AVALON

Chapter 35 - Deep breath

( Noahs POV)

I've done everything I can think of but nothing is working! My hands rub over my face for the millionth time as I avert my eyes from my trashed room, I don't have much but the stuff I do have is strewn over the place. The only chair I had lies splintered on the ground. Still I don't regret it, it took my mind of everything for a second.

I fall back on my bed and bang my fists into the thin mattress growling in frustration. I have run, I have boxed, I've gone out and picked a fight but nothing is working.

How does she just... get under my skin?

My skin isn't just easy to get under either believe me. I have had years to toughen it up to it resembles armour plate in my mind.

Even when I was ten the counsellors had given up after it happened but this... girl just shreds my resolve to pieces.

Thinking back to today I wish I had just stayed at the gym, this wouldn't have happened then. I would still be able to maybe see her again... but now?  Pinching the bridge of my nose I wonder what she thinks of me, most likely that I'm a psycho. I am a psycho, who else would fly off the handle over someone saying that but me?

There's part of me that says she won't think it, that I'm talking about the girl who threw a glass of water in my face at dinner, that didn't blush when I was baring all, that wolf whistled at my bare arse.

Part of me was begging for me to try, just see what she thinks.

I'm having a huge internal argument, which is very unusual for me; everything normally is in agreement, but not now. The hard dead part of me wants to stay that way. It's easy and familiar and we deserve to feel nothing. I made promises too myself that I haven't broken for almost ten years now. Ten years of resolve I have up my sleeve ready to pit itself against anything that threatens to change what I am now.

Then there's the bit it wants to crush, the bit that I don't know, that wants to live again, and every second it's getting louder and more insistent. I don't know if I can take letting anyone get close though, it will all in pain.

It's late; I wonder if she'll be asleep. If I text her now, I've tried so maybe I can go to sleep. She probably won't answer and even if she does I know she won't until tomorrow morning.

What to say?

I can't stop thinking of you? Because that is what I'm thinking. I'm also thinking I can't stand the thought of her living in the house next to Seth of all people.

He will not have her; wreck her and dump her like last weeks trash, not her. I'd rather give up the surfing thing to stop that. Grabbing my mobile I stare at it for a few minutes trying to calm down enough to think about what I'm gonna say. I mean most of all I'm sorry. Maybe I should just write that, she will think its about me storming out but to me it half kind of means I'm sorry I left because I'm really going fricken crazy here trying not to think of you... and for losing it.

I type I'm sorry and stare at it for a minute, I don't really have any experience with girls but I know that Avalon isn't typical, so I really don't have a clue how she will respond, I'm just desperately hoping she will.

Pressing send I throw the phone down the end of my bed, rolling over I press my face into my pillow.

My phone beeps.

For the first time in my recent life I feel nervous. Sitting up I gaze at the thing for god knows how long before picking it up. Avalon. She might just be telling me to fuck off, something inside me hardens at the thought. I can survive anything I know that but somehow that thought hits me hard.