The Butterfly Effect

Chapter 5

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"It would be impossible to estimate how much time and energy we invest in trying to fix, change and deny our emotions - especially the ones that shake us at our very core, like hurt, jealousy, loneliness, shame, rage, and grief."

Debbie Ford

Raven awoke from the spill of sun rays through the curtains of a foreign bedroom. For a moment, she wondered where she was until the body stirring next to her triggered her questionable decision-making from the previous night.

"Morning," he murmured though Raven didn't look at him. She really didn't want to. She felt her face grow crimson with embarrassment and anger. Not at him but at herself. Since when did she allow her decisions to be fueled by subjectivity? She had never before stumped to such a low!

She knew the answer to the question, but she decided she didn't want to address that topic or else she'd spiral into the emotions that caused her on-going conundrum in the first place. She sat up, still avoiding Garfield's stare, and begun to dress.

"Raven?" he asked, but she chose not to answer.

When she finished, she got out of bed and walked to the living room where her phone was still perched atop the coffee table. Fourteen missed calls.

"Are you going to talk to me?" she heard his voice from behind her.

Raven finally addressed him, her eyes only briefly tracing his own before she slightly looked away as if he were just another mistake. Which, though it felt rude to admit, he was. "I have to go," she simply told him.

"So... We're not going to talk about this?" he questioned, though he sounded neither disappointed nor angry about it. In fact, he sounded rather apathetic, much different than the Garfield that annoyed her to hell the previous night. It was somewhat disheartening to hear that emotion (or lack thereof) from him.

"I don't believe you fully understand the whole friends-with-benefits arrangement," she retorted, sounding more hostile than she intended.

"Oh, trust me, I understand," he snorted with no humor in his tone. "And this isn't a particularly proper way to treat a friend."

She was quick to respond, "We're not friends, Gar."

"Fine. Fuck-buddies then," he snapped. "Look, Raven, if you never want to see me again after this, I get it. I'm not going to chase after you like some sort of creep or pathetic wimp. But I'm not going to let you just walk out of here without knowing where we stand. I don't want you to come knocking at my door one day expecting me to be willing to be a distraction from your ex again. If we're doing... whatever this is, we're going to act like consenting and rational adults."

Raven took a moment to respond as the certainty in his voice took her by surprise, and she opened her mouth a few times before she finally got a word out, "I wasn't thinking straight yesterday. It was the alcohol talking."

She heard him laugh quietly under his breath, and she clenched her fists, irritation replacing the anger clouding her mind. She knew she was just trying to find an excuse to blame him. To blame someone else, something else.

"This was a mistake," she reworded, finally locking eyes with him. The words felt like venom in her tongue, and she desperately wanted to spit them out.

There was no hurt in his eyes. On the contrary, there was an absence of any emotion. It was one of the rare instances where Raven wasn't able to read someone, and it sort of scared her—the fact that this lively being constantly blurting out dumb jokes and greeting her with a smile was so devoid of any trace of emotion that she couldn't properly understand what he was thinking.