Going 78 Miles Per Hour | ✓

59 | Mason's Motors

MARTES
6:11 PM

Reid Harlow

Today is one of those days.

Those days where nothing is coherent enough to function, and the only thing you can focus on is a lit cigarette tucked between your fingers.

There is absolutely no reason. I've been abstinent for more than a month now, and my last relapse hasn't shaken me as much as I thought it would. It was helpful, having no consuming thoughts eating away at my soul, or the misery of losing Dahlia—but today, it came without warning.

Dahlia rests her head against my shoulder, playing with our intertwined hands. Her fingers slipping away from mine, comparing the mold of our hands; her noticeably smaller palm resting against mine.

She smiles daintily, studying our differences, as I watch her. She doesn't say anything about my hand slightly shaking, resisting the urge to reach into the back of my pockets in search of a lighter and a pack of cigarettes—when I know damn well, I carried neither of those.

Instead, she tilts her head to the side, burying into my shoulder, tracing the outline of my hand with her index finger. She studies my palm with fascination, as if this was her first time truly noticing me. Before long, the cold begins to creep onto her, and she slips her fingers back through the creases of my hand—pulling me tight, holding me, and looking up to meet my awaiting gaze.

"You want to know what I read last night?" She whispers, not wanting to bother the nearby passengers on the bus with her discovery. My head spinning in a slight haze, and while she lowers our interlaced hands and places them on her lap, I shake myself into consciousness and cock a brow at her. "They say, you're supposed to know when you touch the palm of your soulmate. That their hand is supposed to perfectly mold into yours."

This caught my interest, especially with the highlighted word: soulmate. "Who are they?"

She chuckles softly, "some random quote on the internet."

I hum in response, considering her sources. Best case scenario: the theory is an exploit on romanticism, crafted from a broken heart of an amateur poet. However, the thought itself is appealing, and I don't disregard it just yet.

"What do you feel?" I ask, glancing down at our interlaced hands settled on her lap and returning my gaze to hers.

She follows my stare and finds the warmth of our hold, wiggling her fingers between our touch and heaves a large sigh. "There's no right words to describe this," Dahlia spoke with traces of delicacy, feeding into her sentence with a couple of Spanish. It doesn't seem like she has the answer in her native tongue either. "But, all I can think of is: if it was a cold winter, you were the first sip of hot chocolate. If I was struck with the flu, you were the soup I take every night before bed. If it was spring, you were the rays of the sun I spent hours soaking under."

Dahlia does a nervous laugh, dropping her head low and the fringes of her hair covers her face from my sight. I can't fucking hide the smile that's rising on my lips, and despite the little bump on the road that the bus hit, I am on the fucking moon. Even if Dahlia's words were comparable small to everything else she's ever told me, it's hers, and it's her words I'll rather hear than the rest of the world.

My hands stopped shaking.

I use my free hand and cup under her chin, drawing her vision away from her lap and tilting upwards—meeting me. Her brown doe eyes stare back at me, lips parted, her breathing begins to shallow under my touch and she swallows hard, sparing a glance at my lips. I knew what I wanted before she needed to tell me.