KARMA

2,589 Days. . .

Chapter 9 - 2,589 days

2,589 days. . .

Wait and Hope

. . .It's necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live. . .

-:-

Friday. 02:56.

She can taste the salt from the ocean on her tongue.

She can hear the waves lapping over the sand on the beach.

She can smell the flowers blooming in the windowpane and from the pots along the porch.

She can see the bright sun, sand and sea and it's not just a mirage anymore.

She can feel him at her back, arms looped tight around her waist, like a promise, a commitment to never let her fall.

She can hear him as he whispers into her ear.

It's music to her ears.

"The sun looks pretty in your hair."

He's like a song she'd heard once in fragments but has been singing in her mind ever since.

"It's redder, I guess." she shrugged a comment.

"Not that." he returned, threading his fingers softly through the loose waves of her hair. "The actual sun. It makes your hair look like burnished copper and all fiery. It's like the light is stuck in each strand, setting them aflame."

She giggled - or, perhaps, laughed, but either way she smiled, then sighed, tipping her head forward so her hair hung on either side of her face, hiding the fact that after all these years together he still manages to make her blush with just his words. "Derek..."

"Your skin glows too."

Because just his words only can make her shiver and tingle.

"And you smell like...God, you smell like vanilla and...is that Chanel No. 5?"

She can almost feel the sweep of his lips over the curve of her neck. Almost. Just almost since life is a series of not quite and very nearly.

It's because he's not really here. Still, she closes her eyes to draw him closer, to stop him from teasing her, to feel his lips loving her like before, and she aches when he disappears without saying goodbye.

The phantom memories likes to play cruel tricks with her brain every now and then.

Well, it's more so every than then.

And that's how and why she's so sane and intact and somewhat still aware in the head. Her brain never stops. Never. It loops dangerously, threateningly until it throbs.

She's too close. The vast and whole other world outside is just a hair's length away - both figuratively speaking and in the literal sense. She's so certain that this time will be it. They'll get out. And for once in her life, she actually trusts her newfound optimism, her intuition, her confidence.

Yesterday and for the last thirty-five years, those nouns can never be used to describe her. And all this servile positivity is so bewilderingly new to her because she've never been that - positive. She can't even remember a time when she didn't respond in wit or sarcasm or when there wasn't a touch of judgement in her tone. It's taught. She didn't just born a pessimist. It's a learned behaviour, like watching your parents bash at each other. Optimism and hopefulness can never be seen and is never heard of in the Montgomery Mansion growing up. Back then, it was stacking as high as the Empire State with Bizzy's criticism, disappointment, pessimism and the silent - who's she kidding? It never was silent at all - acknowledgment of all the Captain's conquests.