Inferno

seventeen | the girl in the picture

It's been over two weeks since I last saw Chase. We were supposed to go on that date on Thursday, I couldn't help remembering and then nursing the ache that followed with insomnia thrown in the mix. I've had a lot of urges to contact him, but every time I open my phone I get stuck looking at the wallpaper, looking at Mitchell and then at the vase full of red roses in my room, with the bunch getting bigger everyday. Mitchell and I ended in a disaster, now I'm one, and I can't let Chase turn into a calamity too. He's too precious for ruination.

Cozied in my bed, I stay put with my eyes out the window and a hot cocoa in my hand, that's more than what I've had in the last few days. It's amusingly sunny today, the rays brazen and falling in spots on the taupe floor of the room, but not enough to reach over to me. I set the cocoa down on the table beside, eyes squinted when I walk over to the ledge, looking at the streets of Barcelona abuzz even at eight. With a shaky sigh, my hands grasp the thin fabric of the curtains, pulling them close to retreat back to my abode. Turned on my back, I conclude I'm delusional when I hear a pellet like sound hit the pane of the spotted window. Another step, another time, it becomes a rhythmic pattern, snagging at my nerves until I look out. I bang open the glass between the crisp air and I, just short of cracking it.

A curse sitting on the tip of my tongue fizzles when I look down, all that anger dissipating into nothing, leaving me bereft of a response. "Chase?" It's difficult believing what I see, but I've also come to know how I've never or probably never will come across someone with those glittering green eyes and a smile that works like a stash of reefer to your anxiety. Happened only once.

"I didn't want to do this Romeo thing, but I wasn't sure if  you would be fine with me showing up at your door. Would you?" He pleadingly looks at me, and it's like I never even stopped seeing him. Still just as clueless, just as innocuously conniving.

Not enough, unfortunately. "I don't think talking or seeing each other again would do anyone of us any good." I feel weights of iron come settle on my chest with every word uttered. "Go away, Chase."

He looks away, contemplating something it seems. "Alright. If you say, I'll go, but can you at least tell me what's happened that you're not even putting up a fight. You just gave up, Leia."

It's what I've known as the best option. "You know what happened, and I don't have anything more to say to you. Whatever you might think is all you," I'm not sure if he can catch on my voice faltering, and so soothe myself thinking he doesn't.

"It's not, but I know you won't accept it. Or rather I don't know," I can feel his will of steel turning wrought, my heart sinking as he walks away, thudding in a beat when he halts at the entrance of the inn. Two feet away is a little red post box fixated to the wall, which he opens and stashes something inside, out of my purview. "If you change your mind," that's all he says before vanishing amongst the people of Spain going back and forth on the steep road. 

Leaning on the ledge, I sit square in the tiny space, pulling my sweater up my neck and further in the hopes I'll shrivel inside the knit cashmere. Hiding's my only vice, but has it's own flaws I realise when I get a mail notification from Arizona's teenage support council. Something my father coerced me into joining and what escalated my move to Amsterdam and then Paris, my trauma in tow in freight cargos throughout. I've been too lazy to unsubscribe off their schedule messages and receiving one every now and then has been hurting lesser and lesser until today. Today it's an arse and I'm not armoured to face it. A finger pad hovering over the contacts icon, I fathom the will to scroll down and pull open the number marked under 'help', the words coming at me stronger than in all this time. Do it, Lei. As soon as I press the call button, the signal green, pedals pushed, my phone vibrates with an incoming and the digits don't bear a name along. Hesitant, I pick up, "hello?"