The Summer of Beauty, Brains, & Bruises

Annabeth

Wow.

I'm single.

For the first time in 5 years, I'm single.

Dam.

It wasn't a screaming match or a big fallout, we still love each other which is why we're doing this.

Okay I know a lot of couples say that but it's true.

After the war with Gaea I started having bad dreams. Not just the normal demi-god nightmares but flashbacks, suddenly I was back with Luke and Thalia when the cyclops attacked, I was holding up the sky, I was watching Luke stab himself with my knife, I was with Arachne, I was falling... with him.

They got bad, years of battles and fights all coming back.

Percy and I finished our high school years, we spent a lot of time together. Sleepovers at his lake house or in my dorm room, and on occasions at his mom and step-dad's apartment.

It was one of those nights at his mom's apartment, it was around 2 in the morning, and it happened. I was sleeping holding Percy my face buried in his hair, his hand holding mine, but suddenly I was fighting Nyx. Myself. The darkness, the terror, it was...I was...

I screamed, I woke up Percy, and Sally, and Paul, and little Estelle.

I told them about the nightmares. Percy said he was having them too.

Sally gave us a number of someone we can talk to, a therapist.

It felt weird, it was a demi-god who we would Skype, she was a daughter of Apollo who lived in New Rome.

So of course that fall when we went to New Rome for college we continued our sessions, we talked abut the people we lost, the battles, the monsters, all of it.

I never said half that shit out loud before.

It was almost as scary as the dreams.

We went for years, it's now we just finished our third year of college and we're still going. Well there's no "we" right now, because they thought it was a good idea for us to break up, just for the summer. Since we've been through everything together since we were, what, 12? So just for the summer, I'm single.

Shit.

Fuck, I just walked into our apartment.

Our apartment.

Our.

I don't have a place to stay, holy shit.

The apartment looks so much like us.

The kitchen with white and gold décor I picked, and plants that we both forgot to water. The bathroom a bright blue with rubber ducks everywhere (clearly Percy's choice, he fucking weird).

I grabbed my stuff, then went into our bedroom, suddenly very aware he could come home any minute.

Should I wait for him and talk to him or just leave?

The bedroom, no, no, no, I told myself I wasn't gonna cry. I'm not gonna get sentimental it's just one summer, just one summer without him I'll be fine.

But as I stared at the bed, the blue and gold quilt Sally knit us, my desk with pictures of us and our other friends all over it, the bookshelves he put up to surprise me, a tapestry rendition of Van Gogh's A Starry Night that I wove one week when I couldn't sleep hanging on the wall.

Get your clothes as leave.

I grabbed my shit from our closet, I don't know why I said "our" closet cause realistically Percy just throws his clothes on the floor.