The Gray Zone

CHAPTER 14

/Alexis' POV/

On Monday morning I woke up and my anxiety was basically beginning to kill me right away. To drag me into this deep, dark, unpleasant hole inside my soul and swallow me whole. The later it got yesterday the more I felt it coming. Creeping up behind me. Because I had dragged me through all of my bad and even worse days until now this year I decided to take a break. If anything I was not stable enough to meet so many people today, to be judged and tested. 

It was not that hard to convince my mom that I had the flu and after she checked a few more times on me and told me that she'll hurry to get home today she left. After hearing the door closing I laid there for another hour and listened to music. Levi and I were often home alone but now I was the only one for almost seven hours. I turned the music off and enjoyed the silence and even when I decided to get up and make me breakfast I tried to make as less noise as possible. 

I starred at seemingly boring stuff and tried to notice small, nice things like how good the coffee smelled or the nice color in the living room. There was some kind of satisfaction in looking at straight lines and not moving objects. I showered and put on sweatpants. I could have not imagined a better treatment against everything bad than simply taking care of myself.

At twelve AM I sat down on the floor of the living room and began to draw a few lines into my notebook. Just after a few moments these lines connected into a body, limbs and a face. Furthermore I began to draw two dark eyes, nicely swung lips, a nose piercing on the left nose drill and over the neck, chest and arms little, interleaved lines and patterns. When I backed up I realized that I basically drew a motionless, passive figure of Jesse. This was definitely not what I intended to draw at first and even now I wasn't fully happy with the outcome but I didn't had anything against it. Beneath the scratch I wrote "You don't understand the unbearable beauty of being you ~ Amie Kaufmann" and took the full sight in. 

After a while of purely looking at it with no other distraction I felt a lump in my throat and closed the notebook immediately. This made it somehow even worse so I opened it again and began to feel intimidated and kind of uncomfortable so instead of closing the book I decided to leave the room.

Two hours later, while I was watching Netflix on my laptop, the bell rung and I walked down. I instantly wished that a certain tattooed prick, which I had the bad luck of crushing on big time, would stand on the other side but this wasn't the case. In fact, it was Sasha. 

"Hey Alex" He smiled kindly and made his way into the house "I heard you weren't feeling well today so I thought I could come by and check on you." 

I thanked him and walked in front of him in the living room and sat down on the sofa. 

"Yeah... You know had some trouble on my mind." 

His expression changed and Sasha sat down next to me. He smelled nicely. 

"I'm sad to hear that." He frowned and put his hand on my knee which I had pulled up. "The good thing is, you didn't miss anything today. It was really boring. And I didn't had so many reasons to smile today because you were missing." 

"Am I not just one reason?" 

He chuckled and slid even closer to me. I looked into his blue eyes and felt not so out of place anymore. "No, Alex, you're definitely more than one reason to smile. I mean your comments, your laugh, your smart answers in class, and your telling gazes when a fuckboy begins to speak ... all of this and way more things are reasons that you brighten my day."