Celeste's childhood wasn't something she loved talking about. It was filled with nothing but painful memories. Whether they were the ones from when her father, along with her brothers, left, or the ones from her mother's death and her stepfather's a...
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MY CHEST rose and fell. Over and over again. Oxygen crept into my lungs and crawled out of them. My heart pounded against my ribcage, not so harshly, but in a slightly discomforting way. Different images played on the television's screen; faint sounds acted as background noises to the beeping of the heart monitor, but I paid no attention to any of them. My hands fiddled and my eyes avoided Armani's at all cost.
Two days had passed since I first woke up in the hospital, and an entire day had passed since I last spoke to Enzo. I had woken up yesterday, sometime in the morning, my body drenched with sweat. Fear had encased my heart, and pain had engulfed my entire body. I had searched for my brother within the plain walls of the room only to notice that he was nowhere to be seen. That Dante had taken his place.
My heart had sunk at the exact moment and tears had brimmed within the corners of my eyes. It had hurt so much even though I had known that Enzo would eventually leave. Everyone else did.
I had tried so hard to stop myself from crying; I had held my tears back the entire day and I hadn't allowed any of them to escape my eyes, not even today when Enzo had come to visit—two hours earlier—before Armani told him to leave for school along with Marco and Dante. The silence had been suffocating as it accompanied his presence and I had still done the exact same thing: trying.
I had tried not to cry or to panic when I had watched Enzo leave. I had tried to breathe properly and to fill my lungs with the air they demanded when I felt them tighten so much and crumble under the pressure emitted by my chest. And I had tried to pretend that time was passing when it seemed to stop. That I didn't feel my heart grow more vacant with every single moment when that was all it did as it lost the comfort it had once shielded.
I tried so hard until I grew sick of trying. Nothing mattered at all; my efforts to find a way that would lessen the pain were nothing and my pleas for its sharp fragments to dissipate were of no use. I pathetically watched my power as it slipped away from my grip and my efforts as they shattered under the pain's weight, and I did nothing at all.
I turned the television on and raised its volume until its loud noises were all I could hear. I pretended to enjoy the dull images playing across its surface when I paid no attention to any of them. And I pretended not to notice Armani's gaze as it bored to the side of my head when its intensity was all I could think of.
I kept on pretending and thought that the game I had gotten myself into would last forever. For a moment, I believed that I would never be found again—that I would finally sink into the depths of my churning thoughts and blend along with their darkness. Vanish into thin air. And for the next moment, my mind was dragged back to the surface, my lungs grasping the Oxygen. The television was no longer on and its sounds no longer filled the room.
Armani stood by my side, his gaze piercing right into mine. His lips parted multiple times as though he were contemplating on whether he was supposed to say something or not. He seemed lost as he searched for words and he finally let a sigh out when he seemed to find ones. "You know you can tell me anything, right?"
