Bad Taste (Part I) // Colby Brock

64 - Rebecca

          My night had been spent uselessly thinking. What had I thought about? I wasn't sure, which was why it had been useless. There were just words circling through my head as I stared at the ceiling blankly in my living room, then I had moved to my bedroom to stare into the dark instead. Neither had done anything for me, leaving me incredibly unprepared when my brain suddenly kicked into full gear as soon as I fell asleep. My dream was... intense. Blue eyes had never been so piercing before.

And then my morning was filled with doing anything to distract myself from being alone. I had a fuller breakfast than usual, took longer in the shower, took care with my eyeliner, smoothed down my skirt way too many times, and walked back and forth just to do something.

I had chosen a plaid skirt that hardly reached mid-thigh, a pair of thigh boots still not managing to meet the hem. And I'd worn a black long-sleeved top with a heart cutout at the base of my neck. It was almost turtle-neck, but not quite enough to make me hate it.

Though I knew I looked good, I couldn't stop reconsidering what I was wearing. It was like nothing was certain; like I needed something to ground me. This was what being alone suddenly did to me.

I knew that I couldn't stay alone for much longer, and remembered the strange effect hearing music from upstairs had on me at the studio: I had felt completely fine, as if Katrina had been next to me. Or someone better. So it only made sense for me to head out to the studio, besides the fact that I had to do some more work.

My designs were close to being finished, which meant that I could hand them out to my now-four employees and ask them to make them. I wasn't looking forward to when I had to ask for that, though.

I pulled up at the studio before I knew it, the sight of the classic red bricks already making me feel better. I noticed that there were four other cars here, which meant that there was a full house, excluding Blair, who, in my eyes, didn't work here anymore anyways. That was solidified when I reached the top of the stone steps and found her desk to be completely empty, a key left on it — the key she would have used to get into the building.

My eyes flickered to Jax, who hadn't seemed to stop staring at it. He was so distracted, I wondered if he had even noticed me standing there. Maggie — Blue Hair Girl — had, though, and she nervously cleared her throat. "That was like that when we got here. Did you fire her?"

"No," I answered instantly, my tone sharp.

Jax finally noticed me now and gulped as he turned away.

"She's quit, clearly. You ever see her, tell her she's not allowed in this room ever a-fucking-gain."

Nobody replied, but I could tell they were all in agreement. They felt betrayed that she had left so suddenly without a word — they had seemed like all friends to me, from the outside. I picked up the key from the desk and slid it into my backpack pocket then looked over at Lewis — Beanie Boy. He was lanky, but there was a little something on his arms.

"Lewis, Jax. Take this downstairs and put it into a storage room. Don't care where."

I left them to it, crossing the room for the door to the spiral staircase. I had no idea how they were going to manage that, but the furniture down there had to have been put there somehow.

My boots clicked as I walked to my office door, glancing down the hallway. The break room door was shut, every storage room door shut. It was a little creepy to see the unused mannequins through a window, but not so creepy that I was shitting myself and running away.

The feel of my office was familiar and pleasant, relieving the most of my stress, but none of my frustration. I wasn't going to bother officially firing or reporting Blair's quit, because I didn't care enough. It could say that she was still employed here when she was trying to get another and I couldn't care less. She was dead to me; just another face upstairs, now a missing one.

I sat down behind my desk and pulled out my laptop, spending as much time as I could on finishing touches. I didn't want to call Jax in yet to tell him I was ready to have my designs made; I couldn't take that step. I needed a little more time, which I was earning through distracting myself with other projects.

I had designed a little more for the smallest group of them all, sketching and messily colouring at first until I started to perfect everything. I was tilting my head to either side randomly, sucking my bottom lip into my mouth to bite it, biting the back of the pencil whenever I had the chance. My foot tapped against the ground creating a familiar rhythm from the club — the same one from the cafe. It was so catchy that it was pissing me off. I just couldn't get it out of my head, and it attacked at absent-minded moments like now.

As I tilted my head to the side and bit my lip, I heard heavy footsteps coming down the spiral stairs. With my office door left open, I could hear it well as whoever it was walked slowly along the hallway. They were too heavy for Lewis because he was a twig and-

Wait, is that coffee?

I hadn't looked up from my work yet, though, as I bit a little harder. I was trying to force myself to concentrate on work rather than everything around me. The footsteps stopped, but I still didn't look up. I was intending to finish drawing a line and then look up, but a familiar, deep, heart-wrenching voice spoke and anything I had planned flew out the window.

"You always bite your lip when you concentrate."