In Denial | Completed

The first time they made up

It was eleven o'clock in the morning and she was on her second bag of chips.

Chips as dinner – that had definitely happened before, but as breakfast? Never.

She was laying in bed in her jeans. Another thing that happened rarely, if ever. She didn't like wearing the clothes she wore outside of her apartment in her bed.

But right now, she didn't care.

Her keys were already in the lost and found box in the library, when she looked for them this morning and she didn't waste a second with going home and throwing herself in her bed.

Since then, she hadn't moved. Vanessa was exhausted, but couldn't sleep, either.

She hated feeling this overwhelmed. If only for a day she needed to put the outside world on pause and pretend anything outside of her room was not existent. She knew herself. Sometimes it just was like this and the only thing that would help would be to wait. And shutting herself off.

Incredibly healthy coping skills.

But she didn't allow herself to think about that either. Instead, she opened her laptop and clicked play on the first season of her comfort show.

***

Vanessa woke up to the sound of her phone ringing. For a mortifying second, she thought Vann would be calling, but then she remembered that he didn't even have her phone number.

Phone calls stressed the hell out of her, but it was better to answer then to feel obligated to call back.

A glance at the screen informed her that it was her sister. Tension left her body and she accepted the call.

"Mallory!" She forced herself to sound excited.

"Vanny, my favorite sister. How are you doing?" Vanessa could hear train noises in the background. Her sister made a habit of randomly calling her when she was bored waiting for literally anything.

"I'm alright. How about you?"

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine, too. How's life?"

Vanessa sighed. Normally she didn't mind entertaining her sister (because that's, what this was. Mallory never said anything about what was happening in her life, but expected Vanessa to talk about her last week for an hour, forcing her to recall random things like what she bought in the grocery store the day before yesterday, just because she was bored), but today she dreaded it.

"Nothing new on this side of the ocean, Mal. Sorry to disappoint." A straight up lie, but Vanessa couldn't find it in herself to care.

Mallory made an annoyed sound, but Vanessa knew that she didn't mean it seriously. "Oh, come on. Don't tell me you didn't have at least another run-in with lover boy."

Vanessa groaned. The only person she had told about Vann hab been Mallory. And not really about Vann, either. Just about his existence and that she kept on running into him. She just wanted to vent and expected her sister to understand her annoyance, but since that damned phone call there hadn't been an opportunity where Mallory hadn't asked about Vann.

And normally she was fine with recapitulating their short meetings, but today she couldn't imagine anything worse.

"I don't really want to talk about that, Mal. What's new in your life, though?"

On the other line greeted her silence. When Mallory hadn't answered after a few seconds, Vanessa knew, she must've heard Vanessa's change of mood in her tone.

"So, something did happen, then? Spill," Mallory demanded, but with a carefulness in her voice. She was on thin ice with that question.

Vanessa closed her eyes for a second. Maybe it would be good to talk about what happened with her sister. She always brought some order back in her jumbled thoughts.