The Replacement Girlfriend

Chapter 47

47. So Listen

Two A.M in the morning and it was knocking on Chase’s door, demanding for entry into his heart. He couldn’t deal with the annoying pounding, didn’t want to listen to what it had to say, but since it came from inside of him, there was hardly anything he could do.

He sat up and flicked the lamp that was sitting on his nightstand on. There was no use lying in bed if he wasn’t going to sleep and he wanted to find something distracting that would take his mind off of what Krislynn had said. He found it soon, remembered it actually, and moved across his room to his desk. He took a seat in front of it, flicked another lamp on, and then pressed the combination to open the top drawer of the bureau.

A soft beep signified the correct code and then it clicked open half an inch, letting him pull out the rest of it for himself. Inside the compartment, a few things laid scattered about. They weren’t anything he needed on a regular basis, but even so, their importance to him couldn’t be depreciated. There was a picture album of his family he had snuck away with him when he first left New York, the first manuscript he had ever written but never had the heart to publish, a journal he had kept when he tried his hand at writing poetry when he was fifteen, and a bunch of other gibberish just as random if not more.

He gently shuffled through the things until he finally got to the back where a small, blue, velvet box that contained his high school graduation present stood pressed up in the corner of the drawer. It was a watch his parents had picked out for him, but that wasn’t what he was looking for tonight. In fact, the watch wasn’t even there anymore. He had taken it out a few days before and now it was sitting in a glass compartment inside his walk-in closet along with all his other fine pieces of extravagance.

What was kept inside the box now, somewhat saddened him. He took it out gently, and then lifted the lid, pouring the content out onto the desktop. It was a diamond locket. A broken one. One Krislynn flung against the wall in a disarray of anger. He lifted it up in his hands and held it against the light, admiring it, playing with it, and poking at it.

What a messed up thing! What he had spent a million dollars on before seemed now messed up beyond repair. The chain was broken into two pieces. The locket, in the shape of a heart, now had a broken hinge so that nothing kept it together – two parts of a broken heart, one still attached to the chain. The cover of the locket, the part with all the diamonds, also lost a few jewels. Chase had gone and searched the ground for the tiny things after the fight, and with persistence, had found them, but they still remained detached. It reminded him of a lot of other broken things, he decided, things that he wanted so much to fix, to make better, but didn’t know how to.

He studied the trinket for another good hour and then placed everything back in its original place. He’d have to take it to a jeweller one day, ask someone to fix it, but he was worried they’d tell him it was irreplaceable or that, they could fix it but it wouldn’t be the same, ‘so why don’t you just get a new one?’

Chase sighed and crawled back into bed, but no sooner did he settle himself did the pounding come back again. It was annoying, so damn annoying, but he gritted his teeth and held his ground. He wasn’t going to budge for it. The minutes ticked on, but the pounding persisted and Chase knew he wasn’t going to be able to sleep tonight if he didn’t let it in. It was clenching, squeezing, and it was hurting him. He couldn’t resist the caller any longer and in a state of reluctance, slowly opened the gate. The locks clicked open, one by one until there was nothing more, till he came to terms with it, eye to eye.

He didn’t know what was so different about this time that made him resist so deeply and for so long, but none of that mattered to him anymore. It was in and the pounding had stopped. Now he laid in complete silence, but sleep still avoided him.

Another hour passed by and then he finally got out of bed in defeat. Out of his room and down the dark hallway he went until he stood right in front of Krislynn’s room. He stood there for a while staring at her closed door and then leaned against the wall across the hall from it for another ten minutes. Nothing. Silence. It was past four, she must be long asleep.

Chase continued standing there, gathering his courage and his thoughts before he pushed himself up from the wall so that nothing supported him besides his own feet – he wanted to do this on his own. There he took a deep breath, and then two, before saying into the darkness what had been torturing him all night. “I’m only going to say this once Krislynn so listen carefully,” he said. “I like you… so don’t go.”

He waited after, but nothing – silence all throughout the house. Then he laughed, smirking to himself about his stupidity. Not on the phone, not over text, not in the dark, he thought, you have to say this kind of thing to her face. (While she was awake.) But then, if that was the case, he wasn’t going to do it.

If she didn’t plan to stay, he wasn’t going to ask her to.   

P.S. Was there always such big spaces between paragraphs? This is going to piss me off.