Till Next Time | completed | currently under re-edit

23

23
I switch my phone on to twenty missed calls and thirty messages from Anastasia.

Brooklyn, where are you? It has been so long. Come back please, we can talk about this.

Brooklyn, I am really sorry. When the booklet fell out, it fell open and I saw scribbles along the lines and I read it. I thought it was some prose or poetry you wrote. I did not realize it was so private before I was done reading it.

The sun's gone down, Brooklyn. Come back. I'm scared.

It is nightfall. You are not picking up your phone. If you are not back by tomorrow morning, I will have to inform the police.

I just wanted to get to know you better.

A feeling of shame gnaws at my conscience.
I left a girl who has no use of her legs alone in a hotel room in an unknown place where strange people get drunk and high at night with no one she can trust to protect her.
I check my watch. 23:13.
She isn't wrong, you know?, the voice inside my head retorts, You have hardly told her anything about how fucked up you are.

My stomach growls as my legs finally slow down to a stop from exertion.
The billboard of Marquee's Diner flickers before my eyes teasingly, intensifying my hunger. The only thing between my way is my sky-high ego.
I sigh. The growls get more ferocious.
She must have not had anything either, though she rarely does.
I decide to swallow my pride and walk into the diner.
No more hiding.

My breath hitches at my throat as I stop at the threshold to fish the key out of my pocket at the thought of what I may find inside. The impending panic sets in and my fingers tremble as they make contact with the cold metal of the doorknob. I stop and put my ear against the door.
Stillness.
I hold it in and push the door open.

The cold blasting air conditioner plunges its daggers into me as soon as I step into the room. I barely make out Anastasia's shrivelled up form against the wall under all the covers tangled all along her arms and legs.
I put the dinner down on the coffee table. She stirs a little, relief flooding through me.
"How do we do this?", she breaks the silence between us.
I take my journal out and put it near her, all the while screaming in my head, You are too close, you are too close.
One cannot fathom how quickly a person turns to a strange unknown venture like you didn't just shuttle halfway across the country with them.
You. Are. Too. Close.

I clear my throat, tuning all the voices out and say, "We talk about it."
"Where were you?", she asks. The deadness of her words strike a match in me. A pain runs rampant across my chest.
"Walked around. Thought it through."
No answer.
"What did you read, Ana?"
"Most of it," she takes her time to turn around by herself. My hands itch to help her but my feet remain doubtful and firmly planted to their place. She finds the journal and opens it. For the first time, I see her face.
A nothingness.
She flips open to a page and starts to read.
"I watch my mirth fade in front of me,
Rise up like embers of a dying fire.
And deep inside, I bitterly realize,
Soon enough, I will follow.
There will be my time."
She pauses.
"Every echo of the distant past shatters,
A million shards of glass?
I should bend over and attempt to amass
The remains of a boy I once knew.
I hear thumps on my walls,
Or inside my head? I would not be able to tell them apart at all.
And standing out of the orchestra of cacophony, a loud, sinister snap.
Louder it gets with each passing moment,
And harder gets the going.
I can close my eyes and pull the covers up like I used to,
It will keep the monster away,
Believing with every inch of life left in me.
But I have very little left,
And my monster live right beside me."

She flips over to another page, "This one's just a quote. Just because they are supposed to love you, does not mean they do."
She flips over a couple more pages.
"What did you expect? One fine day you will wake up and whatever you did to me that whole week will just convulse and evaporate into the air like you never made the strongest person I knew writhe in pain?"
"Sometimes now when you make promises like how you'll be there to hold me in my bad days, even when I lash out, it just gives me temporary relief. Because it all takes me back to that one night. It scares me to say this out loud but. I don't believe you at times."
I know the next pages are blank. She puts the journal away.
"Why did you stop?", she asks.
"Stop what?"
"Writing."
"It doesn't come to me anymore."
"Why not?"
"My words never catch up to the speed of my thoughts. Or maybe because I am afraid to start writing, afraid of what may come out. Maybe I have no more words left."
She scoffs, "That's the one thing no one ever runs out of, Brooklyn."
"Someone has to be the first. That someone is me."
She shakes her head, "If only you held on to your words, the way you hold on to your anger."
She props up on her elbow. I get up to help. She motions me to be seated.

"Nothing worth keeping and having ever came easily, Brook. And if they do come around the first time, they do again. From time to time. And you have to take care of them. Hold on, make them stay. Like it or not, you aren't entitled to shit in this world. Whatever you get, you earn it and you best believe it before you lose something you can never replace."

She collapses back on the bed, "They say, if you take care of things, they last."
"Do they?", I blurt out.
A silence ensues.
"What did they do to you to shatter you this  badly?"
A crack resonates inside me.
"I am running away from things, Ana. I am running away," my resistance gives way to my pent up emotions.
She pats on the space next to her.
"What is happening, Brook?"
"I don't want to be this helpless anymore. I don't want to feel like my life is influenced by every other thing than my will."
"Then take control."
"It's not that easy!", I turn away before I say something I cannot take back.
"But is it worth it?", she grabs my cheek, forcing me around to look into her eyes, "Because if it is, Brooklyn, fight for it. You don't deserve pain. You don't deserve the things that you wrote about."
"What do I deserve then?"
My hand reaches up to wrap around her wrist, her fingers still firmly placed where they were, compelling me in looking right into her big brown eyes.
The pressure across my chest begs me to look away before I regret it. But I cannot.
Her lips part ever so slightly, "You deserve hope."
She lets go off me and I see it.
I see that she meant every single word of what she said.

A/N: *nervous breathing*