Say My Name [ Teacher-Student Romance -- Robert Downey Jr ]

Ch.88 - Broken Pieces

20 COMMENTS = FINAL PART. *****
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The faucet hums, water swirling down the drain as she paces her measured breathing. Sweat stained skin still shimmering as she splashes her face again with the strikingly cool water. Hunched over the sink with open lips and pain in her chest.

This is just routine for Charlotte, jerking awake from one nightmare and being tossed into the next.

Her hammering heart has settled, albeit still gripping onto the porcelain counter top hoping it won't crack beneath her finger tips. Still remembering the push of the oceans waves around her abused body as she tried to go to a happier place, tried to think of times with Molly, those big blue eyes, so full of wonder and mischief.

Now all Charlotte gets is a child's chilling eyes, full of deceased deceit drifting through the dark until they snap before her, grip her tight, wailing in agony.

Hands that had started shaking on their own accord begin to lessen. Begin to soften and lose the tension simultaneously as her rigid neck does. Still caught in the state between dream and reality. The two interspersing, intertwining and reflecting straight back at her in the low lighting.

She can't handle it. Not then, not now. Charlotte only needs one of her hundreds-too-many reasons to coward away.

There's no certain thought or subject that brought her to tears, it's simply her life--or lack of life. She woke up like this, muted whimpers, face wet. She doesn't care to wipe away the tears, there's something satisfying with feeling them roll down her cheeks albeit they too have calmed. With each calculated inhale, she slows down the anxiety, controls the waves of emotion until another hits. Until Molly's demise hits. Salt dripping along down to her chin as it gets washed away with the rush of water that soaks her skin, bleeds down her finger tips, her smooth palms, her wrists and arms, to finally slipping down the drain.

She must look ridiculous in Robert's dress shirt, sleeves rolled up and washing her face in the early hours of the morning, trying to block the cries from her throat, the grief in her gut, fade the tears from her face.

She wets her hands, cards her fingers through her hair in hopes to both cool and collect herself. She sniffles a few times, tries to ever so quietly clear her throat, trying not to wake the man stretched out in ruffled sheets with his head buried under a pillow.

Fuck, she wishes life had turned out differently for them--for him, her, and Molly. She wishes that she could've been happy. That they could've stayed happy together. That nothing would've gone wrong before she even got the chance to fall in love with him. That Brandon never would've happened. The regret she has meeting Him, not seeing who he truly was sooner, it still nauseates her. Maybe it always will. Maybe there was no avoiding that, her bad decisions that don't seem to pertain to just one moment. To one choice.

But now Robert has Ava. Now his divorce is settled, living with his brother and family reconciling. Every prudent point to Charlotte insisting their breakup seems solved--maybe she misheard him (no she didn't).

Doesn't matter now, though. She's trying to rid his life from disruptions, from stress, and there is no going back after what occurred, there just isn't. It's implausible and impossible and disrespectful. And he would say something to the same fact, she's sure. He did, sorta, well. Not really. But he was (is) certain that them being apart benefits them both. He respects her decision, respects what she had to do, and said it was for the best. He sees what she saw then, and now she can't?

Yes, she can. She's still adamant about it. She is. She made the right call. If for nothing else, most importantly, in Molly's memory, for what was sacrificed so Charlotte could wrangle Robert into her mess.