Insomniacs (#1)

36. tormented

It'd been a week since that night. A week in which I'd become a shell of myself.

We were playing a dangerous, dangerous game. Well I, I was playing a dangerous game. That night had been a consequence of suppression over years.

But there I was again, not having spoken a word about it over the seven days that followed. Trying to will it away. I'd told him I'd been raped and didn't say another word, couldn't bring myself to speak about the thing I'd tried to imagine never happened for so long.

I couldn't. I couldn't open my mouth and get the words to crawl from my lips. I couldn't think about that pain that day and not want to simply be rid of this body that had experienced those things and this mind that had and will never be the same since.

It hurt too much for me to bear.

And him, he was absolutely perfect. He didn't push nor ask nor bring it up because he could see I didn't want to. I was thankful.

Lu, as hard as he tried, found it difficult to see me often. His boxing training had started up again and at full force in light of the competition his coach had him signed up for. When he wasn't at school, he was at the gym.

And when he wasn't at the gym, he was sneaking into my house all out of breath and sweaty. We'd revel in the moments we had with each other, laying on my bed with my head on his chest or sitting on my rooftop with his head on my lap. I'd twine my fingers in his hair and he'd fidget with my fingers, tell me about how his training was coming along when all I was really focused on was how pretty he looked under the moonlight.

We'd waste away nights in my room, letting our insomnia thrive, staying awake just so we'd be with  each other for longer.

He'd take pictures of me all the time; I liked how comfortable it was now. It was no big thing when he'd bring the camera up to his eyes so I was in focus.

When I wasn't looking or when I looked right at him for a moment, he'd snap a picture. When I was laying on my bed, in nothing but a t-shirt and smiled up at him. When I'd be curled up on my bed, trying to finish the book for English Lit and he'd be sitting across the room from me with that camera up to his eyes.

And when I'd slap the book over my face, stifling a smile, he'd creep right up to me and straddle my hips. Laughs would echo in the air and he'd pull the book down, telling me to show me that pretty smile and so I did, only so he'd smile back.

I captured my fair share of pictures of him too. He'd practically infested my room with polaroids and swarmed my camera roll with pictures of him taking pictures of me. A few of him when he'd fallen asleep, all wrapped up in my bedsheets so I had none for myself.

It'd been a week of this. A week of not really coming to terms with what happened that night; simply because it was the easier way out for me.

Mum hadn't heard about me being in the hospital and I didn't tell her. It wasn't a conversation I wanted to have, especially not when I came home to find her and Enrico Giovanni cuddled up on the couch.

The only way I'd be able to live with it without driving myself to insanity was utterly ignoring it. Pretending like he didn't exist. So that's what I did and continued to do as I skipped down the steps, pulling a sweater over my cropped vest and tucking my earphones into my ears.

I could hear them in the kitchen, talking or giggling as they always seemed to do. Neither of them noticed when I walked out, shutting the door behind me.

The snow was mercurial; the sky completely clear of any snow-filled clouds one day and the next, you could barely make out three feet in front of you because of how heavy it was.