Bi-stressed

CHAPTER 4

The day elapses and soon it is evening. Zac comes over by 6. Aunt Steph pours us some tea to drink and proceeds back to the kitchen to finish her work.
I take a few sips of the hot tea and catch Zac staring at me. He then catches my hand and looks me right in the eye. His eyes have tears but I can still see the anger in them. He stares at me without a blink for 5 minutes straight.

He then begins to speak, "You didn't think about me when you did that?"
His words send chills down my spine.

"I wasn't thinking straight at that moment. I was torn apart and couldn't put the pieces back together. I'm sorry!" I sympathize.

I can see him hesitate to slap me but he forces it. I had expected that anyways.
He then grasps my chin, looks me in the eye and says, "I love you Lexi. I've never loved anyone like that in my entire life. You are the first girl who I have loved truly and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Please don't do anything stupid again. Please!" He pleads.

"I love you." I hug him tight and cry into his chest. He wraps his arms around me and I feel overwhelmed.

We then talk about random stuff and I can see him making an effort to make me laugh. He has occupied my mind completely not letting me think about yesterday, or about the dreams or about Luna...

After about an hour, my mom comes over to meet me. The next day is a public holiday so I stay back at Aunt Steph's house. She brought along my secret diary, shit. She must have read it for sure.

"I found this lying on the bed." she says in a low voice. She opens it reads out the names,"Luna, Zac, Hardin, Elaine, Mom, Aunt Steph!"

I grab the book from her hand and tear the page into pieces.

"I don't want to talk about it right now, please."

She doesn't force me instead opens her arms wide to hug me.

"I love you baby. Please don't do this again!" She sobs.

"I won't, I promise." I assure her.

Minutes later we all are gathered round the table, joking and laughing. Halsey made spicy biryani which I could barely eat. Everything I eat or drink tastes umami. The phenyl taste and smell is just not leaving. After dinner, we watch television for a while and then Zac leaves my mom home. I wish them a good night and thank them for yesterday and for spending time with me and making me feel better. We then head to bed.

As soon as I lay down, I forgot I hadn't checked my phone all day.  I pick up my phone and there are hundreds of notifications. As I go through them, my eyes search for Luna's text I don't know why. I read her name and open the chat. There are 10 missed calls and messages asking if I'm okay. I can't reply to them I say to myself and block her. I go through the rest of my notifications. There are 6 missed calls and 10 messages from Lyra, 2 from Tessa and 4 from Kim. I forgot that I had messaged them,"Sorry but I love you."  I unsend all the messages but Lyra, Tessa and Kim had already seen them. I message Kim and Tessa saying I'm fine and call Lyra straight away before she ends up coming here. She picks up immediately.

"Where the hell have you been? Why didn't you come to school today? Are you okay? Is everything fine? Why did you message me that?" Multifarious questions leave her mouth and she is yelling into the phone.

"I'm fine, don't worry. Everything is okay." I reply even though it's not or maybe it is.

"Why didn't you come to school then?" she screams into the line.

"I missed my van." I lie.

"Your lying I know you too well by now. You can't keep things from me. Something is wrong, I can tell. Did you have a fight with Luna again?"

Damn right, she knows me too well by now. "No. Everything is fine." I lie a second time but she's right I can't keep things from her.

"Tell me what's wrong." she pleads.

"It's a long story. Can we not talk about it right now." I really don't feel like talking about it.

"Okay. Let's change the topic. You know what happened to Chelsea today... "

.....

After having a long conversation with her, I feel so much better than before. She's the only person who can cheer me up and I'm so glad to have her in life.

"I missed you so much in class today!" she says.

"I miss you too. I'll come to school on Wednesday."

"Okay love you babe. Take care of yourself."

"Okay, you too."

After she hangs up, I message Zac to see if he's home. He calls as soon as he receives my message. We talk on call for quite some time and I fall asleep while talking.
When I awake, it's 6 am. Oh I was on call with Zac! When I check my phone the call is still going on, he didn't hang up. I speak into the receiver but there's no reply. After a min or so he wishes me, " Good morning baby." He's up so early, wow.

"Good morning." I reply.

"How are you feeling?" He asks.

"I'm good. How come your up so early?"

"I couldn't get sleep all night so I stayed on call to hear you snore." He teases.

"I don't snore!" I defend myself.

"Oh come on! I'm just kidding. It felt nice having you on call while you sleep so I didn't hang up. I was waiting for you to get up actually."

We talk all morning on call and suddenly the rattling sound of the dishes break the morning silence. When my eyes move towards the clock, it's 10 am. I wonder why Aunt Steph isn't gone to work as yet and then I realize it's a public holiday.