Hurricane Boy // h.s au

6.

"Four....In half-light she'll run her fingers over your arms like she is reading words carved into your skin, binding them together into the perfect metaphor. You'll hear it playback in your head at 4am when your head runs wild with thoughts of her."

– "The six stages of falling in love with her" (via tumblr)

The frigid breeze that comes only on quiet winter nights. The lackluster of the surrounding air, the quiet crunch of leaves on a cold sidewalk, the distant sound of laughter. Music is playing somewhere, loud but muted all at the same time. Few walk the streets, passing in big and small crowds, chatter of the coming week and the past weekend mixing and swirling and overlapping each other.

The moonlight splashed over the edges of the leaves, grasping onto the weltering branches. Some people walked past with hot cocoa heating up their icy hands, others walked by with their hands entangled, others with their hands shoved into the depths of their lukewarm pockets.

It was easy to feel so unsparingly lonely at times like this. So easy to feel out of place in such an empty, desolate kind of way. It was easy to feel like there was something missing, something so achingly empty about these kinds of vacant nights. The cold air brisking around the hairs of her neck seemed to sting a little more than usual. She quickened her pace, rushing to get out of the cold night and into the warmth of the diner.

She'd felt a bit strange lately, in an inexplicable, robotic kind of way. Exciting and glory filled days halted and slowed into routine-filled motions. Curious, wonder filled touches and heated gazes turned into needy, anxious ones, secrets and fears weeding and winding and rooting in the spaces between her ribs.

The school year was winding down, the last few days of the wintry breeze of February giving out their last breaths before the budding leaves of spring began to show. Days were filled with work, responsibilities, endless purpose filled motions and anxiety-ridden thoughts, and nights were always, always, filled with Him.

She spotted him immediately, sitting by himself in a booth at the back corner of the diner. The nerves in her stomach began to grow as soon as she noticed he'd picked the only secluded spot there. She let out a shaky breath, taking off her scarf as she made her way over to the table, sitting down across from him.

His face was sullen at first, in deep thought, mind racing with jaded thoughts, things he'd never tell her, but upon noticing her in front of him, a striking grin spread across his face, eyes wide and sparkling.

"You made it," he said, immediately placing his hand over hers that was gently resting on the surface of the diner table, "I didn't think you'd be able to come."

She stared at their hands for a second, focusing on the warmth radiating from his hand, warming up her cold ones, gusts of the unforgiving winter air still swirling around the crevices of her fingers. And then, she rested her gaze on him. On his gleeful, upturned lips, his glossy, tired eyes, his flushed cheeks. He was slightly drunk, she could tell.

"Why do you say that?" she softly replied.

"Your mother," he said, his smile turning slightly sour, "Doesn't she hate me?" A glint of something flashed in his eyes, resentment, anger, all written in a flash of crimson red and swirling black, but was quickly washed away as he once again rested his gaze on her.

She uncomfortably shifted in her seat.

"You don't have to say it," he said, forcing a smile, "I know."

"What did you do today?" she said, attempting to change the subject. He hadn't been going to school for the past few weeks. Everyday, after all her classes and after school clubs were finished, he'd call her to come to his house, each and every time with tear ridden cheeks and a new bruise somewhere on his body. Things were worse than usual, much worse. He was getting paler, thinner, smiling even less, rarely ever speaking. It was only today she'd seen him smile, seen him talk, traces of the version of him she'd once gotten a glimpse of shining through in his drunken state.