❝the worst end of a bad dream
when you lost your heart at seventeen.
consigned it to your brother,
he swam it two miles off shore.
it's aching in his hands,
pining from the ocean floor.❞
❘❘
AN ACHING SILENCE CHASES the confession, stifling heartbreak into something still, something suffocating, something surreal. Slowly, every trace of fearlessness drains from my body, spilling out of me like breathless blood, broken, blue, bare.
Suddenly stripped down to nothingness, cold and captured by the faint memories, I feel empty.
Numbly, I hang up on him.
"Neva?"
"No," I mumble, standing up and brushing past Emmy. My bottom lip trembles. "Sólo necesito... I just need to... I..."
I need to do something.
"Neva, stop," Emmy pleads, but it's warped, withering into the background weakly. A crushing weight presses on my chest, smothering every single feeling into a searing fire. My vision dims. "Neva, Neva, Neva..."
I hate the way he said my name, letting it roll off his tongue like he deserves to say it, like he knows every inch of my body, like he... like he took something from me.
Like I can't stop him.
"I just..." I fumble for words, shaking my head, desperate to rid myself of the disgusting feeling—that inevitable sliver of shame I can't escape. "I..."
"Neva, háblame. Por favor."
As I reach for my bag, for my keys, for my sweater, I steer my gaze to the floor. "I just... need to get some air."
Air.
All the fresh air in the world can't fucking cleanse me of the feeling. Because once I'm sitting in my car, it's itching beneath my skin, scraping and scratching, gnawing to the surface with a vengeance, and I can't... I can't stop it.
Distance feels meaningless. I've spent years putting distance between mi familia and me, between that night and this moment, but everything is still there. Mindlessly racing a mile a minute, fishtailing out of control, driving away, away, away from him, from them, from me.
It did nothing.
Lo pienso. I do. Por primera vez en años, I think about going back to Florida.
Home?
I... I think about going home.
And somehow, that brings me to Julian's apartment. As I climb the stairs, a duffel bag hugging my hips, the things I thought I felt seem so... fake. In those moments, when we were wild and free and careless, we were dangerous.
How could I have ever believed this was a home? How could I have found safety in those nights? Lost in the scent of smoke and sex, swimming through highs and lows, drifting, drifting, drifting... numb... wasting away on the fragile fucking fears of a sixteen year old girl?
Why do I still feel like this?
My phone vibrates all night, pero no importa. After one hit, two hits, three hits, rails of soft, sensual snow, nothing matters but keeping myself afloat amidst the winter weather, reaching for más, más, más. The calls pass by in a blur, fading into the night... bleeding into the morning... dwindling with the dying buzz in my veins.
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...
