The first semester in Oxford has already started. Balancing between studying to become a lawyer and life in general, Julia Eden has found herself sitting across from a shrink, or in better words: a psychologist.
It only gets worse when the old man s...
song : eden - gravity (this is one of the songs that describes darien and ibrahim's relationship. do give it a try)
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It was one of those perfect end-of-the-summer night, in London where everything seemed sensual, like you would never forget it.
The breeze outside Julia's balcony was pressing on the glass, leaving sounds of the coming storm. The sky was a dark shade of gray, darker than the gray Neal Williams’ eyes were. Temperatures were in the low twenties. Outside, it rained, creating pitter-pattering sounds on the pavement below.
Seven houses away, Olivia Portman was awake, so was Cassidy Dubois. Both of them lay on Olivia's bed, kissing each other until their lips felt dry.
Forty minutes away from where they were, Darien Pryce was scrolling down a pet shop website, wide awake, looking for a particular type of goldfish. Every now and then, one would pop on the screen but she wouldn't like any of them. The Oranda she wanted was different, she muttered to herself each time she came across a picture of a goldfish. Sometimes, she would run a hand through her silky black hair and by one in the morning, it was in devious tangles. Didn’t Julia tell her that Chuck bought a goldfish?
That was it. She reached for her phone and dialled.
Julia Eden was lying on her bed, scrolling through her Instagram feed after putting up a picture from Noah’s birthday. In the photo, she was standing in a corridor in Ibrahim’s house, in a pale blue slip dress she, with Liv by her side. Both of them wore sunglasses for a dramatic effect. A decent amount of likes was received and so were comments. The only thing that mattered was the comment from Noah Clarke.
Clarke_inthebox_ I want my sunglass back.
She had responded in an equally sardonic way.
JuliaEden_ Where’s the cake for your birthday? You ain’t getting it back now.
As she scrolled down the screen, something caught her eyes and she pulled the screen back to see. It was a picture of a guy, cropped from the abdomen just to show off the shoes he was wearing. It looked like a mirror selfie but the crop made it hard to understand. He was wearing a white button down, tucking it in navy pants. And on his feet were two pointy brown shoes, that seemed so familiar. But she couldn't quite put her finger on it. As she wondered for a few more moments, the name typed on the corner made her realize.
Neal_W
She was half-tempted to click on the name. Instead she disconnected the wifi and placed the phone somewhere by her pillow. She was looking up at the ceiling when her phone rang. She felt uncertainty at first, then a sense of dread that it might be Neal Williams. It was a feeling so alien to her usual state of being that she was not able to put a name to it. Guilt. That was what the feeling had been. No, it couldn't be an alien feeling to her. She had been feeling just that since her twin brother had drowned in the Thames in their twelfth birthday. Guilt. It was going to eat her up, by God, and it was going to make her suffer more than she already did.
