Behind the Glasses || a.i.

Chapter 19

 The phone clatters to the floor, and my eyes fall closed. “Trinity?” her voice breaks through the phone.

 My body trembles. What kind of gone? There’s gone for good, run away gone, gone for a little bit, but I couldn’t bear to hear what I could’ve done to her. I see Ashton pick up the phone from the corner of my eye. Gone as in dead? Gone is in never coming back? Gone as in can’t find? Gone as in temporarily? Why would she call if this is temporary, though? “Sierra, what’s going on?” he asks, completely bemused in the situation. Did Daniel find her? Did he hurt her? It’s only been not even an hour. How much damage could he do? “Yeah, I’ll talk to her.” Then again, how much time did he need the last time… Is she in the hospital?

 “Trinity,” he says with force. I turn to him. “I thought I was losing you,” he mumbles to himself more than me. “Listen, Diana ran off, and her boyfriend is nowhere to be found,” he explains. I curse to myself out loud, and his eyes widen, as if he didn’t know I was capable of saying such a word. He stands up, pulling his phone from his back pocket. “I’ll call the boys for help.” He heads into the kitchen to speak to his mates.

 I attempt to clear my mind by grabbing a sheet of paper and scribbling down the thoughts sprinting marathons through my head. I write down what I just told Ashton and what has happened to Diana and how embarrassed I was. By the time he comes back out, ten minutes later with his phone still to his ear, I have sprawled letters across almost a full page. I quickly crumple it into a deformed sphere, tossing it into the small trash bin in the corner. He gives me a questioning look, dropping it almost instantly.

 “What’s the address?” he asks me. I tell him the floor and room number, and he repeats it to whoever is on the other end. He looks back at me after a minute. “Calum wants to know if it’s okay that Luke comes,” he addresses me.

 I think a moment. Would she like it if he came? “The more the merrier,” I respond.

 “Yeah, he can,” he translates. “Okay, man, see you soon. Alright.” He pulls the phone away, tapping the touch screen of the iPhone. He catches me eyeing it. “My mom pays for it,” he informs me with a smile. I nod, sighing deeply, before heading down the hall. He follows me into my room and stands in the doorway, as I fix my raccoon eyes. “What’s all this?” he asks, heading over to a glass bookcase in the corner. Inside are six shelves, four of which are filled with notebooks and binders.

 I walk over beside him, where his finger reaches out to touch the glass, tracing across the row at eye-level. “The case was my mother’s. All of the journals inside are filled with stories.”

 He stares at them in awe. “How long have you been writing?”

 “Since I was thirteen,” I tell him, “Six years.”

 “Wow,” he mouths, but it comes out muted audio. “What kind of stories do you write?”

 I shrug, not wanting to respond to that. Not accepting that as an answer, he stares at me, waiting for a verbal one. “I write stories about disorders a lot. Other than that, I write some horror, some adventure, and some romance, even though I’ve never been in a relationship.”

 “You’ve never had a boyfriend?” he gasps.

 I shake my head. “A few boys in school had asked me out, but I never said yes.”

 “Why? Love is one of the most perfect tragedies on the planet!”

 “I never had any need for it. Love is too complicated. I’ve just been afraid of falling too quickly, I guess. I wouldn’t handle heartbreak too well,” I justify.

 His face falls a bit, but he tries to cover it up quickly. “It’s complicated, alright,” he gives affirmation.