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29/03/2022
REAGAN DISAPPEARED FOR an hour. Sixty whole minutes. Vienna shouldn't have been concerned. As a girlfriend, his girlfriend, she shouldn't have doubted his trust. But she was betting on it now. The two dollars she found abandoned on the floor was the source of her spiral. Take it if you trust him, leave it if you don't. She couldn't tear her eyes away, the notes chanting her name. Screaming. Taunting.
"I got this for you," he said. Him. The missing boyfriend, the untrusting lover.
Vienna turned her head, a movement that almost seemed robotic. Not that Reagan was paying enough attention to notice. Her silk dress was quickly growing cold, but the jacket she used to wear at parties was gone. Reagan was only in his button-up now.
He was holding out a plastic cup to her, a liquid sloshing in its confinement. Most people would've grabbed it. Vienna almost did. If she took it, she would save herself the argument, and save herself the energy. But she was sick of this now.
"It's alcohol, isn't it?" She asked, her voice a murmur over the pumping music. You downer, Vienna, she thought. You're killing the mood. No. Reagan killed the mood first.
Reagan finally looked down at her, a crease in his skin forming between his brows. "Of course it's alcohol," he grinned, laughing through a gentle scoff. "We're at a party, Vi. What else would it be?"
He thrusted it closer to her. A trickle of the liquid splashed against the rim of the cup, flying against Vienna's dress. She looked down, watching the lilac silk grow darker under the alcohol. She looked up. His eyes were on the dancing crowd in the middle of the room.
Gently, she nudged his hand with the cup away. "I don't drink."
Reagan scoffed, again. He looked down, a flicker of his teasing nature rising to the surface. She had missed that, and she could've fallen all over again, albeit the circumstances.
"Since when," he shouted over the sound of people screaming to the beat.
"Since forever," she replied, her lips dipping into a frown. "You know this, Reagan. I tell you everytime."
He only shrugged, hiding a roll of his eyes by looking away. "More for me," he mumbled, his voice blending in with the music. Vienna watched him down both drinks. When he lowered the second cup, his eyes wide and dazed, he looked to his side. She was gone.
Vienna stood on the balcony. Her cold elbows rested against the barrier overlooking the city, the breeze washing a chill over her body. She just stood there for a while, breathing, thinking. Her heartbeat was louder than the music inside. Eyes closing, wind rolling over her, she sighed. How did people do this?
She opened her phone, eventually. She didn't go on Instagram, though. Or Pinterest, or Twitter. She swiped into her notes instead - one in particular. Untitled, it was called, but it wasn't fitting. Him, would've been better, or once upon a time, My love.
She wanted to hate herself for this: for feeling this way, thinking these thoughts. But she couldn't stop herself. How could she not dislike him? It wasn't the reality that really got her, it was the principle. Leaving her for an hour, when she knew who he was with. Not complimenting his girlfriend, but complimenting her. Forgetting something as simple as remaining alcohol-free over, and over, and over again.
Innocence could only go so far.
She stared at the words on the screen. The lines, the verses. The stars shone above her, twinkling in the darkness. Cars tooted below. Lovers sat in those cars, something she once was. She loved him, yes, at one point, but she soon came to the daunting realisation, standing on her friend's balcony while her boyfriend danced obliviously inside, that she didn't like him. That's what drew a line, solidifying a nightmare. Vienna didn't like him.
The backspace had never deleted so many words. Hours upon hours of love and praise disappeared in minutes, her appreciation for a once-great man fleeing before her very eyes. She wished she could erase her thoughts, her wild heartbeats, her realisation. But she couldn't. It was something she would have to live with for the following year until she finally got over it. She just didn't know it would take so long.
The page was empty now. Everything, gone. She thought it would feel good, like the stars above pulling the weights away from her breaking shoulders. But, it didn't. She felt empty. Arguable, she felt worse.
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, lingering like her mind. Write, sing, think, do. Words spawned in her head, but nothing that made sense. It was almost ironic. Nothing made sense to her anymore.
She left after writing a sentence: I'm so sick of seventeen. She forced herself to walk back inside. She wouldn't let her sadness simmer during such a positive time. She found her friends, her people, her true loves. She danced with Wren, Amita, and Billie, letting her grin seep up her emptiness to hide it in the pit of her stomach. She saved it all for later.
She only moved to leave when the clock struck midnight. A fitting time, a fitting scene. She hugged her friends goodbye, bidding farewell to whomever she saw and recognised, before walking through the crowd.
And there was the jacket she used to wear. The collar was turned up. Shielding her neck, her skin, her being. Walking past, a brush of the shoulder, and then it was gone. Gone was her jacket, Reagan's jacket, gone was the two dollars on the floor, and gone was Violet Terrell.
Vienna didn't text Reagan until she got home. It was cruel, she knew it, but she was sick of playing fair. She wanted him to notice she had disappeared. But he didn't. She had to text him first, silk dress on the floor, purple ribbon torn out of her hair.
REAGS <3
just got home i'll leave the door unlocked read 1:02am
nah, lock it ill probs be here a while longer so ill just stay somewhere else wouldnt want to wake you read 1:08am
