Missing Her.

Chapter 4.

Why?

Why today of all days? 

Why now?

Over a year later, a year! and everything I finally got off of my chest kicks me in the gut. It wasn’t her, but dang, that didn’t help stop the memories from trying to resurface. As the elevator finally arrived on my floor, I hurried with my head down, not wanting to meet anyones eyes if I passed by a familiar face, and just headed to my room. I unlocked the door, but as soon as I stepped in, I remembered I had to put the groceries away. 

Hopefully my roommates would still be too busy playing video games to notice me. And although I could turn them down for a chat, I made a habit of actually hanging out with them. It was something I begun doing when I finally started over.

But this old habit resurfacing is dying hard.

I shoved the food where it goes, then grabbed up my book before carefully walking towards my room, I was almost to the hallway when they noticed me though.

“Hey! You’re back, come sit and play. We’re putting in Mario Kart.” Chad had called out. I looked over at him with a guarded face, but sighed and went over anyways. He handed me a remote and patted the only open spot on the couch.

Maybe a little distraction would be good. I thought to myself. 

“Where’d ya go?” Derek asked me. 

“Store.” I shrugged, picking out Luigi for the race.

“OOH! did you get me any food?” He hopped up, then darted across all of our view, making us all swerve.

“Mine.” I rolled my eyes at him. Derek was always trying to eat everyones food. Of course we let him have some, but he made a joke out of a lot too, just to annoy us. I glanced over at him briefly and made sure he wasn’t getting into any of the stuff I just bought, then went back to the game. 

For a few minutes, it served it’s purpose. It distracted me. But as time went on, It gave out and the memories started to once again fill my mind, distracting me from the game at hand. 

I gave up after I lost one round because I couldn’t focus, then went back to my room and tried to cram my thoughts into a corner with reading. I focused on the characters, the scenes around them, putting the emotions on their face when it was implied. But it was all futile.

It didn’t want to work because I knew this book basically like the back of my hand, so I kept getting distracted when similarities between the characters of the book would intertwine with my memories.

Instead of reading about them, I started to picture my best friend and me. Instead of watching the two characters in my head, they changed into memories of her.

It wouldn’t work. I couldn’t escape.

The pain and the longing that the characters felt only reminded me of my pain and longing. 

I snapped.

~

I tapped my foot on the ground as I waited, just letting it bounce off the concrete as I leaned against the brick wall outside my building. It’d only been fifteen minutes since I texted her, but I was impatient, I needed the distraction. I picked up my phone and checked the time again, also checking for missed calls, but nothing was different in the last two minutes than before.