OLDER MEN | THE WEEKND

24

        this past year — we've all grown up, haven't we? thank you for waiting for me.

warning; implied sexual content & explicit sc in the following chapters.

024

In her dreams, she sees him. The tennis court lined with white, the rain that drips down her back like his gaze, slipping low. Lower.

  Look at you, he says. He lifts her white cotton skirt, revealing pale, untouched skin.

Bella wakes up to a room full of flowers. In bloom, they are as precious as they are living —
peonies for the rose in her cheeks, the amber from her sister, and a vase of white roses from her father on her vanity. Next to them are boxes on boxes full of what she hopes is diamond-encrusted jewelry. October ninth; it was bound to come.

It's been a week; a week since that tennis court, a week since he'd kissed her. No calls were made, and no texts had been sent. School'd been a mere distraction, and Yvonne... Yvonne kept looking at her like she was something foreign, like she was fragile.
Three days into Bella not relenting to her pleadings to tell her what happened with Mr. Dayholt, and then Abel — The Weeknd for her — Yvonne had held her wrist between her soft fingers and said, her tone cold as the wind outside, "You're not acting like yourself."

Beneath the anger, she was scared. Bella wanted to laugh. "What do you mean?"

The halls were beginning to empty; the bell had rang a few seconds ago, but there they were, by the lockers, Yvonne with a look on her face that betrayed— worry?

Why would she be worried for her?

"You keep avoiding the subject. Class? Sure. Gigi? Sure. Even Luca, you discuss him like it's nothing." The words were really tumbling out now, as though she'd been holding them in for days. Had Bella really been that— drawn in? "And then, when I ask you about that time you cried on Mr. Dayholt, you close up. You tell me nothing."

Bella froze. Tried to relax. Her face must have been telling because the frown on Yvonne's deepened. "What?"

   "Has he done something to you?"

She couldn't help it; she laughed. There it was again, that question. Her mother first, back at the restaurant, and now her best friend.

Though— Yvonne couldn't have known about the other man. The older man. "Dayholt? Mr. Archival?"

Yvonne's grip tightened, tipping on painful.

"Who else?"

   

Back in October ninth, she skips breakfast. The kitchen is empty save for the cleaner, who offers her a smile and a happy birthday, miss, which Bella returns.

Her mother's taken up yoga classes early in the morning again, and Gigi is out of town, but she cares little for her lack of audience.

She feels — new. Strange. The pale pink angora wool of her dress feels novel, as though in the night she'd shed her old skin and emerged a strange new version of the same model.
  And that dream. She tries not to think about it. Ever since the tennis court, he'd infected her dreams like a fever, always present, always under the surface, always inevitably finding her.