The Taste of Silver | Fortune's Fool #2

18 | a jester's optimism

[ a   j e s t e r ' s   o p t i m i s m ]

♥ gabriel ♥

HOW STRANGE IT was.

Her features softened as she hesitantly took a step closer to me. It took every muscle in me to force myself not to take a step backwards in instinctive self-defence.

The sudden irregular beating of my heart and breath was getting annoying and it was beginning to hurt my chest. I wanted an immediate escape.

"And if it means having you leave, then sure. I'll tell you." Strangely, my words came out fast in an attempt to make her stop approaching me. She didn't notice. "Antidepressants."

Five beats of silence.

Finally, there was some sort of expression on her face that I could be sure of recognising without being mistaken. Regret. Her eyebrows lowered and her dark chocolate eyes flooded with sadness.

"Gabriel..."

My stormy grey eyes met here, eye to eye and face to face. By now, I was feeling ridiculously short of breath and was having trouble acting like everything was alright. I took another gulp from my water bottle. The vodka in it burned down my throat heroically, scorching it with a warmth that was impossible to find in the real world.

"Are you happy now? Because I have plenty of other things I could be doing right now," I tore into her coldly, giving her an unreadable look.

The tall slim woman took another step towards me, eyes still locked on mine like a forgotten jigsaw puzzle and head shaking side to side slowly.

She ignored the latter part of my response which felt odd. Over the last months, nobody dared to ignore what I said.

"Why would the fact you're on antidepressants make me happy, Gabriel?"

Because frankly, I don't understand you anymore.

My words seemed to have triggered something in her for her voice was now thick, viscous with emotions like a molten river of liquid metal. The feminine sound was almost raspy, buried under some sort of suppressive weight.

"Of course I'm not- Of course I'm not happy," Louisa said the word as if it was alien to her.

How ironic. She'd been the one to make everything so difficult and introduce a grey between my black and white.

Dressed in a blouse and tight pencil skirt that hugged her slim hips and long legs, Louisa sighed at the complication of everything. She took a seat on an empty chair and beckoned for me to take a seat too.

When I didn't respond, she stood up again.

There was a double meaning to her words and I knew she wasn't simply talking about the pills.

She was the one that wasn't happy?

My lips pressed together in incredulity and I took a deep breath to steady myself. "I don't know how you do it, Louisa. I don't. I don't understand."

I wished I could have taken back my words instantaneously. I was showing too much vulnerability. And to show that in front of her was the equivalent to seeking out my demise.

The way my life had gone so far, she was going to be the death of me.

Dark brown waves with the perfect curve hung down her back and settled against her waist, strands of caramel peeking out occasionally. Her nude pumps clipped against the floor as she further reduced the gap between us.