Bring Me Back

chapter four

Five year later

"You're going to win it, Honesty"

I speak to myself to open any channel of positivity in. There is no place for anxiety, doubts or negative emotions right now.

And this upcoming moment will decide my fate soon enough.

"Essie, will you calm down? We all are well acknowledged about your talent. They will recognize you and put you in, for sure."

"I don't know, Kassy. This thing is important to me. I have been waiting for a big opportunity as this for months now."

Kassidy holds my hand as we walk towards our respective cubicles while my phone pings, hampering the beat of my heart for a second.

"Is it the boss?"

When I blink harder for a second and look at the screen, I shake my head to her as we both sit adjacent to each other on our seats and I roll my leather chair to face the monitor while replying, "It's from home. Ben has been texting me continuously for some shit back there for past few days. I am not sure I want to attend their distress call."

"What you mean? Shouldn't you think it might be a real emergency?"

I give her a grave look and face the dust when she fails to understand the dramatic background of my family. I bite the skin inside my mouth and tell her without irritation to bring her on same page.

"As you know, Ben has been my best friend since we were all in diapers. Now he has finally proposed my twin sister, Sasha. They are going through a rough period because apparently Sasha wants a winter wedding or something. I don't know what happened to Ben or why is he arguing on that stuff. As far as I know he has always been an adjustable guy. So I am figuring my sister has corrupted his senses somehow. Basically, it isn't my shit to decipher and spoon feed them anymore."

Kassidy hears the telltale sincerely with her both elbows on the either side of the arms of  her chair and bobs her head as if she is trying to imagine the biggest anomaly of my world... speaking of which pours back faded yet potent memories of the night I have been trying to forget for the past five years.

The moment my brain replenishes with those fragments, my eyes burn a little knowing that my hurt is cracking again, I scrunch my nose and feign nothingness as I always have been.

"You okay?"

Sasha intrudes my act and I shrug, "some dust got into my nose."

She looks around my table then to our floor, "We should the cleaning lady again."

"Sure, why not. Let's get back to work before  Dorothy burns her eyes into our skulls through the cameras."

We both laugh as we make fun of our ultimate boss, Dorothy Serviette, the chief editor of The American Deccan newspaper that I work in as an junior reporter and editor.

As I surf online inside our portals and databases for latest research on robotics and its impact on manufacturing industry in western America v.s. Japanese Kaizan theory, snippets of some years roll in, clouding my mind and freezing my heart than it already has become.

Five years ago

In Texas

I reached Solomon University, Hudson, Texas 3 months ago and I couldn't feel any more helpless and aloof.

The feelings of having left some precious behind never stopped haunting me and torturing me at the night when I tried to sleep.

I couldn't tell the same to my parents or Ben or even my sister but being the identical twin she always knew something wasn't right about me.

One of such days, she accused me on the phone that I was committing a big mistake by lying to everyone on the face that I have never been any better. She told me blatantly that she will always wait for that day when I will be ready to talk about Landon, my heart breaker.

With a suffocation towards her seamless confrontations, I started to make excuses of network issues and workload for not attending her calls.

She dropped me threatening messages to spill everything to everyone and kill Landon and throw his body under the sewer or to the stray dogs or what not if I didn't talk to her.

Given that she was my sister, I knew her threats weren't if she was not taken seriously. Irrespective of who does what to me, I wouldn't wish for anyone to meet such a untidy death or defeat by my sister.

Hence, forfeit danced in my court and messaged her strings of apologies and requests to leave me alone from accusations and enqueries because then there wouldn't be any way for me to move on if she kept on prying.

Thankfully, that time she understood and fell back into her normal irritating sister but I did cut off with everyone back in Virginia for my own betterment.

Little did I know, it was all a big lie that I had been feeding to myself. In reality, I have been hurting myself more and more. My own body couldn't seem to forget his touch and the way he talked and walked by my side. He was becoming my obsession even after I knew how I meant practically nothing but an item for a night to have fun with.

Then my grades started to wallow and the concern grew in me more because I was in Texas to make a career, not the otherwise.

The dogs couldn't be left to sleep anymore when the hounding of my lust pregnated by each day. I had to visit a psychiatrist and I did .

They kept me on anti depressing and mood swings pills which finally started to work.

Though, the feeling of being betrayed and left alone never went away, but I gained some amount of composure of my life in my hands.

I started to sleep more and focus more.

The only things I allowed to bother me for the coming months and years were my studies, grades, evaluations, interviews, career path and so on. I became a workaholic but a hole in my heart, unseen, relentless, and incessant.