Closer To The Sun [Poly] [Bi]

13 - Shea

Q.O.T.D – What do you do when you can't fall asleep?

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🌲 . 🌼 . 🌲

Shea wasn't sure what kind of response to expect from Nora. Sure, she was almost certain she'd get a reaction out of Nora – what she'd texted had basically been akin to blackmail, if taken the wrong way. Shea had basically said, "I know one of your deepest darkest secrets, text me back?"

Maybe not the wisest introductory text.

She hoped Nora would be the kind of person to recognize Shea's message as curiosity, not a threat. Because she was curious. She'd never had the courage to ask Nora about it in person, but Shea knew Nora had been somewhere... impossible. She couldn't explain how she knew it; she just felt it on her. Some kind of familiarity. Kinship.

For a while there, Shea laid in bed, contemplating sleep, worried that she'd just burned a bridge before stepping foot on it. Her anxiety dulled as no response came.

But then her phone binged beside her head and she jumped. She was terrified that it would be Nora. At first, she was hoping it would be Kayla, and then she was kind of hoping it would be Campbell. It was Leonard.

I think Trey hates me. Does Trey hate me?

Shea didn't have the stamina for Leonard right now.

She rolled over onto her side and eyed the clock. It was already eleven fifteen. She should probably go to bed. She hadn't even turned the bedside lamp off, and yet her eyes were already starting to flutter shut...

Shea started to drift, her cheek pressing into the soft ridges of the blanket, the folds tracing lines in the grain of her skin, looping, twisting, rough... she felt heavy. And then she was somewhere else... stretching far upward, high, high up... scraping the clouds... and her feet dug below the Earth, anchoring deep into the ground...

Twisting...

And then she remembered where she was, and she sat upright. And then she was calling Campbell.

And then he picked up. "Hey."

"Hey," Shea said.

They lay there in silence for some time. She could feel her heart beating in her fingertips. She could hear the hum of insects from his side of the line.

"Are you outside?" she asked.

"Yeah." She could hear the grass move below him as he stretched, or rolled. His voice was rough; it sounded like late nights and fireflies and campfires. "Couldn't sleep."

She wondered if he was like her, if what he meant when he said "I couldn't sleep" was "I'm afraid to go to sleep." Her fingers grasped at undulations in the bedsheets, as if she were steading herself on a rocking ship.

I could be over there right now, laying next to him. He's alone, and I'm alone...

She pinched a fold in the blanket between her fingers, watching how the shadows cut and twisted against the white bedsheet. Spiraling, twisting, like...