Salvation in the Secular Age {MH/GD}

{The Person Falling Here Is Me}

Hey everyone! My UTMOST SINCERE apologies for slacking on this story. I've had a lot of writer's block with it, going over and over different scenarios in my head. This story , and it's prequel, are like my little first born baby, and I want to do right by them. Cranking out chapters for the sake of it didn't settle well with me, and I feel like a few chapters in this story are a little subpar, but I'm okay with it for now. Anyways, I'm done ranting. Hope you're all well. Much love to you! Please play "Dreams" by The Cranberries.

There was a throbbing at my temples, nearly disintigrating the tissues of my brain, like a low bass amplified to the maximum, the high-pitched tune of my alarm on my cell phone making it about a thousand times worse before I rolled over in my bed and clutched the electronic device so tightly I almost broke it. I turned the alarm off, and briefly thought I heard Claire's pretty, clear voice humming from within the kitchen of my apartment, a lovely tune that I'd so missed, and knew it was wishful thinking.

I swore I smelled her scent in my sheets, embedded into the Egyptian cotton like a reminder, a facade of what I had loved, what had taunted me. The soft, delicate notes, like pure vanilla and spun sugar. Maybe it was a perfume that she wore, but she always seemed to smell like it, and it always sent me right back to those moments we'd had, that year ago and then some where I could actually kiss her whenever I wanted, hold her when she needed me to, love every obscure detail about everything she was.

But that was the past, and this was the now, the now in which I lived a bittersweet reality. The fame, the money, the model girlfriend. There were thousands of people who sang the tunes I'd written alone in my bedroom, who worshipped me, a person who didn't deserve it. The only one I wanted was the one I could not have, the one who'd realized that we were not meant for each other, and found herself underneath my best friend, time after time. The girl whom I'd loved unimaginably, and whose heart I had broken. The one who'd returned the favor tenfold.

Last night was a complete blur of foggy memories: George throwing money at Adam with his high-pitched cackle against the bass of the house music at the club, the electrifying rush of blood through my veins when Ellie offered me the cocaine she'd used regularly, the absolute demon Harper became when she saw this, Claire's pretty face striken with anxiety as she'd driven me home and took care of my completely drunken ass.

Oh.

Claire had driven me home.

I sat up on my side, tracing the white sheets of my bed that were wrinkled with the memory of her, and my smile widened when I remembered she had slept in the bed with me. The memories of last night came like brief glitches, like deja vous, like a dream but a certainty.

Claire had slept in bed with me.

The taste of her skin was on my lips, still, and became more potent when I closed my eyes and remembered kissing the tattoo of the crescent moon she had on her collarbone before I lost myself to a tequila and wine and weed induced coma. The sense of purpose, stability, like I was right where I was supposed to be with my head on her breasts and her breath on my forehead as her heartbeat lulled me to sleep.

In a daze, still, I stumbled out of bed, walking past the black and white and gold aesthetic of my bedroom furniture, into the master bathroom, tugging my Calvin Kleins around to take a piss, the hand that wasn't on my cock rubbing the sleep from my eyes. The bright lights of the bathroom did not help the intense hangover I was probably too old to inflict upon myself, and when I went wash my hands, splash water on my face, and brush my teeth, I nearly choked on the buzzing toothbrush on my mouth when I saw something on the antique cabinet in my bathroom.

Claire's outfit from the night before, tossed onto the wood, her bra folded into itself, the perfect symmetrial circle making me realize she was still here and we might have, might have, slept together last night. My suspicions were proven when I turned the faucet off and definitely, definitely heard her humming from within my kitchen.