Red String, Blue String

Chapter 4

          "Hold on...what?" I asked, my eyes threatened to burst out of my face since I was so shocked.

"It's just the logical choice," Theo told me.

"The logical choice...what?"

"Well we're in danger aren't we? That's what I understood from what you told me last night," Theo was correct but I wasn't ready to admit that, I tried avoiding any thoughts related to what would inevitably transpire over the next couple days.

"No..."

"You're lying," he said as he looked directly at me.

"Listen Theo, we can't just pick up and leave," I told him firmly despite the scenarios my brain was now creating, scenarios of a different life, a better life, I tried to scrub those images away as if it was a mess I had split onto a table.

"Luna, we can, it's not a big deal, and what else would you do?" I thought to myself after he said that, and I began to truly understand what he meant, my life was in danger at that point and there wasn't much for me to do about it.

"How would we do this?" I asked as I looked up at him, he flashed me a quick smile before he spoke again.

"I could fake my death?"

"Woah. Hold on, what?"

"Well I'm supposed to be dead anyway," he told me as he decided it was an opportune time to go back to the kitchen.

"Theo, you really don't have to....actually you shouldn't do that," I said as I followed him, he handed me a blue pen and he opened up a black one for himself. I raised my eyebrows as he turned a sheet of paper that he had grabbed from the cabinet.

"It's our plan," he said as he wrote 'plan' on the top of the paper, "I'll write then you add to it." He began by listing what we needed to do, he switched between writing in capital letters to a cursive style, the pen seemed to glide across the paper. That is what I had focused on rather than the actual words, my mind had begun to race even faster, as if it had wanted to run a marathon.

He turned the paper to face me and gestured to the pen in my hand, I grabbed the corner of the paper and I actually read what had been written. It was mainly just bullet points of what needed to be done in order to move to new york, but one at the end threw me for a loop, 'fake being a newlywed couple'.

I must've looked weirded out because Theo looked down at where my hand was on the paper, "oh that...thought it would be a good cover story."

"Hmm? yeah.." I said, pretending like I hadn't even noticed it.

"Luna," he said and I tried looking up to meet his gaze but ended up looking back down at the floor, "are you okay?" I managed a small nod in his direction before I slowly walked out of the kitchen and back towards the couch, I needed a minute to calm down.

He didn't follow me right away which I appreciated, so when he had finally taken a seat, my breathing was less erratic. I didn't have a full panic attack but I had felt the anxiety coursing through my veins.

"Sorry if I scared you," he broke the silence.

"It's not your fault." I replied and I felt his gaze on me, I looked up and I was able to keep better eye contact than I had in the kitchen, "I just get nervous sometimes." He nodded in response and wordlessly turned the tv on, we picked from where we had left off in the show from before.

Lunch time eventually crept up on us and Theo went back into the kitchen to prepare some food, I joined him after a little while and I grabbed plates and cutlery, every meal brought us closer to having some sort of relationship, a friendship, definitely just a friendship. Instead of it just being Theo's home or Theo's kitchen, a small part of it, really a miniscule part of it, was becoming mine too, I would have never told him that though.