See the Stars with You | ✓

EIGHT | 8th March, 2015

EIGHT

-2 months

8th March, 2015

LUCA'S POV

"How's my favorite girlfriend this fine evening?" I cry out the minute I set foot in class. My sister, seated to her right, scowls at me.

"It's eight in the morning, dimwit," she growls. I recall that our coffee machine broke down today. A tragic triviality. Coffee really takes a toll on Lucy's mental health.

"What do you mean 'favorite girlfriend?" is what Harlin wants to know. I ruffle her hair and sneak a kiss to her forehead, returned with the customary tinge of color heating her brown cheeks.

I toy with her braids as the room fills up, accompanied by the buzz of conversation.

"How's my favorite chipmunk?" Rida drawls in greeting as she flops down behind her.

"You've stolen my nuts for the winter again, nutcase," comes her usual response. I sense an inside joke, but if there is, the girls refuse to let it on. Other than 'chipmunk' being a reference to Harlin's chubbiness, I find nothing else, so I'm lost here.

The teacher's call for attention silences the clamor, replacing it with the etch of pencils against paper as he begins his lecture.

I lean back in my chair after a bit, letting my pencil twirl between my fingers. I've been told that I have the attention span of a goldfish. I can't really argue against it.

My gaze, fixed on the windows overlooking the campus, now shifts to Harlin. I wonder what she'll be like today. Yesterday was a nightmare. I guess that it's all part of the deal, having to have her back through anything.

She was just having a bad day. For weeks. Months.

The teacher's drawing something on the board, now. The floor's ashy with chalk dust.

I turn to the right again, studying Harlin.

It started in December. We'd both gotten used to getting calls from the other at ungodly hours, over the two years we'd been together. But it wasn't the sleepy, playful tone I was accustomed to.

Her words were an outright slap.

Lucy grumbles something about Rida stealing her only pencil.

One moment, I'd picked up the phone. The next, she was yelling at me. So loud. She said that it was all my fault, and I couldn't understand anything. I kept trying to ask her what was going on, if she was okay, but it was like speaking to a wall.

A wall that somehow... spoke back to you.

Right.

Frustration consumed me as I'd replayed the day's, week's, incidents on loop, wondering what I could've done for her to be like this. I'd messed up somewhere, I knew that much. I came up with nothing—I couldn't think straight, not with her screaming and swearing at me like I was her worst enemy.

I'd grabbed my jacket, by then, and was searching for my bike keys. She needed someone, I had to be there for her. But how could I, when she just wouldn't tell me what was going on?

And just like that, it was over.

The teacher sets the chalk down and resumes his lecture, my ears drowning in his monotonous drone.

It was over as quickly as it had begun.

The screaming had come to an abrupt halt. Her voice broke, allowing a dam of tears to burst through. I collapsed back onto my couch, wondering if I should still go over. I decided she might need a little space when she kept apologizing. Over and over again. She said she didn't know what she was doing, didn't know why she said all these things she didn't mean.