Deja Vu (SatoGou)

Chapter 10

Nothing ever made me cry like the inevitability of Ash's departure sinking in that night. I locked myself in the room, turning down dinner, and slinked into bed, pulling the covers up over my head to put myself in darkness. At first, I thought I wasn't going to cry. I felt completely numb, and it was hard to process a single thought. My brain was shutting down any negative thoughts in a feeble attempt to protect me from them.

Accepting my numbness, after fifty minutes of sitting in the dark, I crawled back out from under the covers and grabbed a new book from my bookshelf. It was a thriller, not a romance. I wasn't sure I could handle reading a romance. It was warm, and I didn't want to sit back under the covers in the stuffy heat so I sat at my desk and opened the book. I thought that reading might distract me. I thought it might be a good idea to disappear into another world, for a bit.

I had to re-read the first page four times. After the fourth I gave up and put the book down on the desk, and stared ahead at the wall. I could hear the ticking of the clock in the hall, and the sound of cars driving by the house, and the distant barking of a dog. All of a sudden, I burst into tears. They came so fast I almost couldn't breathe, and for a while I thought I was going to drown myself in my own tears, and that would be such a pathetic way to die.

I cried for hours. Every time I thought I was done, they would come back again. I wasn't sure how I had any tears left. My eyes were sore. Actually, my whole face hurt. I was grieving someone who was still alive, because I had convinced myself that we were done being best friends, even though that didn't need to be the case.

I lost track of time, and I wasn't even sure when I stopped crying. I was sitting on the floor, staring blankly ahead, and at some point realised I was no longer crying. My throat hurt, and was so dry, but I couldn't make myself move. I was glued to the floor. I glanced at the clock and it was one in the morning.

I was exhausted, but the thought of laying in bed and closing my eyes, of giving in to the memories that would no doubt come flooding back, was bleak, so once I finally managed to stand again, I snuck downstairs, grabbed a glass of water, and went right back to the desk. I opened the book and started to read. I managed, but my brain was foggy, and I wasn't really taking in the words.

At some point I dozed off, my head pressed into the desk, and I woke up to the sound of a knock at the door. I was stunned for a moment, confused as to why I was at the desk. It was too bright and I squinted to see the time. It was eleven in the morning. I sat upright, rubbing my eyes, which felt swollen from crying. The birds outside were so loud, and every sound was making my head ring.

"Goh," my mom called up the stairs. "Ash is here."

I tried to straighten myself up quickly. I knew my mom would just send him up- she always did, she was so used to him being here. A moment later I heard his footsteps on the stairs and picked up the book, pretending I'd been reading. I couldn't even remember what had happened so far.

He opened the door and closed it behind him. I turned to look at him, and he stood at the door, watching me. He looked me up and down, and I realised I was in the same clothes, and my hair would be a complete mess.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," I repeated.

Silence fell for a few moments. There was a strange tension between us now; an elephant in the room. I wasn't sure how we could possibly act normal when we knew what was coming.

He moved across the room to sit on the edge of my bed, watching me carefully. I hadn't seen myself in a mirror, so I had no idea if he could tell I'd been crying, or awake half the night.

"You've made good progress on that book," he joked, nodding. I looked down. I was only four chapters in. How did I only read four chapters in so many hours?