BLOOM • awsten knight

68

JANUARY 2019

"Really?" Taylor raises her eyebrows, as she walks into Elle's bedroom.

"What?" She turns back to look at her, confused.

"The purple bed sheets," Taylor points out.

"Oh my god," Elle rolls her eyes. "That's not- that doesn't mean anything, I swear."

"Are you seriously gonna try and tell me that the colour purple doesn't remind you of him?" Taylor folds her arms across her chest."You know, the guy with purple hair?"

"No," Elle shakes her head. "Well, a lot of things remind me of him, but- no," she earns an odd look. "His hair wasn't always purple. Blue reminds me of him more, because of the colour his hair was when I first found the band-" she begins to talk a little too quickly.
"Like, a sort of-" Elle pauses, trying to think of a way to explain the shade, and it hits her, "Daphne blue."

"That's a type of blue?" Taylor looks cluelessly, while Elle reaches for her phone, and begins humming to herself. "What are you doing?"

"Black jeans and Daphne blue," she sings, almost incoherently, "still makes me thing of you," Elle adds, before looking back up at Taylor. "It fits."

"What fits-?"

"Fits with this melody we were working on," Elle cuts her off, before opening FaceTime. "Hang on, sorry, I need to call Jeffrey."

She's been writing with Jeffrey and Spencer a lot for The Band Camino' as upcoming record; the collaboration feels natural, and seems to slot together perfectly.

Elle has learned a lot from collaborating; writing for someone else feels like she can be more honest, and she finds that if she pretends she isn't writing for herself, there's a difference in her own songwriting.

Awsten is still on her mind, but she's working through it; she's writing about it, and she's working on herself, because that's what she has to do, right?

She's muted his social media, and has been tempted by the unfollow button a few times, but she won't; too many people would notice, and she doesn't want to have to deal with that sort of backlash.

It's been over a year since her breakup with Alex now, a year since she moved to Houston, and a year since she saw Awsten in Target.

She hasn't been back to that Target in months, because she refuses.

She won't go to the coffee shop that he took her to when they first met, or the restaurant he took her to on her birthday, and she usually avoids driving past his parents' house.

And when she visits LA, she definitely won't go to that market in Burbank.

Elle can't even walk through her own kitchen without being reminded of the way he kissed her - or the way she wouldn't let him take things to the bedroom, because she felt like she couldn't wait any longer to have him.

She wonders if it's wrong to miss that side of their relationship - if you could even call it a relationship - she misses every other part of him, so why not that, too?

Sometimes when she lays in bed, she can feel his phantom touch, and she swears it'll drive her crazy; she almost feels haunted.