The stag hunt with the scarlet heart

Chapter 6 "Before the age of twenty we believe..."

Before the age of twenty, we believe we are invincible we fill ourselves with delusions of greatness and reasons to steal those opportunities that we can neither see nor feel, regret lasts a brief time, but it always finds you. We want to scream more, we want to live a little longer; we want to be remembered for our feats and not for our mistakes, without caring about the end of the story, because we live the plot wilder, more intense, and definitely more reckless.

I know it's true, and that when it happens as fast as the wind, we get to the point where we want to turn back and slow down, but if tomorrow someone tells my story or sings a song, there will be no glory. Because without mistakes there will never be any right. As soon as the memories were written that neither time dared to erase, that's why our story was left without glory.

A routine was created between us but no matter what I catch myself every five minutes staring at him every time we're in my office, and he knows it, he just ignores me and as usual, I make a speech about the book I edited, the next releases, or anything that could distract him to keep staring at him.

There were a lot of things Callum didn't know, he would read paragraphs out of any folder and immediately ask a question, I don't know if it's because I'm not explaining myself well or to make me talk and cut my psycho stalker look still I answered each of his questions calmly under his suspicious eyes.

When the evening comes, and I should be getting ready for my dinner with Tristan, I'm still enraptured looking at the Tarzan in front of me, although we often change positions, he leans on the shelves behind my desk and reads, or he sits in my chair with his legs on my desk while I walk around my office talking, and he just looks at me and nods with a smile, when we were face to face on the couch I couldn't even last two minutes, his eyes made Atlas' face come to my mind.

Their temperaments are totally different, and the way he smiles when I get frustrated that I can't explain things better, Atlas would have laughed at me, Callum just smiles like he thinks it's cute. Something that makes me uncomfortable, but I ignore it, like every other thing I feel around him.

"God only knows where you are now." Callum murmurs, snapping me out of my thoughts. He doesn't seem annoyed, just curious.

"I was thinking about the cover of the poetry book, and tomorrow's meetings." I lie quickly.

"I know most writers decide the covers, I can assume, given your controlling nature, you have the final word, don't you?" I feel my face contort into an unspoken question, how did you kn... "You don't get to Simone's desk when you drop her a list of tasks as far as I could verify you had already reviewed it before, The manuscript she gave you when I arrived, something you had already edited and reviewed yourself, as soon as you had it in your hands you reviewed it again, yesterday when I arrived you already had folders and everything organized for me without knowing me, shall I continue?"

He gestures with an eyebrow and a sideways smile in an arrogant manner and flutters my eyes.

"No, thank you. I realize you're observant, but I'm not controlling, maybe... organized?" I defend myself, even though it's not an accusation.

"You love to put euphemisms on things, don't you?" He touches a finger to my nose. It's only inches from my face. "And you're something fun and interesting to watch."

I stare at him, dying to know how his beard feels against my skin, needing the warmth of his hands again. Wanting to know if they feel just as warm on my cheeks as they did when he used his hand on my back this morning, I move a little closer to him, seeking his touch, not measuring or caring.

Will it make me feel the same way Atlas made me feel?

Will I tremble under his hands?

Will I feel rhinoceroses in my stomach as with Atlas?

He looks at my face so intensely that butterflies fly from my chest to my stomach, he raises his hand as if to touch me, and just then Simone comes in, our future writer behind her, Tristan smiles at me as soon as our eyes meet. I welcome the distraction.

The introduction between Callum and Tristan gives me time to compose myself and get my things, honestly what was said went over my head, but maybe the black cloud hanging over me had little to do with the situation and more to do with my mental disaster.

The meeting didn't go very well, the subject of the books went off the rails from time to time.

"You're quite young. What are you, twenty-four?" I nod. "Too young to be editor-in-chief."

His suspicious look makes me sit up straight, used to being questioned about my age, at the end of the day in this world that matters.

"If there's one thing you need to know about me, it's that I take publishing books very seriously, I'm an inveterate reader, but when a book is published, the first day it comes off the press, a window opens, and we allow others to live a thousand lives in a thousand different places. We are creators of a magic carpet that can take you to that fluid universe that is reason, science, poetry... life."

"I don't know if you're telling me this, so I'll publish with you, but I will, I'm all in."

From there it was all uphill, we made our way through routine conversations with writers, full of doubts and promises.

Entering my apartment, I blew out some lit candles, assuming Ryan had taken my husky, leaving a messy mess of fabrics with two creepy headless mannequins, climbing the stairs was a challenge, I had to dodge objects, there were pincushions, threads, shoes, and even a wig lying around.

My reflection in the mirror surprised me, today of all days I look like the saffron that Atlas loved, my lips and cheeks flushed and my eyes that, without realizing it, expressed more than they should and lastly... my curly hair, so similar to my mother, but unlike my dark brown and her caramel, I have my father's almond skin and I inherited my mother's anger, maybe that was the root of my bitterness.

It's exhausting to think about Mrs. Lisa Alba, it's suffocating to concentrate on her because she's the past, and I've been running from her the way a person can run from an aggressive bulldog, but the purple flash shines out of the corner of my eye, so much so that I can't help but notice it.

The journal on my nightstand is pointing at me, buzzing to be touched, to be opened, to unleash the whirlwind I've been hiding for years.

You must know that the stronger the memories of wounds, the more you give in to cowardice. Like air trapped in a forest of skyscrapers, you are caught between pity and pain. You spin in circles, unable to move forward. And you isolate yourself.

I wish I could tell Saffron, who wrote this diary, that we shouldn't be nervous about someone's love. We shouldn't be eager for their approval as if it were a shot of energy. When they give you their attention, we shouldn't be anxious about whether that person is kind or unkind. If they're unkind, we shouldn't worry about whether that person loves us.

But I understood something at a very young age, your secrets are yours, they are your grief and your burden to bear, that Saffron did not understand that her weakness was the beginning of the end. But the world doesn't need to know my sins, the very ones I'm exposing by opening the diary.

I move the purple lid as if it weighs, because it does, the sins, fears, and crimes weigh, I just didn't know what it really held for us.