Give Me Back Whats Mine ➳ David Dobrik

Chapter Twenty Five ➳ The Unseeable Whiplash Was This

DAVID

Earlier that day ...

Coming back from the mountains had been like coming up for air. My brain had retched and spluttered against the crisp clearing of whatever fog had been filling it. Our world had snapped back into sharp focus so quickly that it had given me some sort of unseeable whiplash.

Natalie had left the house early and come home late in a subtle bid to avoid me.

When she'd finally arrived home after spending the day at Fletchers and quickly locked herself in her room, I felt like storming in after her and screaming that I knew what she was doing, that I knew she was avoiding me.

The unseeable whiplash was this. It was her.

A little over twenty-four hours had passed and she had gone from asking me to kiss her, from inviting me up to her room, to this.

The small part of me that had hated her for reeling back the leaps and bounds we'd made in repairing our friendship – whether it was an illusion or not – seemed to be growing stronger.

What gave her the right to ignore me?

She'd been the one to put us squarely back into the unsafe place we'd been climbing out of.

She'd ask me to kiss her.

And now this.

When Taylor and Jason had finally left for the night, I'd strode quickly up to her bedroom door with every intention of crashing through it. She was going to know exactly how I felt. I was going to make my unseeable whiplash very, very visible.

But something made me pause just outside her door, I strained my ears to listen past the thumping of my angry heart.

And when I heard the very happy and docile sounds of Gilmore Girls coming from her television, I knew that she was asleep. It was her comfort show. She'd needed comforting.

A wave of sadness blew every ounce of hate and anger that I had for her, out of my me.

I was so desperately sad that I wasn't the thing that was providing her with comfort when she needed it, when at the base of it all, our childhood, and our friendship, that was what we had always been, each other's greatest source of comfort.

So, I didn't crash through her door and deliver a slew of harshness.

Instead, I immediately put myself to bed and began a night of sulking. A night that then turned into a morning.

There had been no sleeping, only moping. I'd watched the colors outside my window change from black, to grey, to pink, to blue, knowing that hours were passing me by. 

Even though a late Sunday night had slid into an early Monday morning, my mood continued to stand resolute.

It wasn't until Taylor all but fell through my bedroom door in a panic at seven o'clock, that the tone in the house changed.

Unfortunately, it was not for the better.

'Where the hell have you been?' Taylor asked, an infuriation on her face that I'd never seen before. It was enough to make me immediately get out of bed.

'Tay, what's wrong?' I asked, knowing instantly that something bad was coming.

'I have been calling you for hours!' She almost screamed. 'Where is your phone? Have you not seen what's going on?' Her arms were flailing everywhere.

I looked around for my phone, realizing that I must have left it in the living room last night.

'Taylor.' I said, walking up to her and grabbing her by her wrists. 'You need to calm down.'