Forever August ✔️

chapter thirty-one

"we were only seventeen,
you were lying next to me."
- no rome
____________________________

THE MOON WAS still dominating the sky when Aurora rose from bed that night. She untangled herself from Gus' arms, gently placed her feet on the ground, and tip-toed around the hotel room as silently as she possibly could.

Aurora made sure to pack everything. She wanted every trace of her to be gone when Gus woke up. She packed her clothing, her hair brush and even took the hotel's pen off the nightstand and packed that, too. Mostly as a reminder that these days in New York City existed.

When her bags were full, she crept out the door, down the hallway and into the elevator and dialled Thomas' number. He answered on the third ring, and Aurora was grateful her brother never slept. She told him it was an emergency, and she needed him to drive into the city and pick her up.

"It's three-in-the-morning, Rory! And that's a three hour drive!" he hissed over the phone.

"Please, Thom. I need to come home." She was crying now, and she forced her voice to sound stronger than she felt.

It took a few minutes of fighting, but eventually Thomas got into their parent's car and drove to pick up his twin sister. Aurora walked to a twenty-four-hour breakfast diner down the street, ordered a stack of double-chocolate-chip and a large black coffee, and ate all of it while she waited for him to arrive.

She ignored the two boys sitting at the table across from her and the way their eyes kept drifting over. They weren't Gus. They weren't the person she loved and couldn't have.

Thomas' car pulled in and Aurora hauled her luggage into the parking lot. When they settled into silence and the radio was humming softly, Thomas drove them back home to Maine. He didn't once ask why she wanted to leave, and Aurora didn't ask about the photo he posted with Ivy. Some questions were meant to go unanswered.

Once they returned home, she slept. That night, she dreamt of an ocean that was empty. All the water had been sucked out.

The image was still in her mind when Aurora woke up to thirteen missed calls from Gus. And that didn't begin to compare to the texts. She couldn't blame him, and that's what she continued to tell herself.

She imagined him waking up to find out she wasn't there. Would he run around the room looking for her? Would he run into the hallway and then the hotel's lobby, screaming her name until a staff member told him that she left that morning?

Aurora realized that she should have left a note. But she didn't know what to say.

She rose from bed and peeled back the curtains, letting the sun swallow her room and push aside all the pain that seemed to show up out of nowhere. It wasn't physical either. Her ribs, leg and arm were feeling better every day. This pain was internal, the kind no one could see.

Aurora shut her phone off and flopped back down on the bed, bunching the blankets up between her feet. A knock sounded on the door, and she knew it was her mother—she could hear her bangles chiming as her wrist moved.

"Leave me alone," she grumbled, throwing a pillow at the door. Her mother walked in anyway, sighing when she saw her.

"Thomas told me you called him this morning," she said, sitting on the edge of the bed. Her mother smoothed down her hair, then said, "What happened, hun?"

"I'm dying. That's what happened."

"Even if that is true, Aurora, you've known that all month. Why push Gus away now?"