ALANA'S MISTAKE ✔

Chapter 35

Elias Smith sat alone in his flat, at his tiny kitchen table, trying to write his next song. He used to find it easy to write songs, the words flowed out of him like honey. But now, right now, he couldn't think, he just couldn't think straight. He hadn't been able to think straight since he met Alana, the one girl he had ever loved.

He still loved her. Was that so bad? You can't chose who you love - it chooses you and there's nothing you can do, right? He stood up suddenly, wearing his blue and white striped pajama bottoms. He needed a slice of toast, to line his stomach. He hadn't eaten in ages, he didn't eat as much as he once did not anymore.

As he dropped two thin slices of white bread into the toaster he wished, for the thousandth time that she was here with him, about to share the toast with him. She would like peanut butter, of course she would - she was definitely a peanut butter kind of girl. He would make sure she got peanut butter on her toast. The other girl, her friend, wasn't a peanut butter girl. That was for sure. He didn't know what kind of girl she was but it wasn't anything like his love.

The two of them were like opposites - she was the devil compared to his angel. He needed to see Alana again, to explain - to tell her that it wasn't real, it wasn't even slightly real, what she saw in the ice cream place. He winced when he remembered her face that day. He had wanted to see jealousy, but all he saw was a quiet kind of terror. All he saw was her with people who weren't him.

He grabbed a knife from the drawer, holding it tightly, scraping out some butter then pulling the toast out and dragging the knife over the top of them. He then stabbed the knife into a jar of nutella, then covered the toast in a thick chocolatey layer. He bit into the toast but as he chewed it went dry in his mouth and the taste was sickly sweet. He forced himself to swallow the bite but then left the rest of the toast on the side, walking back to the kitchen table.

The same questions that knocked on the door of his mind on a continuous loop started again: how can I get her to love me?  How can I get her to listen to me? He knew that he would never be able to live without her. So what could he do? How could he make her his?

That's what every girl wants, his father had always said. His dad had liked to teach Elias about people and how they thought, how they acted. He always said he would have been a psychologist if he could have got himself the education for it. Girls, his dad said, wanted a man to chase them, to want them so badly they would do anything to get them. 'That's how I got your mother,' he would say. 'I had to fight for that one and it wasn't easy.'

'Where there's a will, there's a way,' he'd say. Elias knew he had the will. She was all he could think about. Everything else was pointless without her. The band, the music, what was the reason without her? Nothing. Now he just had to find the way. And there would be one. If only she would stay with him, for longer than a few seconds before she kept trying to leave. He let out a quick, strong sigh. He picked up his pen and gripped it tightly.

She didn't love that husband of hers. How could she? The night they spent together proved that. She must be unhappy, so unhappy. To be in a relationship with no love. She says she doesn't but she misses the time they spent together, just like he does, every single day. That magic - you can't buy that magic for all the money in the world. You can't find that magic easily, it can only come once in a lifetime and if you miss it, what then?

Missing it couldn't be an option. Imagine if his dad hadn't fought for his mum? He wouldn't even be here. He didn't want to be here if he couldn't have Alana. He looked at the blank page in front of him and ripped it off the notepad. He scrunched it into a ball and threw it onto the floor. He tried to write more words, but nothing would come. Nothing but thoughts of her, thoughts of them, thoughts of things that should be, thoughts of her, her, her. He grabbed the whole notebook and ripped the pages out, then he threw his pen across the room until it smashed a glass and fell to the floor.

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