My Crazy Nerd (GirlxGirl)

Chapter 39: Gift

Chapter 39: Gift

I couldn't sleep.

The dull pain in my toe prowled relentlessly in my mind, poking and persistent with its throbbing discomfort; I was left alone with my gruelling contemplations. I kicked the wall. I kicked the table. I walked into a table. I rammed my toe on the leg of the table. Yes, that was what happened. I wanted to know how fast I could walk, but silly ol' me didn't watch where I was going and I slammed my foot onto the wooden leg at full speed. Walk speed. It made sense and therefore was true.

A buzz rang in my ear and the darkness tuned in and out into static grains as a dark figure stood stagnant by the end of my bed. I blinked and it disappeared. Then, it reappeared. It wasn't real, of course. I imagined a human silhouette looming over me. I imagined a smothering presence that could crush my lungs with its weight. I imagined an abyss that stared through my guiltless soul as it slowly consumed the space around it until all that was left was a void. It went away the moment I stopped forming that image from my mind.

It wasn't real. It was real.

My sweet father. My crazy, violent father.

Alive. Dead.

He seldom came to my room, but his visits became frequent ever since I've read the newspaper. In a form of a whisper, a feeling, and a memory, he'd come in the day. At night, he'd appear as though he never left, his scribbled head and firm stature obscured by the dark. He wouldn't say much--he never did--and he'd stand there as he always had with his fedora hat. A lovely hat, it was.

Not real.

A body stirred next to me and the pressure that built up vanquished into a past sentiment. Audrey was lovely.

Real.

She mumbled softly and shifted her position until she faced me, but her eyes were still closed. Have I disturbed her rest with my restless thoughts?

Again, she mumbled, a small noise rising and falling from her lips, until her eyes slowly came into view with mine, and I stared curiously as she aroused from her short slumber.

"Penny? You're still awake?" she murmured and I nodded softly.

"Was I thinking too loud?"

She snorted quietly. "Yeah, very loud." I blinked at her, but I doubt she saw that. "...I'm joking, by the way."

"Oh."

Crickets chirped in the distance.

It was relieving to hear the quiet sound of her inhales and exhales, alive and well, and as I peered into her watchful gaze, I pulled my hand up to feel the skin across her bare stomach which glided smoothly beneath my fingertips. Audrey flinched on contact and pulled a fraction away from me.

"What are you doing?" she breathed and I glanced up to see her expression, but the dark prevented me from observing it.

"I wanted to make sure you were real," I whispered and the tips of my fingers buzzed from the touch of her skin. "You still sleep with your shirt off."

A grumble sounded in front of me. "I thought you didn't mind."

"I don't." I brought my hands up again and this time she didn't move. Tracing the skin along and above her clavicle, my hand reached to her soft neck and then to her cheek which laid on the side of the bed. She leaned closer to my palm.

"Does your toe still hurt?" she sighed humorously and covered my hand with her own.

Toe. What a funny word.