Chapter 15 #2
I often wondered if demons had the ability to care.
I often wondered if demons had the ability to love.
But I'd known the answer to my question long before I realised.
I supposed when I thought about it, it was obvious.
Painfully obvious. Screaming-in-your-face-and-pointing obvious.
I could see it in everything that he did, in the small things and the big ones too.
In quiet actions like taking care of my plants or hanging out with my cat.
In the way he'd roll his eyes before I asked about his book, but always answered anyway because he knew I enjoyed the company.
Something about him knowing me, something about the familiarity that had developed beneath my very nose, felt disarming.
I felt stripped bare, vulnerable as I tried to tread the water of uncharted territory that was letting someone else in.
It was nice—inexplicably nice. And yet the whole thing felt so bittersweet because I knew I couldn't depend on that, I knew I couldn't allow myself to grow attached to his company.
Yes, there were moments, moments when I'd catch myself excited at the prospect of returning home to him, like I'd maybe miss something whilst being out.
There were moments when I wanted nothing more than more mundanity, more ordinary, but with him.
He had fit so perfectly well into my life that it was easy to forget he was simply biding his time until he could leave.
I hadn't expected myself to crave the presence of another person, but I couldn't let my heart ruminate on the feelings that seemed to stir deep within my chest because I knew, deep down, that someone as otherworldly as him could never be mine.
I was in the process of pouring oat milk into an unnecessarily large bowl of Froot Loops when Thallor stalked back into my apartment.
I'd had a quick shower before changing back into the same pyjamas I'd been wearing previously.
It was just one of those days. My hair was wild and knotted, cascading down my back in chaotic wisps.
After yesterday, after everything that happened, I couldn't help but feel comfortable in Thallor’s company.
“Hey,” I said as I looked up at him.
He closed the door behind him, took off his shoes, and walked into the kitchen, sitting at the breakfast table and sighing.
He was wearing a black linen shirt with the highest button undone.
It was oversized but still pulled slightly, seeming to hug his muscles and the curve of his arms. He wore jeans that fit a little too well, and the outfit starkly contrasted with what I had come to learn was his actual day-to-day attire the night of Halloween.
I'd taken him shopping pretty early on in our arrangement, so it didn't look like I was walking around with Count Dracula the whole time.
“Are you hungry?” I asked, pulling another bowl from the cupboard before hearing his response, because Thallor’s usual answer to that question was ‘I could eat,’ something I distinctly heard him mutter before pouring him his own bowl.
I popped the bowl down in front of him and settled into my–now designated–seat before looking up at him.
I still felt exhausted. Broken. And confused.
But after spending the last few hours battling the chaos of my own emotions.
I did feel lighter, at least. Looking at him as he inspected the bowl, I could see it, my greatest heartbreak developing before my very eyes, something I knew I wouldn’t survive if I let it go any further.
At that very moment, I resolved to close the door on any blossoming feelings I had for Thallor.
Maybe that was cynical, maybe that was wrong.
But my heart was as fragile as all the rest, as much as I wanted to pretend it wasn't. My cynicism didn't mean that my heart came with armour, no matter how much I wanted it to.
Mine was capable of breaking. Mine was capable of falling apart.
What I wanted to do was forget. Forget the previous nights and everything that had happened.
Forget the feelings in my chest, the feelings that seemed to ignite every time his leg brushed against mine under the table.
And if I couldn't forget, if I couldn't push the thoughts from my mind, then I would do the next best thing, which was to distract myself.
I would distract myself with fun. Something that didn't require effort or attention.
Something that allowed me to be someone else.
The girl with the freeing laugh, the dazzling smile, and the warm disposition that could light up a room.
I wanted all the shiny parts that I showed to the world without all the ugly, broken pieces underneath.
I made a mental note to text Jude, the person who saw just that, all the good and none of the bad, because that's exactly what I wanted to be.
“What is this?” Thallor asked, pulling me from my thoughts as he eyed the bowl in front of him.
He cocked his head to the side as he looked up, settling me with a quizzical look.
Everyday. Every day, without fail, I eat at least one bowl of Froot Loops.
Being honest with myself, it was probably closer to three or four.
Maybe I had been a little presumptuous in the attention he paid me because this should have been obvious.
“Cereal?”
He patted at the top of the colour little rings with his spoon and grimaced before looking up at me. “This…is dry.”
Thallor said that about ramen. He said that about toast before I explained that you added jam. And he had said it about that one time I cooked pizza. That time, in his defence, I had forgotten it was in the oven and burnt it.
“This texture resembles wall plaster or…gravel.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, fighting back the smirk and mustering up my wall to remain serious as I looked up at Thallor. Demon or fussy child? That is truly a question I didn’t think I’d get the answer to.
“You have to wait for the oat milk to soak through,” I said, as if I was some kind of cereal sommelier.
Once properly soaked through, the colours will begin to run–you should pick up notes of artificial sweetener and food dye.
“Give it a second, then you’ll get the perfect balance of mushy and crunchy. ”
“Because the words ‘mushy’ and ‘crunchy’ really scream delicious,” he grumbled, looking tentatively down at the bowl. Succumbing to whatever emotions were tugging at my insides, I let a smile stretch across my face before giggling softly. “Why are they all different colours?”
“Those are the flavours! Come on, try it.”
Whether it was everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, whether he was simply trying to appease me because he did, in fact, enjoy my company, I wasn’t sure.
Regardless, Thallor looked down at the bowl, the swirling of colours now making it look more like a greying soup than anything else, before reluctantly spooning some into his mouth.
The look he settled me with–one of pain and betrayal, one that said ‘I trusted you’–had Froot Loops spraying out of my nose.
“What flavour? This tastes like cat litter.”
“It does not, you big baby,” I scoffed before pulling his bowl toward me and standing up. “Pray tell, how do you know what cat litter tastes like?”
“What I imagine cat litter tastes like…” he growled. “It certainly doesn’t taste like fruit.”
“If it’s not strawberry jam, why even bother, right?”
“I didn’t realise you were paying so much attention.” I don’t think I really realised how much I was either.
“I wasn’t. I’m not. I—"
He looked up at me but didn’t say anything else.
I hesitated for just a second before turning toward the sink.
I hoped I could hide the magenta blush that began to creep up the sides of my cheeks under the guise of the hot water making me feel flushed.
But slowly, like it always did, the telltale wisps of smoke that crept up my nose, blanketing me in late-night camp nostalgia, the sweet, syrupy smell of burning wood enveloped me.
I didn’t turn around. I didn’t want to see the look on his face.
I couldn’t allow my mind to churn over every inconsequential tick of his jaw or glimmer in his eye…
not when he was going to leave. We could be friends, sure, but—
“That’s a shame. I guess it’s just me then.”
I’d taken a couple of days to sleep off my emotional exhaustion.
I knew that pushing the events of the attack to the back of my mind wasn’t healthy.
I knew that the emotions of that event would eventually rear their ugly head in the minutiae of everyday life.
There were things I would never be able to look at the same way, but that was better than trying to stitch back together every broken part of myself with nothing but trembling hands and tears in my eyes.
So my brain did what brains did best: fill itself with thoughts of Thallor.
I’d gone back to university a few days later, fearing the repercussions of Caldwell’s wrath if I missed another one of his lectures.
It was like I was suffering from a lecture-induced Stockholm Syndrome.
As much as I loved my subject, the week following my attack had been nothing short of painful.
Between the overpriced cups of coffee –with too much caffeine that made me feel anxious, Caldwell’s recycled insults, and the headaches I got from trying to read his chicken-scratch handwriting, I’d questioned whether a passing grade was even worth it.