Chapter 45 #2
When we left the store after Lara had paid for her items, my lungs still felt like I had walked into Chernobyl. Everything still smelled like Jessica's perfume, even when I stopped in front of a bookstore.
“Dad’s birthday’s coming up, so I think I’ll see if I can find him a gift.”
I looked up with interest.
“When is his birthday?”
“November 11th.”
So in about two weeks...
What did you get a man who could buy anything? Something that might actually bring him joy...
“But he never has any wishes.”
“Give him a book.”
“He has thousands. That's nothing special to him anymore,” Lara said amusedly.
I smirked.
“Why do you think he has thousands?”
“Because he's a bookworm.” She rolled her eyes. “And still, he's only read half of all those books.”
Shaking her head, she turned away and continued walking, but eventually stopped when I didn't follow her.
“I'll look for something more useful. And you look like you want to stay here?”
I smiled at her. “Just for a while...”
She grinned. “Let's just meet in the parking lot later, okay?”
They’ve All Gone
Mr. Kamera
Only because I knew Lara could spend ages in changing rooms did I allow myself half an hour to browse through books.
Normally, I could stay in a bookstore for hours, but the lights here were bright, there were lots of people visiting this store, and I couldn't concentrate on the printed letters.
With a headache and a small shopping bag containing Davian's gift, I left the store, hoping he would like it, but almost bumped into the next person.
With a growing tightness in my chest, I paused and looked around the now definitely busier mall. A trail of ants.
Taking a deep breath, I stepped out into the mall's wide corridor and immediately found myself pushed into the crowd.
You can do this. Just keep walking. It will end eventually.
It was easier in my head than in reality.
Still, I walked with my eyes down, dodging unfamiliar faces, avoiding tripping over dog leashes, until everything in my head was spinning.
Someone bumped into me.
“Hey! Watch where you're going!”
I bumped into the next person, unable to move, and the woman stared at me as if I had escaped from a madhouse.
The lights blinded me from above, so many people were talking. And they didn't stop talking.
I wanted to keep walking, just get away from here, out into the fresh air, but no matter how long I stumbled, the people didn't stop. The noise didn't stop...
Frantically, I pushed two women aside, apologizing before making it to a display window after two more people dodged me with bewildered looks on their faces.
My head was too overwhelmed to take in what was behind it. And so I slumped against the glass, slid to the floor, clutching my shopping bag, pulled my knees up and covered my ears.
“Please, make it stop,” I begged, tears welling up in my eyes. “Mama... Please come back and get me out of here.”
Mama wouldn't come.
She was long gone.
“Vincent...”
What was I doing here? How could someone who didn't even exist come and get me?
Slowly, I drowned in the sounds, a never-ending firestorm raging in my head.
My skull was about to burst. I was sure of it. Just as sure as I was that somewhere in all the chaos, someone had called out my name. But it could just as easily have been my head. A memory. Mama?
“Quill?”
Sobbing, I clutched my bag tighter until my fingers dug through the paper, met each other, and I could ram my nails into my flesh.
“Quill!”
Someone shook me and I began to sob more violently.
“What's wrong?”
Davian's voice. But I was unable to respond.
“Quill! Come on. Talk to me. Did someone hurt you?”
Too many questions. But I couldn't reach for the answers. They swirled uncontrollably through my throbbing skull, pursued by the smell of fast food and barking dogs... and Jessica's perfume... and...
“Quill... hey...”
His voice was gentle. Constant. Graspable.
“Davian...” I sobbed, even though I was sure I was imagining him.
Why would he find me in such a crowded place?
“Get me out of here.”
My voice broke.
I looked up and saw him kneeling in front of me, his face full of concern, while countless people rushed past us behind him.
He stayed in front of me. The only constant. Graspable.
Instinctively, I reached for his arms, feeling the pain in my hand as I clenched his forearm.
Davian stared at me.
“Please. Make it stop.”
He didn't hesitate any longer, placing his arms under the backs of my knees as he had done once before, and I prayed I wasn't hallucinating as he lifted me up and I pressed my head against his chest, nestling against his dark blue shirt and burying my face in it as the noises around me tried to tear me away from him.
“Let me take you home.”
I clung to him so tightly that nothing and no one could tear me away, and it felt like an eternity before the cool autumn air greeted us.
Cold wet drops hit my scalp and I parted my eyes at the dark storm clouds above us, which for a split second reminded me of those in Wonderland.
Davian let me down and I immediately lost my balance, falling against the passenger door of a car. His car.
“Are you okay?”
I nodded, braced myself, looked around the parking lot while Davian opened the car door for me, and I got in with shaky legs.
I felt pathetic as he got in on the other side.
This shouldn't have happened. If I had walked along the side of the mall corridor, I...
Davian's warm hand landed on my uninjured one, forcing me to look into his searching face.
“Was someone following you? Harming you?”
Ashamed, I shook my head.
Look After You
Aron Wright
His gaze traveled down my body, lingering on my bloody thumb, and only then did I realize that my hands were still clenched around the handles of the bag.
With trembling fingers, I released them, and Davian immediately took both into his warm hands, gently running his thumb over the bloody side of mine, the crusty red already dried. The slight pain his pressure caused in those spots, relieving.
My nails were the only blades that had ever cut deep into my skin. Davian, the only one that cut deep enough.
“Just my inner shadows.”
He looked up.
With a sad smile, I turned away from him, grateful that he didn't let go of my hand as I tried to let the drops on the windshield calm me down.
I didn’t know how long we sat there, but it didn’t matter. All the time in the world could never give me what it gave me to feel him slowly tracing the back of my hand with his thumbs.
I closed my eyes, allowed the tears to race with the relentless rain on the windshield.
Davian shifted beside me, releasing one of his hands from mine, and when my eyes fluttered open after a few seconds, he was also looking at the blurred windshield, his head leaning against the headrest of the seat.
His Adam's apple moved as he swallowed, but I forced my eyes back at the window.
He slipped his fingers between mine and I gasped as he intertwined them.
Our silent language. A quiet promise that neither of us could keep. But whenever we gave it to each other, neither yesterday nor tomorrow mattered. All that mattered was our now.
We both knew that if we talked about it, if we brought it up, it would break. Because it was already more than we could allow ourselves.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I didn't know if I wanted to, but I knew he understood me without words. He read me like a book written just for him.
“I'm too weak for this world. Too sensitive. A dry autumn leaf in the wind.”
His thumb gently nestled against the outside of mine, sliding down to the base of my thumb.
A pleasant shiver ran up my entire arm until the moths in my stomach began to flutter.
“You've made it through every storm so far.”
“It's not the storms that destroy dry autumn leaves.”
When a storm carried me away. That was the only moment I knew I was alive. A storm chaser, chasing from one storm to the next, hoping never to land on the ground.
“If you are already an autumn leaf… then what am I?”
He tilted his head, raising his eyebrows slightly.
“A leaf that was picked in spring and placed in a book to dry, where it has now been lying for twenty years. Beautiful, flawless… lifeless.”
Davian laughed dryly.
“You're good at cheering up your friends.”
He elicited a weary smile from my lips, and the urge to return his thumb movements grew immeasurably, but I didn't want it to remind him that this mere touch was already one step too far.
“I always found it motivating when people showed me how low I had sunk. If I've learned two things in my short life, it's that things can always get worse and the farther you fall, the more room there is to rise.”
“So there is hope in you?”
“Not in me.” I smiled sadly. “Next to me.”
A glance at him told me how much I had thrown him off balance, because he was incapable of doing anything but staring at me.
The back door of the car opened and we both jerked our hands apart when Lara slid into the back seat.
A hint of a forbidden apology shimmered in Davian's cornflower ocean before he looked back and I shifted further toward the window.
“Sorry to keep you guys waiting so long. There were seasonal donuts, which I hope are still alive after this downpour. All my stuff got wet.”
“You look like a drowned rat,” Davian said before starting the car.
“Thanks, Dad,” Lara replied breathlessly from the back seat before handing me something between the seats. “Then only Quill gets a donut.”
With a smirk, I took the orange-glazed donut with skull sprinkles and looked back at her.
Lara grinned at me. Her usually strawberry-blonde hair was sticking to her cheeks, now the color of chestnuts.
“You better eat them quickly. Because when we’re home, I’m going to snatch the rest,” Davian said, also smirking.
The incident at the mall slipped further and further into my past. Nothing compared to all the other storms in my life. Nothing as long as I had Davian by my side.
How to preserve an autumn leaf from decay?
– Leaking Batteries Diary