The Distance Between Us | Eric Coulter

twenty-eight

I search through my trunk at the foot of my bed for my nightgowns but find none. Instead, I find a bunch of plain black oversized cotton t-shirts in their place and immediately knew who was behind this; fucking Eric.

Gripping one shirt in my hand, I'm aware of the curious looks I get from the other initiates as I stomp down the long hallway until I reach Eric's apartment on the other end and pound my fist against his door.

"Open the fuck up, Eric! I know you're in there!" I yelled.

Finally, after a few solid minutes have gone by, Eric cracks his door open, a smirk on his stupid-ass face.

"What a fucking surprise," He states, though he doesn't sound very surprised at all. "What do you want?"

Waving the shirt in his face, I demand, "What the fuck is this?"

The asshole has the audacity to frown at me as if I was an idiot, "Looks like a shirt to me. Do you need to get your eyes checked?"

Pissed off, I toss the material at his face but he easily swipes it away. "What the fuck did you do to my pyjamas, Eric?"

"Oh, you mean this skimpy thing?" He says, holding up the lacy fabric with a finger hooked through one of the straps.

Stepping back into his room, he leaves the door open and throws over his shoulder. "If you want them, you can come and get them yourself."

I hesitate for a beat because the whole thing feels a little sketchy to me. But this wasn't just about my pyjamas anymore. Nope. It was about revenge.

Eyeing the threshold to Eric's apartment, I reach my toe over it as if I was worried that going past it would set me on fire and pause by the door once I'm inside to take it all in.

The place looks exactly like how Eric's room used to look back in Erudite, all dressed in dark colours and spotting an unmade bed (he didn't see the point of making it if he was just going to mess it up again).

There's a jar of cookies sitting on the counter of his kitchenette- chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips, if I had to guess what they were. Eric's mum used to make us chocolate chip cookies all the time when we were younger and I used to always eat around the chocolate. Eventually, she just ended up making them without the chocolate chips and it soon became Eric's favourite too.

I resist the urge to ask him where he gets his cookies because if I was being honest, I missed his mum's cookies a lot. After Eric left for Dauntless, she'd just drifted off into her own little world and refused to talk to anyone despite the countless times I tried to approach her.

Spotting the oven below the stove, I snort to myself for even entertaining the idea that Eric actually uses it. No way he's making these cookies himself.

"What the fuck are you laughing at?" Eric's voice cuts through my nostalgic haze like a sharp knife, reminding me of what brought me to his apartment in the first place.

I turn my glare back on him on full force, "Where are my pyjamas, you psycho?"

Stomping straight to his dresser, I pulled the drawers open and began ransacking them.

His clothes are arranged in rainbow order- not that there were many colours to begin with- and I rolled my eyes. It was another habit he kept from when we were younger, and I'm starting to realise that despite his hardened exterior, there was still a lot of the boy that I used to know inside of him.

Pushing the thought from my head, I move on from his dresser when I come up empty-handed, moving to check every nook and cranny. And instead of stopping me from turning his room into a mess, Eric simply watched me in amusement as I tore through it like a hurricane.