ʟᴜsᴛғᴜʟ ᴡʜɪsᴘᴇʀs |(𝟷𝟾+)

24

ᴅᴇɴʏ

Sweat is dripping down my forehead. My legs are aching and my breathing is shallow.

"Woah, relax. You've been running non stop for fifteen minutes. Drink some water." Oliver takes me out of my daze.

I don't listen to him and keep running, my body was telling me to stop but I liked the feeling. When there is an ache, it means you're doing something right.

"Jude I'm serious, stop. You need to give your body a break." Oliver catches up to my speed, jogging next to me.

"I know what my body needs." I reply, purposely running faster to lose him.

Oliver was a- he's just an accomplice who happens to train for the same reason I do. We're not friends. He just talks to me and I reply sometimes but it doesn't go further from that on the field.

Honestly, he's a pain most times. He doesn't know when to mind his business and he's nice, which means he pushes in asking you what's wrong.

"Fine, you win. I'm gonna take a break." I hear him gasping for air behind me.

My main priority since the age of fifteen was to move out of this state. Since deciding I was going to be a police officer, I started training a year ago, the physical training was the easiest. I heard about the ROTC program but I wanted to focus on school first and my main goal was to be a police officer, then once I had everything planned out, I would move to the East coast where I'd live a quiet life alone as an officer. I didn't want anything more or anything less.

All these people here, they wouldn't matter anymore in a year. I just had to make it through another few months. I'd make it my goal to just push past this in a flash before I finally reach my goal.

I stop running once I make it past the white line for the last time. I found this track field a few months ago while on a run, then I started coming here because I thought I'd be alone. Then Oliver started coming and I stopped. These past few weeks, when not at home, this is where I was, training or working out.

It's a good way to get your mind of a certain someone.

"I was shouting your name but then remembered you can't hear me, silly me." Oliver chuckles as he throws me my water bottle.

He was one of the few I told about myself, again in another heat of the moment argument. I was tired of him always talking so I told him I couldn't hear him thinking he would stop bothering to talk. Ironically, he actually knows sign language and was communicating that way before I told him I could hear and speak.

"So-" He wipes his sweat off his forehead with a towel as he sits.

"Who's the girl?" He asks, squinting his eyes up.

"What girl?" I ask at his sudden question.

"You telling me you've been coming here to blow off steam all month and there's no girl behind the reason? Come on!" He smiles, holding up his bottle.

"There's no girl." I glare at him because he's in my business again.

"So you look like that and there's no girls? Are the girls at your school blind? I love women but I can comfortably admit to a male being attractive." He says.

"Good for you." What's the point in this conversation.

"You could say thanks, but it's alright." He stands up, dropping his things on the ground.

"You can say there's no girl all you want." He walks up to me.

"But that doesn't explain those hickeys on your neck." He pats me on the shoulder, with a smug smile on his face.

I'm so sick of hearing that hickeys have to mean more than what they are. They're just marks. No meaning behind them at all. People can't move on with their lives.

Memories of Annalise and that night resurfaced with that being said. I woke up the next morning with purple marks around my neck, it was clearly a regrettable mistake we both made. These things on my neck were a shameful memory of a mistake.
She was probably used to guys going into her room so it was like usual for her, but I knew better.

It won't happen again. She doesn't mean anything to me and it's time I let her know it too. Someone should show her, her place.

"I'm gonna take another lap." He says before jogging off ahead of me.

Without saying anything to him, I grab all my stuff and leave. He doesn't know anything either, he's annoying and always happy.

I enter the same empty silent house everyday, yet it's not the silence I want and am wanting to run towards. My dad is always home, he works here and does everything else in the comfort of his home. He doesn't leave much, I don't need to be a therapist for me to know that it goes back to what happened with me and my mom.

The silence here is exhausting and just depressing. Our house is open and while there's a lot of space, sometimes it feels small. That's why I started leaving in the first place.

I don't hear anything from the kitchen which is usually where he is when I get home. I head into the kitchen pulling out another water bottle then going to my room.

I shower, taking off my hearing aid. My showers are always quiet but for some reason, today they are even more quieter than normal. I close my eyes, hoping that the darkness would help me hear something, anything.

The faintest noises come from the water falling below me. My left ear worked better than my right but right now I couldn't hear much of a difference. There was always a fear hidden in the back of my mind about this. One day the world would go completely silent and I'd miss everything.

But that shit is only as real as I let it be. I get out of the shower, applying the hearing aid right back onto my ear. There was a time in the day I always looked forward to, with the exception of working out, it was always being alone.

I didn't like things too loud or crazy, I preferred being alone since I was a kid and that's the way things would always be. Nothing else mattered to me.

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Written: 11/11/2024