The Awkward Love Song of Abigail Archer

Chapter Three

CHAPTER 3

The constant hush of passing cars and blaring fire engines resounded in the world outside. A world that Marcus and Abigail were not a part of, and for their own respective reasons, didn’t want to be.

Motionless, Marcus watched on as Abigail’s stare fixed on the ceiling for long seconds of silence and unawareness. Quiet moments where, for Marcus, moving was unmanageable, a proper breath impossible. Faltering in rhythm, he knocked their private symphony of breathing off tune, and it crumbled it into a secret conversation of give and take.

She exhaled. He inhaled.

He exhaled. She inhaled.

In this shrouded intimate exchange of life, a strange sensation rose within Marcus and tightened his chest. It was a familiar feeling. He’d felt it before. Not on many occasions, no, just a few times with which to remember its warm feeling. It was that of a lazy Sunday morning in the English countryside or of a quiet house in the middle of winter. Marcus sighed quietly. Memory of the last time he felt the sensation drifted off, too blurred along with the rest of his humanity for him to properly remember. However, then and there it was peace that warmed his bones.

He trailed Abigail’s gaze to the shadows of moving cars stretching past her ceiling. They weaved through the strands of light that filtered through carelessly closed curtains and expanded until stretching to nothingness. He looked back at Abigail. A faint smile tugged at the corners of her lips, a genuine smile that wrinkled the corners of her eyes.

What on earth did she see? he mused, but he held fast to his silence. Accepting his blindness to her universe, he rejected the urge to say a word. He couldn’t bear to disturb her there, not in her world. Not when she looked so devastatingly happy and nothing like the girl he met the prior night. In those brief moments, watching darkness pirouette across her personal concrete heaven, she was alive.

Palpable apprehension washed over her face swiftly. Though she hadn’t seen him, Marcus was certain she sensed him. Her fingers spoke of this consciousness. They grasped the white sheets until her knuckles blanched with fear. She sat up, releasing a shaky exhale. Her green eyes brimmed with alertness, though she had yet to notice him, pressed against the wall beside her bed, veiled by the shade of her dilapidated piano. Looking out to the center of the room through narrowed eyes, she waited for a clue, a confirmation.

Marcus braced himself. His throat swelled with choking indecision. He wanted to say something, he did, but what? She tossed aside the bed coverings and brushed away his intent. With her sight fixed on the openness of the room, she stood up. Unearthing a slender hand, she pressed it against her lips and paced forward like a ghost, her willowy figure lost within a white shirt five sizes too large.

At once, a cold wave of indecision ripped through Marcus. What was he doing there? Why hadn’t he taken her, and when did it become so hellishly difficult to breathe? Numbed by uncertainty, he watched her reflection appear gradually in the oval mirror tucked in the corner of the room.

Her eyes found his instantly.

Bit by bit, all color drained from her face. In equal dread, his heart took his chest in slow, sharp spasms of regret. Truth was, he shouldn’t have been there. But accepting of his folly, he rose. And under the study of Abigail’s stare, he quit the shadows of his hiding place. She remained unmoving, her stare constant as he took one cautious step toward her, and then another.

Marcus hauled in a slow breath. Each consequent step birthed a question in his mind.

Step. Would she scream?

Step. Would she throw things in a fit of panic?

Step. Whether in anger or to beg him to take her, would she near him? Would he touch her?