Running Out of Time

Chapter Twenty-Two

The next day I awoke with a pounding headache and a dry throat. The events of last night were hazy, but I distinctly remembered going to a bar and flirting with a bartender, and then Sophia brought me home. I didn't remember anything afterwards. My stomach roiled, but when I heaved, nothing came out. I swallowed the aspirin and gulped down the glass of water before crawling out of bed and dragging myself down to the community shower. I felt icky and sticky and absolutely miserable. Then, as I stood in the shower, I remembered once more with the force of a truck driving into my body that Lia was still gone from me. I sighed and languished underneath the hot spray for another ten minutes before stepping out. I dried myself, put on my clothes, and tramped back to my dorm.

It was already afternoon by the time I'd made myself presentable. I grabbed a quick lunch at the school cafeteria and returned back to my dorm, moping by myself.

Sophia burst into my room an hour later.

"You're awake!" She smiled.

"Hi. I feel like shit. What happened?"

Her smile fell. "Well, you flirted with the bartender, got off your ass drunk, and then I got you back to your dorm."

"Ah." I let out a tense smile.

"And you told me about Lia." She added. My jaw tensed.

"Can we not talk about it?" I pleaded quietly.

She seemed to think for a while, and then sighed. "Maybe not now. But I don't think acting like this is an indication that you're particularly okay. You'll have to talk sometime."

I shrugged. "I can deal with sometime."

***

And so, months passed, and like before, the ache lessened with time, although it stayed underneath my skin, a constant throbbing with every beat of my heart. Winter passed, and spring did too. I took my finals and passed with good grades, although I thought it was nowhere near how well I could've actually done. There was still next year, my mother told me when I reported back with my very average grades. She didn't know that the ache would never go away. It had eased, like last time, but would never go away. My mother didn't even know that I'd gotten back together with Lia for a little while. I'd decided to keep that secret to myself and Sophia, at least for a while. As summer rolled around, I decided to stay in Seattle with Sophia for a while, because I didn't want to leave. Sophia had rented out an apartment near campus and would be staying there for her remaining years at Valley View University of Fine Arts.

When pride month rolled around, it amused me to see all the people walking up to me on the streets and saying they supported me. It was the way they seemed terrified, the way they didn't dare to cross me and my mop of short, now dark purple hair. It was like being a god.

I noticed that Sophia was starting to act a little secretive. At first, it didn't bother me too much because I knew that Sophia had her own life and it wasn't up to me to decide what she would do with it, but when she began slipping away at random times and texting intensely, I began to get worried.

"What's up?" I asked when another one of those intense texting sessions began.

"Hmm?" She hummed absentmindedly. "Nothing."

I made to snatch her phone out of her hand, but she clutched her phone close to her chest. "Nuh-uh. That's mine."

My eyebrows arched. "Why so secretive? Where you watching porn?"

Her face blanched. "No." She denied. My mouth curled up into a smirk.

"That was suspicious. But I'll let it slide." I said with a playful shove. I didn't think about the incident until later.