TW: blood, fighting
🛹🥺💖
meet me at the park tomorrow morning at nine. lets talk.
Sent yesterday 7.43pm
Me:
okay
Delivered
I stared at the texts from the night before, nervously gnawing on my bottom lip. I was twenty minutes early. I hadn't slept a wink the night before - Naomi staying the night or no, Lloyd's drawings or no; it wouldn't have changed the outcome of my sudden, critical burst of anxiety-induced severe insomnia - worse than usual.
Placing my phone to the side, I inhaled deeply through my nose in a useless effort to settle my nerves. My stomach was rolling with knots and it felt as if my lungs had been bundled too tight in a blanket - each breath was heavy and thick and doing little to actually oxygenate my chest.
Drowning on dry land.
It was the height of spring. A Saturday morning and also Jay's birthday. A couple of parents were out with their kids. A few dogs chased frisbees thrown by teenagers. It was still cold from the lingering chill of the night, but the way the dew on the grass glittered gold in the sunlight was a sight worth the shiver that tumbled up my spine.
It was early and peaceful.
I was a ball of agitation.
I checked the time again. Only a minute had passed from when I last looked at my phone screen. The morning was dragging slow and languidly, unaware of my turmoil. Time waited for no one and apparently it ignored the impatient, too.
I felt a little guilty leaving Naomi alone at my own house aside from my parents, but she insisted that it was fine when I told her about the meeting Lloyd had set up. Besides, she'd been over enough times to consider my home as her own. She'd be fine.
I swallowed again, throat still like the desert - to absolutely nobody's surprise. I cursed myself for not bringing a water bottle but I couldn't find it in myself to get up from the bench closest to the entrance to purchase one - on the paranoid off-chance that Lloyd arrived and left while I was gone. And what if I bumped into trouble?
No, no. Kai was patrolling the area and keeping an eye on me in the park. Weird, because he told me that it was supposed to be Lloyd's shift. The green ninja wasn't there in the morning. His bed was empty.
I gnawed on my lips to distract myself, eyes following a ladybug's journey across the vast jungle of grass stems.
I tried not to think too hard about Lloyd's absence at his own home. About why he wasn't there.
I pulled out my phone again and caved, not caring whether I was still fifteen minutes early. So what if I was eager? Of course I'd be eager. It's Lloyd. We both want to sort this out just as much as the other, right?
Me:i'm hereDelivered
It'd be nice to fix us before Jay's party-turned-training session. Apparently my dad's present to Jay was letting the ninja absolutely decimate a handful of military captains in sword combat.
Did I say decimate? I meant teach. Teach a handful of military captions in sword combat.
Jay was excited, at least.
I counted the seconds as I stared at the sky. Maybe keeping an eye out for Bentley? How was Bentley? I hadn't seen him in three weeks. I missed the dragon. He was so much more than an elemental beast, so much more than a pet. It was crazy that Lloyd was calling him an it when we first met. He was so much more sentient than to be reduced to an it.
Seemed that Lloyd quickly understood that, too.
Was he still having trouble with Bentley? He hadn't ran off again, but had Lloyd even summoned him since his little trip to see me in the ungodly hours of the morning? I hadn't been keeping up with the ninja stan accounts on Twitter. I stopped using it when I found out about a negative, trending hashtag to expose the green ninja's fiancée - because that one interview he did a while back didn't fool anybody, apparently.
