Hope you're prepared to see a side of Cerise you've never known! Let me know if you think this change in her is justified, and if you like her more or less :) (Do you think she's melodramatic?)
Thank you all who comment/vote, you are all wonderful and I appreciate you more than I can articulate! xoxo
_____________________________________________________________________________
“Are you sure?” the woman asked yet again.
“Yes,” Cerise’s patience had been wearing thinner and thinner the three days she had been without him.
“Just checking,” the hairdresser muttered in her southern drawl. She cut off three inches so it fell just above Cerise’s breast.
“To my shoulder,” Cerise ordered sharply. “Must I tell you again?”
“I just want you to be certain,” said the woman pathetically. “Your hair is so pretty already—”
“You’re getting paid handsomely. You don’t need to question what I want. Hand me the damn scissors and I’ll do it myself if you can’t.” Cerise never swore around anyone other than Harry and she didn’t even feel shame to do it now. Since she had kissed him, the walls that secured her emotions to a minimum had crumbled dramatically, and all of her pent up angst was being released in periodic bursts.
The hairdresser was indeed being paid well enough to take the comment silently. She cut it off to her shoulder and looked at the adolescent in the eye. “Do you like it?”
“Of course I do. Go on, keep cutting. It won’t do to have only part of my hair chopped off.”
~
It will be inches longer by the time I see you again. It may be down to my breast; indubitably shorter than what you are accustomed to, but I’m sure you will manage.
Loneliness sears like hot iron through me, tearing at every shred of pleasure I found before I had you. I still take joy in my garden, but the smell of lavenders brings me heavy nostalgia, and I cannot be in their presence for too long. I am in a state of mere homeostasis, and I know that I could be content without you—I am not a dog, after all, and I am very independent—but it would be a long time before I could be happy.
Unfailingly yours,
Cerise
She choked back a sob as she folded the letter and threw it in the box. Before she slept, she poured another poem onto paper; a tradition she had picked up to ensure her sanity.
Constant melancholia tears rampant through my veins;
Consuming me; deluding me—
My mind is no longer safe.
For the fourth night in a row, Cerise fell asleep with a tear-streaked face and the faint lingering smell of Harry on his pillow to remind her that he was real.
~
Cerise came home two days later to a cleaned bed, much to her furious dismay. She didn’t bother to even yell at Manuela, instead she stormed out through the kitchen; walking without direction, but somehow unconsciously magnetized to a specific place.
The cabin looked as though it hadn’t been touched from the outside. She had walked at a sluggish pace the whole way there, but the second it came into view she broke into a sprint. All at once, she broke through the door.
