THINK ABOUT LIVING | Daryl Dixon

002 | Lessons of Trust

━━━━━━ CHAPTER TWO ━━━━━━
Lessons of Trust
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          THE SCENT OF ALCOHOL INTOXICATED the very air between them. Humidity made it ever the more fragrant in the aftermath of a busy day that had left the bar feeling desolated right in the first minutes of the closing hours. It was the early summer of 2006 and the radio played the classic rock on a much more diffused tone than mere moments ago — the sound seemed to have distanced itself from the scene like a storm passing over a town, leaving room for the sound of waves to wash through the open windows in the back and the brush of the broom across the floors to become ever the more soundly. Thus was created the illusion that one could hear the pin drop there during the cleaning late hours of the night, when the clock pointed a lot past midnight.

Though he personally would grow to remember only fragments of what had happened there and then between them, Daryl had been staring at his empty glass since Mallory started cleaning the floors. He's been a quiet company the whole night and imagining there must have been something troubling him, she wasn't planning on poking a possibly ticking bomb, not until her hands were free of duties to carry out and she could wrap her arms around him.

"Don't go," Daryl mumbled, barely intelligible.

Mallory's broom came to a stop and she looked up from the floor only for a sneeze to interrupt her immediate confusion. After promptly brushing her nose, leaving it behind flushed in red, she furrowed down her eyebrows, taking only but a quick note of his empty glass, not long before having been filled with beer. She gulped dryly, then tilted her head, "What's that, honey?"

He hesitated to look away from the bottom of the glass, "Just don't go." After a deep sigh, Daryl finally squinted up to find her eyes, "Please."

Though she opened her mouth at first to inquire about what he meant by his plea, Mallory instantly realized she knew exactly what all of this was about, so she closed her mouth and sighed, going back to sweeping the floor even if just to quickly even the pile before she set the broom aside and wiped her hands on her apron. Daryl watched on rather impatiently and perhaps neither of them knew the delay had stirred his stillness into anger's brew.

"We talked about this," Mallory noted, walking over to his table. After leaving a pat on his bare forearm sticking out from pulled sleeves of a plaid shirt, she started cleaning his table, thus counting more bottles of beer than she recalled being brought to him during her shift. "I'll be back, you know. Before you even get the chance to properly miss me, I'll be back."

"You don't even know how long you'll be gone, Mals," he shook his head ever so slowly, bowing his gaze back to the now empty table. "Could be months and it could as well be years."

"We've got phones, don't we?" Mallory shrugged it off. During their first discussion on the matter, she's been far more compassionate and even touched by Daryl's concern to missing her too dearly, but given that conversation had been weeks ago and it ended with his acceptance of her decision, everything that followed disturbed her; it started smelling fishy, like someone was countouring his concerns in his mind when she wasn't looking. It wasn't particularly difficult to pinpoint the culprit that was making her boyfriend restless, for he had started getting agitated on the matter only after a night out with his brother after all.

"It ain't the same thing," Daryl turned around in his seat to watch Mallory drop the empty bottles on the bar's surface. He was expecting her to turn around, but the lack of patience made his right knee bounce. "I just don't get it. Why? Why do you want to go?"