𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐅𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐋𝐔𝐃𝐄𝐃

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Fifteen

    Nora didn't sleep that night. She found that happening more and more often and as someone who appreciated her sleep she found it to be awfully rude. If Nora didn't get enough sleep, she could turn into a heinous bitch. At least, that's what her dad told her once. He said sorry, but she still remembered. She assumed he got frustrated living in a house full of girls, but he was at work most of the time anyway. So much so, Nora used to think he was cheating on their mother, but then she would see the utter love in their eyes when they looked at each other and she decided she didn't feel like becoming a conspiracy theorist. Things with her family were better than she expected them to be, but she was grateful for that.

    All that aside, she found herself up on the roof for the second time that night. However, there was no Eloise to join her that night as the girl was sound asleep in the living room after the third movie they watched. She was far too heavy of a sleeper to be awoken by the window opening all the way upstairs. Nora sighed to herself, wondering why she would feel so lonely when she had all the people in the world to love her.

    She wasn't going to kid herself; she knew why. She had her sister, her friends, even had peace with her ex-boyfriend. Her life should be going perfectly fine right now. Right back on track like she wanted so badly. That was, except the one person she wanted in her life right now wasn't there. Of course, she appreciated her friends, but in this quiet moment of self-reflection, she wanted nothing more than to talk to Edison. There was something so understood between them, something that made Nora feel seen. They clicked so instantly, having her gone so soon was like a knife to the heart.

    Of course, she was probably just being dramatic.

    She hated that word: Dramatic. She hated how often she used it to describe her feelings. Was it possible to be your own worst enemy? Nora was starting to think her brain was going to earn the role of being her nemesis as things continue to roll downhill at rapid speed.

    One time she visited San Francisco and Eloise and her thought it would be a good idea to skateboard down the Russian Hill street. Not standing up, but with both of them sitting down on the board which, when they were ten and twelve respectively, seemed like a badass idea. They lost control and all Nora remembers is the wind through her hair and the scraped knees and elbows they both ended up with. That was how she felt about her life right now. She was just rolling down a hill and had lost all control. The feeling of all control of life slipping through her fingers made her heart skip a beat in the worst way possible.

    As she stared up at the stars and pondered who and what she had become, she felt tears well up in her eyes. Strangely, she didn't even know she was going to be able to cry anymore today. Maybe since it was past midnight her body did an automatic reset and filled with even more tears; she was fairly sure that wasn't how it worked.

    Nora was tired of crying over things so simple. These problems were so benign in the grand scheme of things. Under the infinite stars, nothing mattered. She supposes they weren't quite harmless considering they hurt this bad, but she liked to think it could be so easy. She wished she could pinpoint when exactly her life took a turn for the worse so she could invent time travel and go back to undo it. Make the right choices. Did she even know what the right choices would have been?

    There was no answer to that which she knew; she found that to be the case more and more lately.

    The girl jumped as she felt her phone vibrate next to her, the movement causing it to slide slightly before she caught it. She wondered who the hell would be texting her at this hour, but then she remembered Kristen and Amarie were quite the night owls.