Written In The Stars: Book Two

CHAPTER TWO: MEMORY LANE

The inside of Elijah's mouth felt like paste as he swallowed hard, finding no relief. He didn't need to open his eyes to know daylight was pouring through the windows, but he would need to open them a little to make his way to the bathroom.

What his eyes first focused on was his bedroom floor, littered with pieces of paper that even his hungover state could remember. It was early on yesterday, about when he'd finished the six-pack of beer, but before he'd begun the bottle of whiskey, where he'd spotted the still untouched box his M&M had left behind.

His Maddie.

His Madeline.

She'd dropped it off while a sliver of those titles were still his to keep. Right before she'd asked him to be her first, something he could carry with him forever. Now? Now she wasn't his at all. Maybe never was. Maybe she was always just a symbol of what he wanted for his life, much like Mitch and Mary. Symbols of a better life he had never and would never have.

In his tipsy, but not quite drunk state, Elijah had thrown the box across the room, the correspondence she was never able to send sprawled across his bedroom floor.

This was the room he'd left mostly untouched. The candles he'd lit for their night still sat on the surfaces of the room. Lavender and vanilla; the smells which invaded him every time Elijah allowed himself to hold her. Every time he'd laid next to her in a peaceful slumber.

Now the nightmares were back in full force. No amount of booze in his system could release him from those, only made the details hazy once he awoke. The only thing that gave him release from that torment was Madeline, and now she was gone.

Still, her scent remained in the unbroken candles, and against the pillowcase he couldn't bring himself to wash. Elijah would wake up from the couch or floor every morning, stumble in here, then lay on the bed just to smell her again.

He wondered if this was what it felt like when the love of your life died. Everything around them is useless unless it reminds them of the one they lost. The uncontrollable anger rising through the despair. The guilt, wondering if there was so much as a single thing you could have done differently which would have changed the course of fate.

Fate.

Nothing felt so absolute to Elijah than the fact they were destined to be with one another. They were written in the stars, a promise of something beautiful beneath all the shit that was his existence.

Elijah remembered first stepping foot in her bedroom, the prism hanging by the window dancing from the wind of the fan. When he turned on the light, that was the very first thing he saw. And it hit him like a boulder landing against his stomach.

She hadn't forgotten him, and she could never leave him behind. M&M thought of him, needed him, as much as he did her. The little girl with the wild hair and big eyes had turned into a teen, then a young adult, but never grew out of their friendship. And when his eyes found a picture tacked on the wall of her and her friends sitting in the grass smiling, Elijah's tormented heart skipped a beat while his breaths hitched.

He felt like an ass about it, but that night while waiting for her, he'd gone through her things. It wasn't right, but Elijah couldn't help but discover all he could about Maddie. He wanted to learn about her life, and instead what he found was reminders of the past that bound them.

A deck of uno cards, likely the deck. A 'Blink 182' pullover he'd left at their house a good ten or eleven years prior that he thought he'd just lost. Why? Because Maddie said she hadn't seen it. A picture from the sixteenth birthday her parents had thrown him. Then there was the picture of her head laying against a pillow he'd propped on his lap, both fast asleep after she insisted of staying up for New Year's when she was eight. He remembered waking up to see both Mitch and Mary in the living room, watching them with amusement etched across their faces. He'd never known that photo existed.

She even had the stuffed animal he won for her at a fair when she was six. Mitch and Mary had taken them one night in the summer. All the money he had in his wallet from babysitting was blown on that single blue giraffe that now sat on a small wooden stool used as a second bedside table.

Then there was the letter in the top drawer of her desk, looking older and more worn out than it should have been given its age. By its condition, Maddie must have read the thing a thousand times. Same with the only other letter he'd given her, laying just beneath it.

She was still Maddie then. Although he couldn't deny being struck by her beauty in the collage of photographs on the wall, she was still his best friend then.

Eventually, he laid against her bed, and that was the first time his lungs filled with the now all too familiar scents of lavender and vanilla. The lavender reminded him briefly of his mother, and Elijah shook at a memory long since faded, almost completely lost in time.

Sandra Fox loved gardening, lavender being her favorite scent. She'd make everything with it. From carpet deodorizer to infused oil to decorating packages with it. She'd crush it, then tell him to take a big whiff. How could Elijah have forgotten something his mother was so passionate about?

The bigger question was how was Maddie already giving him back so much of his life before ever stepping through that door?

Elijah fell asleep to the gentle sent, and when he awoke, that's when he truly saw her, and it felt like the very first time.

Madeline Martin, the girl who lit up his dark word, turned into the most radiant woman he'd ever laid eyes on. And Elijah knew right then she was going to capture his heart and never give it back.

So if she still had it, what the hell was this sharp pain in his chest?