[EDITORS' PICK]
Joyce Blackbird is a bored aspiring writer who just entered her adult years. The world around her frustrates her and disrupts her inspiration to write.
Chase Journey, musician, is the first person she's interested in. Through the cl...
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a/n: don't forget to vote!
When Joyce awoke, she was facing the other side of the room. She didn't remember turning around in the night. As a matter of fact, she was sure Chase's arms had been around her the whole time she slept.
As she opened her eyes, she found the wall's blue paint to be less dark than what she'd made it to be last night.
She spun around and saw Chase sitting beside her, looking at his phone shirtless, with the blankets still covering his legs.
"Good morning, Blackbird. Woah," he turned to look at her, but then averted his gaze and put his phone over his eyes.
Joyce looked down and found that the blankets weren't doing much covering on her, so she pulled them back up. "Sorry. What're you doing?" she asked.
"Nothing, just ghosting the anxiety. How are you feeling?"
Memories of last night resurfaced as she sat up by bending her legs toward her chest. "I'm fine," she said.
From that standpoint, she was able to grasp Chase's tattoo. "Remember who you are, even when you become someone else," she read it out loud.
"Yup," Chase said putting away his phone. "It was one of the last things my dad said to me. You know, before he died."
"And why did he say that to you?" She rubbed her eyes and yawned.
"It was a particular moment. I was fourteen and I'd just had a fight with some guy at school. Of course, they let my parents know about it. When I got back home, I was expecting this big talk, about all kinds of subjects pertaining to being a teenager. Instead, my dad just pulls this uncle Ben-style catchphrase out of the blue, and that's all he says to me. Nothing more, nothing less."
"Really?" Joyce said as she stretched.
"And then two days later, he died. And I looked back and wondered. It felt like such a foreshadowing of things to come, you know? What, he suddenly talks like some buddhist monk and is not even mad at me? At the time, I imagined some kind of angel coming to visit him and telling him about his destiny. I thought he'd made his peace with that. But, of course, now I know that's a load of crap."
"How did he die?" Joyce asked.
Chase sighed. His expression hardened. "He was shot in a mass terrorist attack in Wilde Square."
Joyce shivered. "Oh my God. I'm so sorry, that's terrible."
Chase swallowed the lump in his throat. "Yeah, I know right. To die like that. To be just a number among many others. To not even receive the recognition you deserve... that you were a man with dreams and a life and a family you fought so hard to build. Not just a number, not just one of the unfortunate victims of Okin. Bull—" He gulped again.
