sonder

hiraeth

Chapter Ten

Hiraeth

(n.) a homesickness for a home you can't return to, or that never was.

~ ~ ~

Kali's eyes spoke for her where her voice lacked. She didn't say much as I got up and left her room but her eyes were hiding a secret behind them, I couldn't quite decipher what they were saying just yet.

The guilt begun to eat at me on my walk home. The stars flickered from their place in the sky and I knew that I would stay up, watching them fade into oblivion with the sun's arrival. I also knew that what happened between Kali and I was different than with others. She was a beginning, a fresh, new beginning for me, but I couldn't help feeling that she was now an end, a beautifully, tragic end.

I was never good enough for her anyways.

That thought nips at the back of my mind as I silently return to my house, the emptiness returning as the key twists to unlock the door.

My room seems incredibly small as I walk inside, heading straight to my computer where my social media pages open instantly. I find myself chasing a white rabbit down the hole that was once my life, one that now seems like a different life entirely.

Pictures of me being tagged with my old friends, at my old high school, at every party on the weekend, at soccer tournaments, and then scattered amongst them all are pictures of Rosie. She was my first love, a person who helped make the noise seem secondary. She was my everything, just like a first love always is, that was until I found her on top of my teammate, a non apologetic shrug was all that I received as an explanation.

The noise grew louder after I found them. I could no longer find a reason to stop believing that I wasn't all of the things that my mind constantly told me I was. It was true that I was not good enough, that I wasn't attractive, that I wasn't talented, that I wasn't anything other than a burden.

The spiralling of my depression continued all through the summer leading up to my junior year of high school, right up until I finally looked myself in the mirror and said that I had had enough, I wanted the noise to end.

The rabbit hole of my past life ended abruptly when my eyes finally focused on my surroundings and the feeling of my nails digging into the cushion of my palm, a habit that I had a acquired over the years and something that my therapist told me was a mild form of self harm. That didn't stop me from applying more pressure almost as if I couldn't control the functions of my own body.

I then remembered Kali's eyes, looking at me as if she knew all of my secrets but would never speak a word.

The pressure of my nails lightened slightly.

I recalled the way that she felt as I held her close afterwards, both of us breathing heavily as her sheets coiled between our bodies.

I shut my computer screen closed, no longer wishing that I could rewind time so that I could be that guy again. No longer overcome with the feeling that I was homesick for something that didn't exist anymore, that possibly never did in the first place.

I sat at my desk and watched the stars for a long time, imagining what it would be like to actually be able to hold Kali for a little longer. Everything in my being was telling me that she was going to change my life, I just didn't know how to stop it though.

~ ~ ~

"I wasn't sure if you'd show up today." Kali announces, pulling out the chair in front of me and sitting, gracefully, down. It was mid afternoon and the bookstore was completely silent, not a single person having been in here since I walked in several moments ago. Even Mr. Harvey hadn't stopped in yet, unusual considering the time of day but I was happy to see Kali and to get to talk to her.

I shrug, something inside of myself telling me to play this cool and indifferent. "What else am I supposed to do?" I ask, making an attempt at a joke.

"It's safe to assume that you've figured out that this town has nothing for teenager's to do, right?" She asks me, her voice not giving away the fact that last night we were more than two people simply talking at the bookstore.

"I figured that out the second I walked in to town, if I'm being honest." She laughs at that. "They happen to have a pretty cool bookstore though."

Kali's eyes immediately pick up on my flirting which I was grateful for, I couldn't help myself from wanting to banter with her. She made everything seem easy, light, simple. All of those things were adjectives that my life were lacking.

"Really?" She questions, her voice and eyebrows rising with the one-worded question.

"Yeah, a pretty cute bookstore clerk too." I state, blatantly flirting with her now.

"Only pretty cute?" She asks, leaning forward so that her face is closer to mine as I, too, lean against the table separating us.

I shake my head at her. "She's actually stunning." I proclaim to which Kali's face morphs into one of bashful. She then shakes her head of me, her foot swinging against my leg with purpose.

"I was thinking," She says, looking at me through her lashes. "about last night." She finishes, leaving the topic hanging in the air between us.

My heartbeat quickens as thoughts of her regretting what happened and her never wanting to see me again wash through my mind. I'm silenced though by her speaking once again, her proposal tearing all of my fears to smithereens.

"How would you feel about making an arrangement?"

My eyebrows furrow together with confusion, "What type of arrangement?"

"Something along the lines of a relationship with no strings attached?" She clarifies; however, her voice sounding as if she just asked me a question.

"Like being friends with benefits." I said, images of last night popping into my head. She nods, her curls bouncing with the movement.

The bell rings from the front of the store, Mr. Harvey's shadow casting a silhouette on the floorboards leading through the middle of the store. I sigh in frustration as Kali's chair scrapes against the old hardwood. She flashes me a glance of sympathy from having our conversation be interrupted but soon is back at the front, acting as if we were simply talking as usual.

~ ~ ~

My walk home with Kali is spent in an odd type of silence. The both of us were obviously thinking but neither could actually break out of their own head, especially me. I was really hoping that she would crack first.

We were nearing the end of Main Street when I finally was able to free myself from the thoughts that were consuming my being. "Are you sure that you want this?" I find myself asking, slowing to a stop just as the cobblestone ends and the pavement begins.

"Yes." She answers, her foot crossing onto the pavement in one fluid movement. I'm instantly following across the path, my hands finding her waist as her eyes meet mine through her dark lashes.

"Yes." I repeat before our lips collide, blocking out absolutely everything in the world.

~*~*~*~*