Solace In The Silence ✓✓

chapter 34

Fall break couldn't come quickly enough.
I'd been a basket case for the rest of the semester, barely keeping it together. My heart felt scorched and raw. Empty.
I'd managed to breeze through my midterms, only because I'd spent every waking moment of my miserable existence studying. I'd thrown myself into my last few days of classes at college and buried my nose in thick textbooks. Anything to keep me distracted. I'd been so determined not to fail, even with everything that had happened lately.

I'd lost my boyfriend and said goodbye to my best friend in the same week, and it was lonely as hell.
Whenever I thought about it, it was like reopening a wound, a sucker punch straight to my chest.
Angie had implored me to understand; that traveling and finding herself was something she needed to do. She promised that she would be back from  in six months and that we'd still talk to each other every day, but that didn't mean letting her go was any easier.

When I'd gone with her to the airport, watching as she'd disappeared round the terminal, time had drifted to a standstill. It had dawned on me with a terrifying clarity just how alone I was now—Angie, Jake, and Elvis, my three childhood sidekicks, gone—and I'd had to squelch the very real, plummeting grief.

Time was still frozen, no longer flying by at warp speed. It had reverted back to how it was when I was younger, every minute stretching into what felt like an eternity.
But mostly, I'd been determined not to fail my midterms because of Jake.
I hadn't spoken to him in three excruciatingly long weeks. Staying at home and commuting to school meant that I got to avoid him for the most part, but there were unlucky days. As if seeing him at Concepts in Design wasn't hard enough, he cropped up around campus every now and then. He was always with Lynn and Gery.

One of the mornings, our gazes had collided for a fraction of a second, and the intensity and despair blazing in his eyes had robbed my breath. I'd seen the way the anguish and exhaustion clung to him. I'd noticed the shadows that bloomed beneath his eyes. He was suffering, too, and it should've made me glad, but it didn't. Despite weeks of trying to forget about him, I still felt consumed by him. And despite all the heartache he'd subjected me to, I still loved him.

The only silver lining, to the mess that was now called my life, was Vicky.
The nights I couldn't drive home, she'd let me stay in her dorm, and whenever I would cry, she'd hug me tightly, staying until the tears dried. She'd witnessed some of my epic meltdowns, but never once did I glimpse pity or discomfort paling her features. Vicky didn't judge me or tell me how to grieve, and in the quiet moments that hung between us, I sensed that she'd been through something similar before, that she understood how I felt more than she was willing to let on.

She reminded me of the good things and helped divert my attention from all the bad, which was ninety-nine percent of the time.
My world had been torn apart, and I was still trying to piece it back together again, but there was no use in pretending that things would ever be the same. My relationship with Jake was in disrepair. My best friend's mom was sick. Sometimes certain things just didn't get better, no matter how much you wanted them to, and that truth was as bleak and cold as the weather.

I tightened my coat around me now as the chilly November wind picked up, and made my way across campus for quite possibly the last time.
This was something I had thought long and hard about. Starting next semester, I was going to take my classes online. I couldn't keep driving here every day. Aside from being impractical, I'd probably burned through enough fuel to fly ten fighter jets. With that being said, I couldn't stay in my dormitory, and I couldn't remember when I'd last felt safe at UFA, even during class.

I just had to accept that, in this reality, studying on campus just wasn't going to work out. Not right now, anyway.
I made tracks for UFA Tiger  Hall, the freshman residence dorm, and wished that I'd organized to meet up with Gery outside one of the coffee houses nearby, not in my dorm room. I hadn't been back there since the morning Joe had ambushed me, and my shoulders climbed up to my neck at that admission. I hated that I was jumpy as fuck all the time, but after receiving the written threat from him last month, I knew I'd rather be on high-alert.