Mess You Made

59.*

Malibu.

I wake up to the smell of him. It's the first thing I register when I turn my face in towards the pillow— the smell of him lingers on the pillow, in the sheets, this faint hint of his amber and vanilla that I've memorised and so the first thing I do is breathe it in. It's maybe about thirty seconds. The respite that his fragrance lets me be in— it's about thirty seconds where the smell of him eclipses everything else, but it's only thirty seconds before I'm back to this body.

I open my eyes in the quiet.

I lie there. I breathe.

My chest rises and falls like an automated machine. I don't want to move. My bones feel heavy. So I lie there. Feel as if I'm paralysed for a moment. It's quiet and oddly calm and just nothing.

I hear the sound of his bedroom door open. I don't look back to check. I lie there. I breathe.

Somebody rounds the bed and it isn't until a weight softly makes the bed dip beside me that I lift my gaze. Ria sits atop the covers beside me and gingerly rests her back against the headboard, drawing her knees up.

The room is shadowed with the curtains still drawn. Everything is dim and hazy like it should be a gentle morning. I'd rather fall back to sleep instead, fall away from here. I'm not wanting to escape sleep, not wanting to escape a nightmare. It feels a bit like the opposite. The nightmare is the bit when I'm awake, the day is what I need to run from, where light shines on all the things I can't conceal anymore.

My bones are being dragged into the mattress. Cylinder weights attached to my skeleton— it is intensely painful, this heaviness might be the worst thing I have ever felt but it isn't the type of pain you'd cry out for. So I just lay here.

Ria looks down at me. She looks undone in a gentle way. No makeup on her face, no hardness to her expression. Her hair tossed up into a bun that frames her natural beauty— and when her eyes meet mine, the smile she gives me in the dimness is small. It's barely there, it is almost pained, it's everything and nothing and she doesn't say a word.

I can't move my cheek from the mattress. I can't really lift a limb.

Tenderly, Ria strokes back a strand of hair from my cheek and whispers to me, "Keep breathing." She keeps her hand there, this gentle sort of cradle around my face, occasionally brushing strands of my hair, "Breath by breath, bambi. You just keep breathing."

I turn my face in towards the mattress ever so slightly and the warmth of her palm runs through my whole body and my skeleton is cracking with the weight of the cylinders. It's cracking. The frame of myself is cracking, and yet my skin's in tact, and my heart's beating, and my body is fine.

"Breath by breath." She whispers, her voice thick with emotion.

Miguel.

It's late. So fucking late when I get home to the apartment again that I'm panicked and pissed with myself as I rush through the front door, shutting it behind me. The slam of the door resounds through the apartment. It's morning. Malibu could be awake and I wouldn't be there for her. And I'm a fucking idiot. I'm an idiot for it.

I walk quickly down the hallway and into the lounge room to get to my room, not noting that basically everyone's in here until a body intercepts mine. Someone stands in front of me and slows me down.

"Hey— hey. Relax."

I lift my gaze, confused and dazed until I meet Everest's blue eyes. His hand clamps down onto my shoulder, steadying me there and I swallow so that my breathing doesn't sound as laboured. I blink a couple times, register that he's there as I stop moving.