurately stacked binders, and three fountain pens resting in an open case.
The wooden shelves were filled with philosophy and law books, all neatly sorted by subject.
“You're tidy.”
I wandered around the room, scanning the book titles, looking for personal books, but, as expected, without success.
“It wasn't always like this.” He closed the door and I ignored the warmth that immediately settled in my center. “But somewhere between then and now, I decided to leave all the chaos behind.”
Was it part of who he was? Had he fought it and it had left its mark? Or was I simply the kind of person who was born with chaos in their blood, while he was made for the other extreme? After all, he was an author...
“Is it easier to live that way?”
I felt his gaze on me, but focused on the bronze scale on the shelf, wiped the dust from the head of Justitia with my finger, and admired the pretty shell collection that decorated the shelves here and there, as if he had scattered them randomly, yet thoughtfully, so as not to pile them up in one place.
“Easier. But not better.”
I discovered an aged paper crane, picked it up, and placed it on the right side of the scale, the smallest shell I could find on the other, and, to my surprise, the scale actually balanced itself.
“Chaos burns us out.”
Only now did I realize that I was playing with Davian's decorations, so I turned to him, caught in the act. He looked from the scale to me, smiled pensively, as if it hadn't bothered him, before turning away and slowly walking to his window.
“Monotony kills us slowly. We all strive for balance, but it's more comfortable to live in extremes.”
He wanted to pull me out of my extreme, I wanted to pull him out of his. Alone, we were two toxic extremes. Together...
What was I thinking?
Davian had obviously built a good life for himself, but the fact that he was suffering from writer's block refused to leave my mind.
I was a drug addict who wanted to lead someone who had left drugs behind back down the wrong path. I was not a good influence on him.
Why couldn't I just leave this man alone?
“What if it's human nature to always chase the next extreme?”
I walked past his desk and joined him at the window, taking in the view of the overgrown park, which I had never come across on my wanderings through the campus.
Rescue My Heart
Liz Longley