coast ; walker scobell

twelve.

"No, Dior, this is serious. If you laugh, you are subjected to a life of torment and suffering. Deadpan or you can hang up." 

I've been ripping my hair out since the door closed behind me. After metaphorically clawing into my brother for interrupting what could have been the night of my life, I sprinted to my room to wallow in my feelings. I'm having what I can only consider an existential crisis. My lyric book is cracked open on my lap. I wrote a whole song it what must've been twelve minutes. Littered around each line is a sloppy portrait of him, or a heart, or an absurdly lovesick doodle. 

I think I'm really going insane. 

"Okay, baby, I'm being serious. Come on, I want to know what's got you in your feels like this," she drawls, mid-applying makeup. "I'm guessing it's Walker, but I'd like to know more anyway." 

I recount every second of the day in precise accuracy - down to the quote, down to the sliver of movement, down to the feeling. I strip every second into an essay of explanation, and she is forced to ingest it all. 

When I finish, it is as though she's torn between laughing and whooping. Her smile is restricted but honest, eyes gleaming with fascination. She calmly sets down her makeup brush before releasing a squeal. "Oh girl, this is it! Come on, you said he looked smug? That's totally what he wanted - he wanted to kiss you. And he is sure you want it back now." 

I narrow my eyes at her. "I thought he was glad I didn't," I share my perception of the moment. This makes her really crack up. 

"No, no, no, come on. A blind pig could see how besotted he is with you." 

"How sure can you be?" I fret, glancing between my phone and lyric book. I'm pining like a ridiculous puppy, so it better be true. My heart is fragile enough as it is; I feel as though his rejection could snap me in half and make me shrivel into a pile of atomic nothing. 

"Sure," Dior reassures me. "I bet he'll show up with flowers and tickets to the movies, and, and - I don't know, he'll be everything you want him to be." 

"There are no good movies out," I complain, back to pulling at my hair until my scalp stings. 

"It'll be everything you want, baby, and if it isn't, maybe that'll teach you a lesson. Don't procrastinate things you can't control. Now, go get a good night's sleep." She blows me a kiss and ends the call. 

Huffing dramatically, I connect to my speaker and blast a song. Losing you, Solange. I hum along, spinning around in my chair, trying to connect all the fractured evidence in my brain. 

Okay... maybe it does make sense. My vision blurs with dizziness. It totally could. The physical contact, the eye contact, the... the everything contact. Us sharing a bed. How casually he seemed to act about me waking up in his arms. 

But then it wouldn't make sense, because I had constantly told him all my romantic songs were about past crushes and relationships. Wouldn't that insinuate that I was still hung up on them? I groan into my palms, distressed beyond reason. I feel as though I have spent the duration of my crush on Walker tying myself into knots just so I wouldn't have to confess. And now, when I teeter on the edge of actually confessing, all my elaborate schemes are creeping up to haunt me. 

I look up and, looming on my mirror like a threat, a strip of photos me and Walker captured in an arcade are pinned up. My eyes dart between my face - sunken with worrying, eyes devoid of excitement - and the pictures - tiny versions of myself and Walker. I pry the little reel from the mirror and pull it closer. 

In the first, I am grinning cheekily at the camera, hands buried in Walker's hair. His cheeks are tinged with colour, but the monochromatic filter betrays little. He looks flustered, if my intelligence is to be trusted.