So Much Paint But No Colour

Hot Summer Nights (daddy issues- Nbhd)

Note: Maaaaaaannnn its been a while. I have changed an incredible amount since the day I typed the opening line to this book. I've never planned out the story line which I'm happy about as it allows a fluidity which is incredibly refreshing. You may notice my writing style has changed slightly, I have written and rewritten than triple-written this chapter and I think I can officially say I am happy with this end result.

I invented a name for days like these when I was a kid, the lost days, the days where anything and everything can happen...When the street lights blur and the voices of each stranger and friend feel like a different language. But something about today felt bitter, like a regretful memory that now clings on to you, until you eventually excepted it and become tired of grieving it's occurrence.

Sitting on the top decker of the bus, watching each stranger walk by the world felt so slow yet so selfishly fulfilling in the strangest way...

The night before...

I loved nights such as these ones where the sky was cloudless yet starless, like a black infinite plain and the moon, looked like it was taken from a Polaroid, not a clear white like usual but a seemingly glowing orange. To put it simply, that night felt like a slightly impressionist collage, the houses looked different in the strange lighting of the street as if each one was cut from a different newspaper and awkwardly stuck together. Yet, somehow, like art normally does, they worked together as if they were a perplexing pattern, that, no matter how hard you tried, you just couldn't find the point where they repeated.

The summer air had a sense of heat to it, a light breeze rapped around me like a hug from a long lost family member. The heaviness of the atmosphere so comforting for such an unusual time, I loved moments like this. The moments where you didn't need to put your headphones in to drown out the world but instead let that itself be your music. I was lost stepping out of that house, yet somehow I found comfort in my confusion. Crowdedness in my loneliness...

I found a spot by the road, normally I'd have smoked but something told me I shouldn't, unlike usual there was no urge to change this moment into a philosophy lesson, a dwelling session, a gathering of thoughts. I just stayed there, alone on the edge of the sidewalk, my legs wresting on the deserted road that at this time was filled with ghostly static cars. My headphones tucked away in my jacket pocket, just me and the rest of the world...
***

I think that night I might have been there for hours, in a state of numbness, a trance so to speak but I was stopped from wondering into a state, i'd never recover from.

"Don't speak, just sit down" I said sensing Emerson's presence behind me, I spoke without turning around and said nothing more. There was no need for words not in this moment, and looking back I think he knew that too..

He sat down next to me on the road watching me through the light of the street lamps. We didn't say anything for quite sometime, as if both of us were caught in our own fantasy of each other. Imagining the perfect conversation, this action ironically stopping it from ever becoming nonfictional.

I wrested my head on his shoulder, I just needed the sense of touch, the reminder that he was there with me. For a while I just focused on his breathing, the thought that he was alive and I was alive both comforted and tour at me.

I then layed back on the pavement looking both at the stars and at the side of his face before sliding a hand up his shirt, tracing his spine with my fingers

"Am I clingy?" I asked, rather rhetorically, as if I were a wife asking her husband whether I looked good or not in a certain dress.

He layed back on the pavement, gently removing my hand from his back and holding it in his hand, he spoke whilst tracing my fingers.

"No...well that depends"

"That depends?" I repeat somewhat too seriously, I knew he was only teasing me yet I guess some strangely inferior part of myself was curious and slightly desperate.

"I'm kidding by the way, but we have seen each other everyday since that art exhibition" when he spoke, there was no harshness, no challenge in his tone, he stated it as it was, an observation.

I would have snapped I know at his first line, but I knew it would seem too stern or out of place. Instead I just smiled at him, a sincere, possibly winsome smile.

"Look" he said, a slight change in his tone, one of both sincerety and seriousness "I...uhm, I" he stumbled, I could tell he knew what to say just didn't want to say it.

He paused for a brief moment, the sort where you'd expect him to clear his throat or-

"We're, the... B- we're going on tour Ivy, we're going away for a few weeks, I, I won't see you for a while-"

I cut him off,

"Why, what, you,"

"I asked as many people as I could if somehow, some arrangement, you could come, b, but there's really nothing, I'm so sorry Ivy"

I'd never seen it before but in that moment, he clinged on to each word like a child, the desperation in his voice stunned me. I wasn't upset or angry, I understood what he was saying.

"Emerson... it's fine" I looked at him for a moment before embracing him in a hug, it was raw and transparent, an odd way to describe it I know but in that moment I understood every thought racing through his head, and he did mine...

Just a quick thing, I'd almost given up with this, it's taken too long for this chapter to be released and I am so so sorry but I wanted to say thank you to EmiLaVie for pushing me to get this out and LunaBunny0825 for that poem, you've really made me realise the effect that writing has on people, I read so many books and always take something away from each one and to think that someone can feel like that from something I wrote , no matter how small, I am so grateful for.

So thank you all for following this...