Tacenda ~Owen Joyner~

Chapter 11

In high school I had a friend group that included a mixture of boys and girls which was a great set up because the boys made it very interesting and girls were girls and easy to relate to and talk to.

Now I'm here in Vancouver and I've got Charlie and Owen as my closest friends and I desperately need some girl talk but they can't help with that for obvious reasons. They're both guys, both best friends, and I kissed one of them. Which is exactly what I need to talk about.

Sure I could go to Madi or Savannah but we're just not close enough for that. Not close enough to tell them that I kissed Owen.

So here I lay on my bed staring at my dusty ceiling fan while Charlie practices guitar in the next room. Adrenaline is pulsing through my body and I just need to get it out. I sit up and see one of my many barely used notebooks on the ground across my room. I practically lunge for it and open to a blank page, grabbing a pen in the process and taking off the lid with my mouth and spitting it out.

I start writing very quickly, so my handwriting looks terrible but that doesn't matter because no one's going to be reading this.

I write down everything starting from the moment I punched Owen, all the way to now and everything that's going through my mixed up head.

Once all the words have been written down, finally out in a physical form, I feel a little bit lighter as I stare down at them. A smile spreads across my face and grows bigger every time I see the words "Owen" and "kiss" written down on the  once blank page.

Then with a swift tear I rip it out of the notebook and continue to rip until it can't be ripped anymore.

So there in my hands lays the little pieces of what I'll be replaying in my mind for the next... forever. Because either today was the beginning of a great love story, or something I'll be crying about because it's only a memory.

I take the pieces in my hand and carry them to the kitchen where I get a bowl and place them inside. I then open one of the drawers and pull out a box of matches that Charlie bought because he wanted to make a matchstick house out of them but never did. I light one against the side of the box and drop it in the bowl. The little pieces of paper light immediately and the bowl bursts into satisfying flames. I stare at the flames for a few moments, watching what pieces I can see shrivel up and blacken.

I'm pulled out of my daze by Charlie running out of his room frantically.

"Cal, are you crazy?!" He shouts, "What are you doing?! You're just going to ignore the smoke alarm?!"

I didn't even realize it was going off. He jumps and knocks it off the wall and it stops beeping as it hits the ground.

He grabs a towel and quickly runs it under the faucet. He pushes me away from the bowl of flames and I stumble back as he smothers the fire with the wet towel. It's sizzles out and he lets out a sigh and turns to me.

"Calliope honey. What were you thinking?" He looks at me with both concern and disbelief in his eyes.

I look between him, the bowl, and back to him again before I realize how crazy that was. I just set a fire in my apartment.

"Love makes you do weird things." I mumble.

"What? Love?" He puts his hands on my shoulders, "What are you talking about?"

I didn't mean to say that out loud. Gosh I sound like psychopath.

"Hm? Nothing. I just- I had some papers to burn but we don't have a fire place and I wasn't thinking." I say.

"Okay... do you have anything you need to talk about? You seem off." The disbelief look disappears from his eyes, leaving just the concern  behind.

"Uh, no. I'm good. I'm actually really good." I smile.