Fleur-de-lis

Lake of Cocytus: Side A

John's p.o.v

The light of the morning sun shines through my eyelids. Waking up wasn't the type of disappointment I was ready to deal with right now but the sunlight insisted different. My eyes crack open reluctantly and my head immediately starts pounding. Maybe I was a bit hung over. I decide to concede and just get the day over with, sitting up and rubbing the sleep from my eyes. I get out of bed, just in my boxers when it occurs to me that I didn't really remember how I got home last night...or much of last night in general. It'd likely come back to me like all the bad things in life do. Scratching an itch on my neck, I decide to save getting dressed for later and judt do breakfast first.

I head to the kitchen, gravitating directly to the fridge. I grab a few eggs and nothing else. I hadn't really picked up on cooking enough to make anything besides scrambled eggs. Next I needed a pan, which I thought I might find in one of the lower cabinets. After finding one, I twirl it in my hand and turn around only to be scared half to death by the presence of another person in my kichen.

"Shit!" I nearly shout.

"Look who's finally awake." Grace greets, standing in just a bra and short tights, holding a bundled up extra article of clothing in her arms.

"Grace? What're you-" I look at what she's wearing and what I'm wearing, piecing together what might've happened last night. "Please don't tell me that we...?"

"What?! No!" Grace makes a face as she rejects the very notion of us sleeping together. "You threw up on my dress when I took you home last night. I just got it out of your washer."

"Oh, thank God." I exhale a massive sigh of relief. I had a tendency to do really stupid things when I got drunk. "In the mean time, do you want scramble eggs?" I ask with a smile.

Grace eyes me suspicously. "John, are you alright?"

Truthfully, I wasn't. I was the furthest thing from alright, but...I didn't want to think about why. In fact, I was already regretting my memory of last night slowly returning. "I'm fine."

"John, that's...that's not what it seemed like at the party." Grace comments.

No doubt, she was referring to my attempted suicide. "I just get a little melancholy when I drink sometimes. Nothing to concern yourself about." I return to prepping for making my scrambled eggs.

"John, this wasn't a little melancholy. You tried to kill yourself!" Grace reasons, growing assertive.

"Grace. I was just drunk and clumsy. alright?" I assure.

Grace crosses the kitchen to make me face her. "No! Not alright." Grace nearly snaps. "John, you...you scared the shit out of Luca. You scared the shit out of me! So I'm not gonna accept your macro responses. What is going on with you?"

The fake smile on my face fades. Part of me wanted to tell her but I didn't know where to begin. I was scared. Scared of feeling exposed. Scared of people knowing just how weak of a person I really was. Their image of me, their smiles when they were under the assumption that I was okay...it was all I had left. If Grace or Luca looked down on me with pity it'd be more than I could take. I turn away from Grace, avoiding her gaze.

"John!" She commands, using her whole chest.

My walls stay up. I return to cooking my breakfast, trying to ignore her existence completely.

Grace's phone rings and she ignores it, prioritizing trying to pry down my boundaries. "John, you can't shut us out.  We only have each other. You, me and Luca." Her phone rings again, ringing over her talking to me. "What're you so afraid of that you refuse to even look-" she grows frustrated with the ringing and angrily answers her phone. "What!?" The anger on her face is quickly replaced with concern. "What?... woah, Luca. Slow down."