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13: Bounce Back

                13: Bounce Back

 

        Dear Diary,

        People are toxic. It seems that I’ve learnt this the hard way, unfortunately, but it won’t halt my plans. They’re still going to go ahead, although the situation has changed quite drastically. My patience worked, actually, and now I’m privy to some secrets that I know could wreck people out from the inside, and everyone that they claim to love.

        But I think I’ll hold onto this information for a little bit longer; I’m interested in how things will turn out, and I’m sure it won’t take too long before the police get involved, either.

        Devin.

                ○ ▲ ○ ▲ ○

        Other than sitting in a dark booth at Dev’s Diner, slaving over a diary neither of us can understand, with a basket of fries between us and half empty glasses of Cola, Siobhan, Antonia and Gabi fretting over us, under the impression that they’re all witness to a couple getting back together, I don’t talk to Charlie other than when the diary is involved. We can spend hours sitting in said booth, fight over who’s going to get the last of the fries, and argue over who’s turn it is to pay the bill, but at the whiff of conversation which even has the faintest of links to something other than Devin, one of us is quick to redirect the other to the more important issues at hand.

        I wonder if it wasn’t for this, the situation we’ve found ourselves in, if we’d even be talking again. Words would have certainly been said in the Gym store cupboard, and even though he’d said that he missed me, once the freshman opened the door and found the two of us, we would have returned to our normal lives, back to the four-month hiatus of ignoring each other and trying to bounce back from a relationship which I’d never experienced before. This realisation is startling, that without the paper and leather with ink scrawls which mean nothing to me from a girl I didn’t really know, I wouldn’t be in contact with Charlie again.

        Sometimes I get hit with waves of emotions, and reminded of how much I miss him and the easy flow of which was simply us. He does this thing with how he eats fries, and I had to stop and compose myself because it reminded me so much of what was back then, and what isn’t right now. “Chin up, Kasia,” he tells me, cracking a smile which is riddled with exhaustion. This is this the third time we’ve met this week, and it feels like we’re not getting any closer to where we should be. I find myself getting increasingly infuriated with the more pages we turn and the more questions we find ourselves asking, though there has been no increase in the answers provided.

        I sigh, frustrated with the waiting process. Everything has been about waiting, instead of just doing, and I find that to be the whole part of the process which annoys me most. “Nothing adds up,” I admit dejectedly. It had felt like we were on to something yesterday, and now its like we’re back to square one, trying to adjust ourselves to the way of which Devin wrote, where every entry was a story within itself.

        Charlie shrugs his shoulders, chin resting on his fist, and blinking slowly. “You just have to think about it. So she followed some guy out to some shady bar out of town in her brothers truck. We could just ask him how often Devin would use his car, how long she’d be out on these drives.” He pauses, flicking through the pages and stabbing his finger at one of the words. “Here it says something about secrets, so it’s not that hard to guess she had a bit of dirt on a couple people. Obviously found out someone was dealing, I mean ‘white powder’, not exactly discreet, is it?”