The Storms Of August

Chapter Twenty Nine: My Heart Can't Take This Damage

My toes clenched as they hit the cold hardwood and I rushed to look out of my window. Nick had accidentally left it open a crack, so the heat was swept from under my bed and into the cold. With a shiver in my spine, I closed it. The only thing I saw under the pale gray sky was the footprints of skidding heels in hurried feet left in the snow. The branches opposite to me were stripped of their winter and left barren on one side. Nothing indicated a goddess or a demon had tapped on my window.

I opened my door and scanned the halls, gone through every floor pattern, and searched in every color, nothing had her name on it. I went back to my room, disappointed in my friend's superstition when I noticed a messy dollar bill sitting in the middle of a rarely clean floor. Beside it, a few cents in spare change was neatly piled from biggest to smallest in size. I soon noticed that the dollar wasn't messy at all, it had been laid flat. I curiously stood and crossed the icy floor to find scratchy handwriting on the face of George Washington.

Keep the change

I looked up, stunned and confused, and found my curious expression reflecting back to me, along with a melty Starbucks Frappuccino and a fresh pack of cigarettes. I should have been a little more concerned that someone, although undoubtedly her, trespassed into my home whilst I slept. I should have felt vulnerable and unsafe, but instead I was the exact opposite. Demi always had that effect on me. I fell in love with all the things she didn't say.

I walked over to the gifts, either an "I'm sorry", "I've always got you", or both, and found that she had left one more thing. Under the wet ring of my was-frozen beverage, sat a folded piece of white ruled paper with my name written in loopy handwriting. Emotion was in the ink, and it was on the inside too. A full length letter written on a different side of the same stars I looked upon the night before. I could say how it made me feel before I read it, how I felt when the words flashed across my glassy eyes, or how afterwards I felt as if my heart has been injected with novocaine. But I kept that letter, and some of those feelings are just for me. I don't have much of her, and sometimes the smallest feelings are the most important. That's for us, Demi and I. All I can give of that moment is the words that I've held so close after all this time.

August,
There are so many things that I want to say to you but don't know how. It's been a long time coming though. Night after night, I've smoked and drank every feeling I ever had for you into oblivion. I've given it cancer. I've filled it's lungs with poison. But it will not fade. The day we met was September seventh, at 8:04 on a Monday. That's when I decided I wanted you. The first night I sat on your roof was 1:39 the following morning, September eighth. It was then that I knew I needed you. When Joe took my place I lost it. I felt like I lost you. I knew it should have been me holding your hand and promising things I couldn't. We've been breaking each other's hearts all this time waiting for each other. The worst thing I've ever done is say nothing. I love you. I will carve our initials in a heart on every tree. I will paint the sidewalks with the sky of the night we slept on rooftops and feelings. I will scream the words to all of our favorite songs. I will brand my heart with rays of sunshine because it doesn't belong to anyone else but you. I know I've fucked up in the past. Give me this one chance, Sunshine. I don't know what

I hurriedly flipped the page of the note and read with my eyes nearly falling out of my head. 

the sun feels like because all I've ever seen is rain. I can be the person that shows you what love is. Sure I have money, and status, and all that, but I also have these same old Vans with the worn out heels because every night I have stopped a midnight skate to look up at your window to assure myself you're safe and sound. I would walk until the toes wore off and my laces were chewed through if it meant seeing you smile at me one more time.