The Art of Starting Over

Chapter 47 - New Leaf

I shut the door as quietly as I could. The last thing I wanted was to wake Sosa and have her freak out over the state Keith was in. 

Keith went straight to the kitchen table and sat down. It was just past one in the morning. We had been at the hospital for four hours. His face was badly bruised and his cheekbone was fractured. They had had to suture his lower lip and apply stitches to his hand, but other than that, he was okay. His ribs and back were sore and they had said it would take some time for the swelling to go down, but everything should heal on its own in due course.

I wrapped a clean towel around a bag of frozen vegetables, a trick I had mastered over the past few weeks, and pressed it gently to his face. I half expected him to push me away, but he didn't. Eventually, he looked at me through the eye which wasn't swollen shut and put a hand to my face. His calloused fingers explored my features softly, as though it was the first time he was seeing me. His touch was so intense I was almost certain it was leaving a mark on my skin, his brown eyes more sincere than I had seen them in ages.

"What happened to us?"

His voice was barely a whisper, but in the quiet of the night, it was amplified tenfold and cut straight through to my heart.

"I don't know," I whispered back.

"I love you, Ally," he said as a tear escaped him. I wiped it off gently with my thumb, but he winced nonetheless. "I know I fucked up but I love you so damn much and I just want you to be mine," he went on. "No more of him, okay?"

I wanted to tell him that I loved him too. I wanted to tell him that I just wanted things to be how they were before. I just wanted to be happy with him, like we had been when we first started going out together. Back when he used to give me butterflies. When we spent hours lazing about on the couch and went for long walks and ate soggy chips with salt and vinegar by the sea. When he wrote and played songs for me and I laughed at his stupid, cheesy lyrics. I just wanted him to look at me the way he used to. I wanted to see his racy smile again, the one that made me weak in the knees and made me wonder how on earth I had managed to snag someone so good-looking and charming and so damn perfect.

But I knew that if I opened my mouth, the words wouldn't come. So I just nodded and held him closer and hoped he understood. He rested his head on my chest and we sat there for what seemed like hours.

***

My phone vibrated beneath my pillow. It was five in the morning and I hadn't slept a wink. I read a text message from Jeremy.

I'm outside.

I looked over to the other side of the bed. Keith was sleeping soundly. His breathing was slow and slightly ragged because of his swollen nose. The contusions around his eye and cheeks were already turning a nasty shade of purple.

I edged out of the bed slowly and quietly. I put on a pair of jogging trousers and Keith's sweatshirt and tiptoed across the room, closing the door quietly behind me. I ran down the stairs and opened the front door.

I didn't know what hit me first, the cold air or his cold eyes. My breath came out in a white mist as I breathed out slowly. I crossed my arms over my chest and walked up to him slowly. He didn't take his eyes off me. They grew warmer and softer the closer I got to him, until I stopped a few paces away. I focused on the cut over his right brow. The only imperfection on his smooth face. It was already dry, but it looked rather deep.

He reached out to touch my cheek, but I turned my head away from his fingers. His hand recoiled and I could see in his eyes that this hurt him. But I couldn't have him touch me right now. Not without breaking. Keith was right. We needed to go back to how things were. And we couldn't do that with Jeremy around.