How To Be A Player

</3 Chapter 4 </3

I slowly began slipping back into reality, easing out of my dream and into consciousness. I stirred, and then slowly, I peeled my crust covered eyes open. My mouth tasted stale from the passing sleep and I tried to twist my head around to take a look at my surroundings, it was as if I could hear my bones creak defiantly. I tried again but my brain felt like it was replaced by a block of led, weighing my head back down into the bed.

I was lying on my stomach so all I could see was the crisp white pillow my head was resting on. I began to twist my position to lying on my back, it felt as if bricks were tied to my arms and legs and it took all the energy I had accumulated to flip over onto my back. My glazed-over eyes stared up at the stark white ceiling. I wasn't making much progress.

Again I attempted lifting my head but a searing pain sliced through my skull like a white-hot knife. I groaned but even that came out hoarse and pitchy. Slowly I slid my body farther up the bed until I managed to prop my upper half against the wall. My bones groaned in protest.

My vision felt a bit hazy so I blinked a few extra times to remove the cloudy veil from them.

Sunlight spilled into the crisp white room in thick streams. My brain was too useless right now to acknowledge the familiar feeling I had about this room. The sheets were a pure white and still looked wrinkle free even though my crumpled body was laying in them. The curtains were the same snow color and were starched stiff around the open windows. Though a delightful breeze swept through the room from the opened windows, the curtains stayed motionless, not taking part in the graceful dance all other curtains participated in. A large white-wood chest was at my right, right beside a shiny porcelain looking night stand. It was all clean, pure and perfect. It was a room you’d see on the cover of hotel brochures or on Ikea billboards. It seemed nice in an ultra-intimidating type of way. But in another way it was just . . . too perfect.

I looked to a slightly ajar door to the right of the room, an angel mounted above the door frame, and I could hear the clinking of glasses a few rooms over. Or maybe it was more downstairs. Was I upstairs? Or downstairs? Was there even an upstairs? So many questions adorned my mind.

Suddenly I heard footsteps so I panicked and collapsed back onto the pillow, pretending to be asleep. I heard the door creak open.

“Ava? Are you up?” A voice asked; concern evident in their tone.

  It took me a few moments to place the voice to a face, my mind was just a tangled mess of things, it took me a while to separate the intertwining threads of thoughts into something comprehendible. Slowly I turned to face the source of the voice, half of my mouth turned up in pain.

“. . . Zack?” I croaked, barely above a whisper. Suddenly his features came into view. His pale blue eyes, the shaggy brown hair, the birthmark on his neck that I just recently noticed, it all came into view. I could feel the gears in my head piecing things together as the seconds ticked by.

At the sound of his name Zack’s eyes lit up. “Thank God . . . I was scared you’d wake up with amnesia or something, then this whole thing would turn into this reality turned drama where I had to show you who you once were, let you meet your family again, maybe even teach you how to read again if you forgot that much of your past . . .” He rambled on anxiously.

“Zack,” I interrupted his chain of pointless blabber. “I know who I am: Avaline Willow, I remember my family, and I can still read . . . I think” Zack’s eyes widened at the last part. “I was just kidding.” I said while raising a questioning eyebrow. He seemed on edge. Then at that revelation I started noticing other things about him.

Like how his pale eyes were rimmed with red as if he hadn’t slept much and how disheveled his hair looked and even how rumpled his clothes appeared. “Long night?” I asked hoarsely while not lowering one of my brows.