A.N. Cute gif of Hayden Christensen, I.E. Sawyer. I picked him because I found so many adorable gifs that I could use to express and represent the character I wanted to show. I'm really glad I found him, I couldn't think of anyone else that could look innocent and cute, but sexy and Southern at the same time. Tell me what you think of the cast because sometimes I make shitty choices and other times amazing ones and I can't tell the difference. Anyway, onto the chapter.
♔ Chapter Six ♔
I stirred briefly in my sleep, feeling my face pushed against the itchy arm of the sofa I'd slept on. I had to force myself up, my back already starting to ache from sleeping on it wrong. Trying to stretch it away, I let my eyes scour the room around me, to take in exactly where I was.
I recognised the flat around me, from the thundering clank that broke through the cracked and boarded up windows. It was an abandoned loft on the furthest outskirts of Penzance, so far out that if the roads were quiet enough, you could hear the violent slashing of waves against the chalky cliffs nearby, where the English Channel attacked the land like a fiend. The house was on one of those old Georgian streets lined in gorgeous brownstone buildings, where it must have fallen into disrepair after one of the depressions.
I could tell, the first time I saw it, standing four stories high off of the ground, that it must have been a grand thing, a few decades ago. The neighbouring brownstone houses looked much the same, but not nearly as run down. This one was a decaying, rotting clump of brown bricks and broken glass, where the others still had some dignity, and actual people living there. But it was better that way.
Ever since Tom died, when school ended, and I ran away from home on what my mum thought was my 'gap year', I'd grown to realise something about myself. I had an affinity to broken things, abandoned things - things like this run-down loft apartment, things like Tom, and Isaac, and Sawyer, and Fletcher. I clung to them so much that, without even really realising it, I'd become one myself.
I'd found this place my first night away from home, half-drunk, when I'd fumbled down a back alley and slumped myself into a random back-garden. I used the fire-escape to climb to the highest floor, to see the view of Penzance from all the way up there. I remembered looking out at the nearby sea, my eyes caught by the light of the lighthouse near the shore. I screamed out his name as long and as loud as I could. Only once. Tom. I let it blow out in the wind, echoing on; a final susurration of my love for him, that I watched wisp off and was carry out into the very ocean that took him from me.
After that, I turned and saw where one of the broken windows had been left open. Clumsily, I'd climbed inside and fallen asleep, only to wake up the next day on this same dusty old sofa.
Much of the furniture had been left untouched inside the loft, with ghostly grey sheets tossed over them, gathering dust. Cobwebs collected everywhere over time, in the corners of the ceiling, dangling down. The old, dark red curtains hung sullenly from the windows, ripped or frayed in places, with an old brick fireplace in the corner and an old black and white TV hiding in the shadows.
In a way, I guess this had become the place that I lived, or the closest thing that I had to a home. When I wasn't going back with guys, or staying out all night at parties, I'd come back here. Some nights, I'd spend in McDonald's until they kicked me out, and I'd stay out on the streets, or other times I'd stay with friends. When I wasn't doing any of that, I was on the highest floor of the abandoned old brownstone, in the run down loft by the sea. In a way, it was kind of cosy. Like all abandoned things, it drew me in.
Sometimes, I'd get the fire lit, and the room would toast up pretty fast, and other times, the warmth would soak through the walls from the attached houses next door. Because the walls were probably really old and really thin, I usually stayed as quiet as I could, so the neighbours didn't hear anything. Although, that didn't mean that I couldn't hear them.
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Own Me
Romance"The world was a different place, now that he was dead. The love of my life, gone forever. In my dreams, I would see him on the verge of those chalky white cliffs, and he would look at me, before stepping over the edge. He killed himself, and left m...
