Trust Me. I'm Lying - (SLOWLY EDITING)

Counting Colors: Chapter 18

"You know that place between sleep and awake, that place where you still remember dreaming? That's where I'll always love you. That's where I'll be waiting."

—Anonymous

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:

Counting Colors.

It didn't feel in the sightless bit real.

I quite literally heard the birds chirping and saw the sun shining down my window. When I woke up, I smiled. I was sure, up until that point, that what had happened had been, for sure, a very vivid dream. It wasn't until I turned around that I found I had slept the remaining hours of the morning with the phone clutched to my chest as though it was a lifeline.

I covered my mouth with my hand and closed my eyes. It was when it dawned upon me that I had stayed most of my night up talking to Carson on the phone, whispering secrets in the dead of night.

I rolled to my side, finding it hard to relax my face muscles to stop forming a smile. I felt light and giggly and stupid, and for one moment, I realized that I liked it. I remembered Mr. Langley's voice speaking words like that long ago. I heard them as if from a long tunnel. I can tell you a thing or two about love. When you're in love, you smile a little wider, laugh a little louder, hug a little tighter. You'll see the sun where you once saw the clouds.

I smiled a little wider, never feeling so light. If this was what it felt like to be falling, then I liked the feeling too much.

I sat up and searched for my phone between the tangle of blankets. I think it was the first time in a few years that I woke up completely and utterly awake, with not a drop of grogginess in my system. I unblocked it, and if it could have been any more possible, I smiled wider and felt a fluttering sensation on my stomach.

Carson: Good mythical morning, sleeping Bells. Or should I say good afternoon, since I'm not sure at which time you're going to read this?

Me: Hey. And I'd say my Hogwarts acceptance letter would arrive first before my mother would let me sleep until the afternoon.

Carson: Did you sleep okay?

Me: Oh, you mean the three hours I slept? Yes, and you?

Carson: Surprisingly, I slept. For a change.

"Isabelle!" I was so startled by the sound of my mother trying to take down my bedroom door with her fist that I jumped and fell from the bed. "Get up!"

"Such a lovely way to say good morning, darling," I muttered under my breath, rubbing my side as I stood up and sat back on the bed. "Morning, Mom!"

"I have breakfast ready. Come downstairs," Mom demanded. I still wonder what happened to the woman who knocked softly on my door and shook me slightly out of sleep. I think she went wherever my Dad did.

"Sure, Mom, in a minute," I replied, losing track of what she answered.

Me: I want you to know that if I don't come back, it's because Mom heard us talking this morning, and she will probably murder me, which is most likely.

Carson: Bummer. I was all for meeting your mother without me being her next killing target.

I was trying to push the thought of Carson meeting Mom the farthest as possible from my mind. To close the matter and not to worry about it. Ever. The only problem was; the situation at hand was unavoidable. It made my hands shake just by imagining the death glare that Mom would give him. A few months ago, I wouldn't have minded.