Devils and Angels

xxv. the charm of knowing

f o r e l s k e t

the euphoria you experience 

when you are first falling in love

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THE RETURN OF SCHOOL IN the coming January was a shock to my sorely sleep-deprived system; self-induced sleeplessness over secrets behind sewn lips and rampant thoughts.

I'd shut myself away from my friends for the remainder of the holiday, only mustering the stability to visit them for five minutes on the very last day. Hot breaths had condensed into clouds of white vapour in the frigid air; we'd sat on a park bench, four of us in total, feeling absences more strongly than we felt our own feet touching the ground. I remembered feeling like I was levitating, in a purgatorial ether, because Archie was what kept me grounded, and without him, my existence was only something to be doubted.

I hadn't been sure sure if I had been there, or had the ability to be anywhere since, when my mind and body were separate entities on separate threads of time; co-existing in parallel universes―Archie and post-Archie―leaving me entwined in the ability to doubt everything but myself. Duality of mind and body had me torn, and there was no knowing whether my being was one in the same, or if I was forever destined to be fragments of my previous humanity; lost in a void of endless dimensions, tangling and disentangling as they pleased and leaving me as a puppet of fate and inconstancy.

After complaining about the cold, Henry had invited us all for hot chocolates in the warm confines of his house. I'd tried to refuse, but my coming was compulsory it had seemed―his arms had wrapped around me instantaneously, and he'd thrown me over his shoulder. I remembered punching his back in protest, until the cold had sapped me from my energy, and he'd let me fall into his arms bridal-style instead, if only to guarantee that I would stay.

We had all ended up crashing on his couch: Jess, Derek, me, and Henry, crushed together in front of a vivid screen and nonsensical images; low music, and the rich scent of chocolate wafting through the air.

Derek and Jess walked home together. Henry had been insistent on not letting me out of his sight. All the way back to my house, he'd kept apace with me, and stood outside my garden gate, we'd hovered, our words stolen by not knowing what to say.

I remembered how his searching blue eyes―like the magnetic pull of a tide coming to shore, and washing over the sand in pooling silver―had gripped me fast, and he'd curled his fingers around the fence, surrendering them to the threat of hypothermia that crushed the air in an iron grip.

"How's Caspian?" Hen had asked me, in a voice that sounded dangerously low above the howling breeze that cut between us. He spoke the words, threaded with weights, in a way that had him expecting an answer he already seemed to know, but couldn't do, not if he'd been asking me.

The feeling of not knowing how to respond was a hard one to forget; I'd stayed silent, shifting my feet and toying with my fingers, hoping the question would skim over my head, and he'd let it go.

He didn't, and I'd been left scrutinised under his paralysing stare.

It had remained on my skin, and I remembered having to piece myself together after it felt like I had cracked.

"I don't know," I'd eventually said, at a lack of anything more substantial to say. "I haven't spoken to him since..."

"Since?" Eyebrow raised, he prompted, and upon my nervous smile, his eyes widened in recognition. "I'm sorry."

"It's―it's fine." I cleared my throat when my words caught, and my voice had consequently become stronger. "We just―we made an agreement not to be friends anymore. It...seemed like it was the better thing to do. For both of us."