Chapter 21 #4
A strange feeling of connection to this view mingled with the rest of the cocktail of emotions, as if I were experiencing déjà vu. As if I had already stood with him in front of a window like this and looked out at an unfinished courtyard.
All it was was mere wishful thinking. A dreamy desire.
“All I know is that some of us are particularly bad at finding balance.” Exhaustion resonated in his voice. “It breaks us so terribly, Feather.”
I held my breath and looked up at him sideways.
Feather.
Did he know what he was doing? That he was talking to my moths? His voice, warm light.
My gaze lingered on the gray at his temples, and I discovered new angles and edges to his jaw.
Davian seemed off track. Something was off. Something had shifted. His chest rose and fell heavily as he stared outside with glassy eyes.
“I don't think you're broken, Davian.” His Adam's apple bobbed under his skin. “You're surviving. We're both in survival mode.”
Just in two very different ways. I was drowning while he was tying himself to a boat. Yet we were both made to swim.
My hand brushed his and we both held our breath.
“Will we survive?”
I didn't hesitate any longer, took his warm hand, and let my fingers slide carefully down his rough palm.
He inhaled audibly but opened his fingers so I could slip between them and intertwine mine with his.
My heart was pounding. The tingling in my stomach was overwhelming. And yet I wasn't doing this because I wanted to be close to him. This was for him. Entirely for him.
“We can try.”
A tear stole from Davian's eye.
Immediately, my own vision blurred.
Davian was fighting battles with himself, and I was the first person he could even begin to talk to about it.
I looked out again, held his hand, and we both sank into our harmonious coexistence as the blue thread wove itself tighter around our arms and began to wrap itself around our torsos.
Davian squeezed my hand. A silent sign that he would be there, that he would hold my hand when I had nothing else to hold me here.
I gently squeezed his hand too, running my thumb over the back of his hand, so gently that I could feel the veins. I lingered on one, feeling the steady, slightly accelerated thumping of his pulse.
I would be there for him. Unconditionally.
If this was only possible as a friend, I would accept it and make the best of it.
A question in my head grew louder and louder until I couldn't stand it anymore.
“What did you want to show me?”
I gently released his hand, not ready to let him go again, but this was all I could give him. All I could get.
Davian turned to me, looked at me hesitantly, his eyes glassy like never before, so that I froze in my tracks.
He stepped over to his desk and, with his jaw working, opened a drawer that was completely empty, but a tinkling sound came from inside.
He stared down before reaching into the drawer and enclosing something in his right hand.
Hesitantly, he turned to me, stepped toward me with his eyes on his closed fist, reached for my hand, and placed his fist on my open palm before dropping something cool into my hand.
He pulled his hand away and I stared down at the three bullets.
Overwhelm washed over me, and he seemed to notice, because he enclosed my hand again, closing it around the ammunition.
“These bullets...”
His voice was hoarse, shaky, his hands trembling, and I tried desperately not to miss any clue as to what was happening here.
“I want you to take them.”
His lips formed a thin line. Another tear escaped from his eye, avoiding the tiny unevenness under his right eye as he desperately raised his brows.
“And the next time your head drives you to the edge of a bridge.”
This time, I swallowed, tears much too close.
“Take one and throw it, knowing that in that moment you saved two lives. And then move on. Live on.”
Two tears. One from me, one from him.
My voice frail, I could barely get the next words out.
“What kind of bullets are these, Davian?”
I didn’t want to know the answer, didn’t want to believe what he had just confided in me, didn’t want these bullets, and yet I clutched them tighter, because the mere thought that he might take them back consumed me completely.
“Bullets that have been waiting far too long in this drawer to be used.” He stepped back, let go of me, before running his fingers through his hair. “I don't want to see them anymore.”
He seemed distraught, completely beside himself.
I wanted to say something else, but he turned away from me far too quickly.
“I'm sorry... Please excuse me...”
He stormed out of the office.
What the...
I opened my hand and stared at the bronze-colored bullets.
No. He couldn't... He couldn't be as low as I was.
I put the bullets on his desk, stared at the empty drawer with my heart racing, and discovered a note. The note I had put in his suit jacket.
The world needs your writing.
He had written something underneath it.
Why do you think anyone needs the chaos I bring to paper?
A friend, she said.
And held my ink-stained heart in her hands.
– Leaking Batteries Diary