Starry Eyed

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Five

The first thing I thought when I woke up was, "shit."

My skin was cold, speckled with goosebumps, and I could feel the temperature low and hollow in my bones. The feeling was almost emptiness. As my eyelids opened to the white ceiling and the cracked sunlight, a kaleidoscope of memories flashed in strobe lights inside my mind. Laughter locked inside a moonlit dormitory. Blonde hair, lips just brushing my cheek, empty Coca Cola cans. I framed the pictures in polaroid templates and smiled in secret. I had replaced old photographs with something new. At least, that was what I thought until I realized Star is (coincidentally) absent.

And the thoughts washed over me again. Why didn't I do it? Shit. I didn't do it. Shit.

Her lips, her hair, her thighs, her collarbones, the small of her back. I had her, but I didn't dare to do it. Why didn't I kiss her? In fact, why did I even dare to consider kissing her now? Shit.

I sat up slowly on the top of the bed, thankful for the heater in the corner that I now saw sluggishly trying to warm the room up. A rush of hot air skimmed my hair, and I raised my arms to the heat to warm them up. James laughed at me from the other side of the room, startling me into awareness of his presence, and I caught him in the bathroom mirror, placing his toothbrush in the pot. My jaw fell open like a flytrap. I must have fallen asleep in his bed; surely he noticed. Why was he not yelling and screaming at me? In fact, how was I still breathing?

"She left about ten minutes ago," he announced, grinning goofily into the reflective glass. I rubbed my groggy eyes. I must still have been dreaming. James was actually being civil towards me.

"You should've seen her," he went on, trekking out of the bathroom and over to the dresser beside my- his- bed. His sudden close proximity made me think he was walking over to pound me, but he only started digging around in a heap of magazines in the top drawer. The car magazine he tugged out was much more relaxing than the hunting booklet I imagined. "She was a damn whirlwind getting out of here," James continued, flopping across my bed opposite and flicking open the magazine. "You made her cry. What'd you do to her, dude?"

I blushed subconciously, and then felt ridiculously childish. "Nothing. We just fell asleep."

"Uh-huh," James said sarcastically. "You just fell asleep. That explains everything. I mean, it's completely normal for you to do that on my bed, on my side of the room, when you've got the exact same stuff to yourself."

"Shut up. You make it sound a whole lot worse than it actually is."

James grinned at me. He actally grinned at me. Perhaps I'd woken up in an alternate reality, and everybody and everything had switched to opposites? It did make sense. After all, I was sleeping in James' bed, and apparently Star had stayed the night. This was not your average day in the average universe.

"Trust me, it is worse than you think," he continued brightly, staring at a neon-red car shining across a double page spread. "She was real upset. Crying, talking to herself, running around checking to see if she had everything. Muttering like crazy. She even locked herself in the bathroom at one point; scared the shit out of me. Thought she might top herself or something stupid like that. But then she just came bowling out, ten minutes later, and ran off to wherever. She's freaking insane." 

"Crying?" He'd mentioned it before, but I hadn't believed him at first. Was James kidding? Had Star really done all that mental stuff? It did make her sound pretty nutty. "Did she say anything to you?"

"Nah," he shrugged, flipping the page over. A woman in a bikini draped over the bonnet of a convertible stole his attention away from me for a moment, but only a moment. "I mean, she was babbling away to herself, and she did say sorry for, you know, sleeping in my bed. But other than that, nothing."