My Record Store Romance

Black Coffee

Bon Iver & St. Vincent- Roslyn (fav. song that I listened to while writing today, THE NOSTALGIAAA)

An after midnight upload woooo.

Chapter dedicated to leckiel13 because her comment was very cute and I enjoyed it. Thank you!

Chapter 36: Black Coffee

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The next morning, I'm nothing but bloodshot eyes and black coffee.

The house is so silent when the sun rises that I have to tread downstairs to the kitchen, where I can be comforted by the cold white tiles settling soundly below my toes and can listen to the world come alive rather than hearing myself think.

Because, as birds begin to sing and the sky reflects rays of yellow, I'm screaming on the inside. Remnants of last night still linger within me, haunting my thoughts and manifesting in the slightest of ways; the shake in my hands which hasn't disappeared, the exhaustion weighing upon my shoulders, the emptiness that tears into my heart.

I feel as though I'm back at the beginning- before the therapy I had to sit through, before the pills I had to choke down- when it seemed like the world was on its side and nothing would ever be normal again.

I feel how I felt when I was fourteen, when all I knew was how to be broken.

But, I came down here to get away from all of that. To breathe, to let go, to pull myself together before everyone else wakes up. Luckily, my parents have already left for work. I can tell by the half-filled coffee pot which sits in its spot upon the counter, a dark brew that resonates around the room with a thick, pungent scent, and by the vacant hook on the wall where their keys would usually reside.

My mom could always see the signs of a panic attack even once they had passed, saying it was in the way I carried myself afterward, that sluggish, slow, dying on the inside kind of movement where suddenly even the smallest steps seem to hurt. She started paying close attention because I used to lie to her about having them, but when it got to the point where I had to hide in the bathroom during school instead of going to class, I had to admit that my problems were more severe than even I had known at first.

Hailey would notice that something was off too. Her smile would twist into a frown of worry, her chest would ache with the unknown; she would watch me a little closer, be a little quieter, and dance around the topic before saying what she would have wanted to say from the beginning- "Are you okay?" And I know this, because we are one in the same, and this is exactly what I would do.

But this time, I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to relive the nightmare, I don't want to think about everything I saw, even if it wasn't really there. I don't want to talk about how I had to scrub the floor at three in the morning, or about how Ally found me, crying uncontrollably in the bathroom when I'm supposed to be strong for her. When I'm supposed to be the one who tells her that everything is going to be alright, and not the other way around.

But that's not how it happened.

She was a ghost in the darkness, a hush of messy footsteps and frequent yawns, her hair in a bundle of knots that rested upon her shoulders. Her nightgown, a worn down t-shirt that used be Kyle's, falls against her tiny frame and hits the sides of her ankles. I hadn't heard her coming.

I hadn't even noticed that she opened the bathroom door, just a sliver, just enough to snake herself through and be confronted with the chaos I was consumed in.

The illumination from the lights above us turned into shadows on her cheeks as she leaned towards me, "Drew?" she whispered, "Drew? Are you sick?"