Conversations With The Moon (Bruno Mars One-Shots)

Marry You pt. 29

Your alarm blares in your ears, ripping you from sleep. As your ears pulsate, you scold yourself for choosing such a jarring sound. With sleep being so hard to come by, it's often difficult to wake up. You take a deep breath and try to open your eyes, but they don't respond. You try again, but your lids remain shut. You breathe slowly as heat rushes your chest, and your heart begins to beat harder and harder against your ribcage. This time, you try to move. Then a second time and the muscles in your arms and legs spasm, shaking the way they do toward the end of a good workout, burning as though hot sauce as been poured into your veins. Still, you try and there a little give but before you can push through the pain, your muscle contract and lightning bolts of pain shoot out from your core to the tips of your fingers and toes. You head crane backward as your back arches against your will you breath gets caught at the back of your throat. In your mind's eye you see Asher looming over you. His form appears large, larger than normal and his face darkened by the lack of light between you has left most of his features obscured. You can only see his eyes; the look shifty, unsettled but look sort of distant as though he doesn't quite know where he is. You try to scream; you try to move but nothing happens. Nothing at all. A chill blows past you straight to the marrow in your bones.

You try to move but your muscles spasm, contract and then pair shoots through your limbs. Your muscles burn upon your second attempt, and a chill rushes over you the way cold air rushes out of a supermarket freezer section. With tears burning behind your eyes, you gulp down a breath and try again but then you start to see something. The events of last night begin replaying before your eyes. You see Asher approaching you in the dim parking lot light. Willing your feet to move, you try and take a step but look down to find that you're feet are practically cemented to the pavement. Beginning to tremble now, you try again and attempt to scream but nothing escapes your lips. No sound, nothing at all. You take as big of a breath you can manage and try screaming again. Your chest burns, but you manage to get your lungs and vocal cords to respond.

You wake to the strained sound of your own voice, everything is burning, you're damp all over and your lashes are doused in so many tears you can barely see. You press your palms to your eyes rub them free of tears and then and then finally turn off your alarm. You place your hands on your chest and take several breaths. You check the time.

7:45am

Despite how long that ordeal felt, no time has passed. You're on time. It takes several minutes for you to self-soothe enough to will yourself out of bed. You reach for your phone and start to text Bruno before you hit send, you backtrack and delete the message. If you text or even called now and explained what happened, he comes for sure. That wouldn't be bad, it would in fact be good but as you think about it, you resign to set your phone down.  He attempts to drop almost anything to comfort you, yeah probably but that would be a hell of a way for him to learn about this Asher mess. He deserves a full explanation. Especially after you promised to speak up more. Instead, you head into the bathroom and busy yourself with your morning routines. As tears continue to slip from your eyes, you do your hair, apply your makeup and then dab at your eyes before applying waterproof mascara to your lashes.

In the kitchen, you do much of the same minus any actual breakfast on account of how this almost tangible emptiness in your stomach seems to be taking up all of the space available. You gulp down your vitamins with a swing of water just as you hear stirring. You blood runs cold but then your mind seems to receive an update like a email dinging in your email inbox.

Paloma.

You grab a few ingredients from your fridge and start a quick breakfast. Then you make coffee. You're just about ready to pour it into a travel mug when your phone dings.

"Good morning, baby," Bruno texts. "What's today's drink?"

"Matcha," you text back without hesitation. "Iced with Lavender cold foam."