❝you don't recover from a night like this, a victim, still lying in bed, completely motionless.❞
❘❘
EL SOL SALE LENTAMENTE. Every ray of light is crisp against my skin, washing over the city with a cold, cold, cold calculation. Eventualmente, I stop counting steps, blocks, buildings; I start sinking into shivers, wrapping my arms around myself in misery.
My phone is descargado.
My head hurts, my eyes sting, my body aches.
I feel like shit.
The branches tremble in the breeze, and as I come to a stop, my gaze lingers on the skeletal frame withering in the winter weather. A pair of shoes sways.
Those shoes hang so fucking innocently in front of the apartment.
Someone lets me into the front hallway on their way out. As I skate past him to catch the door, the air stills. It's an icy trail, his gaze trailing up my bare legs, my torn dress, my tangled hair. Fuck.
I close my eyes.
"Hey, are you... are you okay?"
Quiero llorar.
But I swallow that pathetic sob, drained, just done crying. Nodding silently, I peer up to give him a weak smile. Estoy bien. Estaré bien. Siempre estaré bien.
As the door slams shut between us, darkness swallows me. In the dim, damp hallway, it's hard to remember the appeal of this apartment. Dirt stains the tiles, leaves scatter with each slight movement, and as my fingers brush along the top of a mattress propped against the wall, it feels like being condemned to an eternal surrender. All things abandoned, stuck inside a hollow hallway, left withering in an unwritten narrative. Is this where it ends? Does it always end right where it began?
What story does that tell?
Disoriented, I force myself forward. My palms brush the walls to stay standing. Each step groans beneath my feet slowly. The stale chill stings my eyes. Bile crawls up my throat. A scent of something cooking—something burning—hits me.
It's a million sensations of touch and taste and smell and... and it doesn't mean anything because I feel nothing. Empty.
I'm not even there. I'm stuck drowning somewhere in pits of misery, carving myself into my body until I can't decipher if things are real or a nightmare. My fingers curl into fists. Numbly, I rap my knuckles against the door, and the echo is harsh and winding, strands of impact ringing between my ears.
It hurts.
Wincing, I close my eyes and listen to the muffled curse, to the shuffling, to the feet thudding across wooden floors, closer, closer, closer—
The door swings open.
My heart stutters.
Surprise flashes in her eyes, fleeting, but fierce.
With damp hair framing her face, frizzy curls caressing her cheeks, she cocks a hip, raises a brow, stares me down with an unwavering amount of exasperation. "Neva."
Fuck. This was such a mistake. My bottom lip wobbles, but before I can mumble something weak and whirl around, her gaze drifts down my body. Suddenly self-conscious, uncomfortable, I clutch at my shoulders. "I..."
Worry tilts her lips into a frown. "What... Neva..."
"I don't... I don't have..."
Her brows crease as she takes in the damage—the skinned knees, the shaking hands, the shivering bitch who couldn't pay her rent. "Neva, what happened? What's wrong?"
YOU ARE READING
Snow
RomanceWhen Neva Álvarez moves to Queens, she's merely biding her time between bartending and dodging her brother's phone calls before her final year at NYU, and with the summer dwindling to an end, it's difficult not to find herself drawn to her new next...
