Here Comes The Sun

eighteen

july 13th
toronto

BRIGHTNESS TRYING TO PEEK THROUGH MY EYELIDS awoke me from a what felt like a never-ending sleep. Just when I was about to mentally cheer about the fact that my head had stopped spinning, a sharp pain penetrated my head like a knife pressing through my skull. Unfortunately, that wasn't the only karma I got; way too soon after the crippling headache, chronic tiredness prohibited impulses to open my eyes, whereas my whole entire body felt ultimately dehydrated. The dryness in my mouth was comparable to what one would feel after walking hundreds of miles through a steaming hot desert.

An unforced groan escaped my lips when I turned to my side, while my senses finally started working again. Muffled noise, what my brain a few seconds later recognized as music, sounded far away from the room I was in, and it probably was so loud to soften the humanly yelling. The Beatles' Help! didn't succeed in hiding the quarrel between a young female and man, causing my curiosity to rise up like a spear.

And, of course, a few moments and quiet footsteps later, I was to be found right around the corner of the living room in which a Hart with flaming red cheeks, no shirt, and very messy curls was yelling almost on the top of his lungs, whereas the girl who had introduced herself as Liz the night before gave him a rather indifferent attitude as she covered her chest with her arms crossed in front of it, wearing the type of glasses I had never expected to see her with, short, dark hair tucked behind her ear, and a casual, black hoodie with shorts underneath.

Then all of the sudden, everything played in slow-motion. Hart slowly raised his hand to perform angry gestures, while his spit flew across the room when he shouted some words. I watched how it landed right between Liz' eyes, and she leisurely wiped it away as her face cramped up into a disgusted frown. Help! continued to play in the background, and when it was the main chorus' time to shine, Hart seemed to acknowledge my presence. His head turned towards the wall I stood behind, and his tensed shoulder relaxed the second he saw my head peeking around the corner. It was too late to hide, therefore I just awkwardly stood there. His lips moved much calmer, expressing varied syllables, but I heard none. My ears were filled up by Honeymoon Avenue playing in my head, so there was simply no room for his words. The fact that I couldn't focus on his talking made me see things differently; the pupils in his by the sun painted honey-brown irises enlarged when he looked into my eyes, and his former red cheeks appeared to be even more red. But it wasn't just his physical features, it was the energy hovering around his body which completely changed. And so did mine. I wondered if he also felt light-hearted in my presence, invincible yet so vulnerable, an odd mixture of feelings that I couldn't even describe. And my heart is at a yellow light, a yellow light. I couldn't even trace how many times per minute my heart beat when I was close to him.

"Nova?" His voice had become clear again, and everything passed by in a normal time setting.

"Hart?" I responded.

"Are you feeling alright?"

"It feels like I'm slowly dying from the inside, and after everything's rotten, it'll eat the outside."

The corners of his lips curled up into a careful smile. And in that moment I knew exactly what was going on. I was falling for Hart Feingold. I was completely falling for him all that time, and I didn't want to give in to it, but what rushed through me when he smiled was too good to deny.

"Tell her why she's feeling like that," his face became all strict when he turned to his cousin Liz.

She sighed deeply before monotonously speaking up. "I forced you into consuming so much alcohol and then I drugged you."