ɪ ᴡᴀɴɴᴀ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ᴇᴠᴇʀʏᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ ʏᴏᴜ.
Easily strung out, Cecelia Catton fled to Seattle on an
arrogant whim, chasing the scene by its ever-expanding tail. Forcing herself out from under the thumb of a failed marriage and stifling environment, the twen...
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❝ 𝑨𝑳𝑳 𝑵𝑰𝑮𝑯𝑻 𝑻𝑯𝑰𝑵𝑮. ❞
LEISURELY HOUR, ( seattle, 1990 ) Chris abruptly woke to a heaviness on his chest. It took him mere seconds to realise the tremulous pressure wasn't just internal. An arm— chalk white and unfamiliar—was draped over him like an afterthought, pinning him to the bed. As his lassitude eyes lifted, his pulse erratically thumped in tandem with his burgeoning headache.
He was most definitely not in his own bed. Not even close.
His eyes were on the precipice of closing again, burning with the heftiness of insomnia, but it took only a second for the dread to settle in. This wasn't his bed. The woman next to him was nameless and faceless in the dim morning light.
He must have been drunker than he thought, considering he actually spent the night. He rarely, rarely, stayed the night. He was essentially inept when it came to gentle reassurance and awkward post-sex conversations, so he avoided them at all costs.
He lay there for a moment too long, not out of a false sense of propriety but because he was paralysed by his own inertia. Covered in a thin layer of sweat, he was splayed upon effeminate, sateen sheets that made him unnaturally warm. His eyes flicked open finally, scanning the stranger's room— lit up in shadows by white beams filtering through cheap Venetian blinds.
He couldn't suppress the muted curse that slipped from his lips.
How drunk had he been last night?
Too drunk, clearly.
The room itself seemed to mock him with pictures of fellow musicians. His eyes trailed over the walls—Mötley Crüe, Green River and Metallica posters. A heaped mess of clothes littered the floor and the scent of a stale vanilla incense lingered in the air. It was all so typical. She was still asleep beside him, her arm across his chest, and he felt that familiar itch rising inside him. The urge to escape. To disappear before things got too personal. He could already hear his bandmates giving him grief for this one.
In the past year, Chris had been met with an unwavering influx of female adulation as the so-called 'grunge sound' blossomed. Touring with the band meant a new city every other night, and somehow, no matter where he went, it was always facsimile scripted. They sought him out after gigs, pulling him into their orbit with promises he barely heard and smiles that never reached their eyes. A gig, a bar, a few drinks, someone's bed, and then—nothing. Just indifference. Every woman, blurred into one big faceless memory that he could hardly recall.
He knew what his bandmates thought. They never said it outright, but he saw it in their eyes, in the way they looked at him when they thought he wasn't paying attention. They thought he was running. Running from Andy's death. Running from grief. But he wasn't running. He was drowning. Drowning in noise, in women, in alcohol, in anything that could numb the gnawing emptiness that had taken root in his chest. Irrespective of how many faces, mouths and bodies he'd touched, eventually they all blurred into nothingness.
