Swish

.19

I chuckled quietly to myself, and sufficiently gorged myself on chocolate while texting Eli, and then becoming increasingly more excited as we texted back and forth amongst ourselves. 

There was a stupidly ridiculous smile plastered to my face because upon saying goodnight, Eli had also sent a winking-kissing emoji that had my heart fluttering much like it had in the car before he pulled me in for the best kiss of my entire life. 

I'd never been kissed like that before.  With Jared, it was lacking passion, like I only kissed him because it was an obligation in a relationship, but with Eli...

He stole my breath, and it physically pained me to not be touching him or kissing him in his presence, like he sucked all the air out of the room and only gave it back if my hands or lips were on his skin. 

And, my god, those abs...

One sweep of my hands along the exposed skin of his lower stomach and I was sufficiently swooning. 

Two pounds of decadent sweets later and I was completely lightheaded and definitely suffering from a sugar high, one that was completely earned.  

I was two steps into my room upstairs after my sugar binge when I noticed something was...off. 

Where my guitar had sat safely in its stand, emptiness swathed its usual cocoon.   Where my recording equipment had once stood proud and dominant in the middle of the back wall of my room, miniature sound booth and microphone as well as my favorite mixing board and desktop monitor that held all of my recordings and countless other contraptions for my music...suddenly gone.  Disappeared, as in without a trace. 

I began pacing my room, nearly wearing a hole in the floor as I catalogued the entirety of my music necessities in my head, finding each and every piece missing. 

Could it have been Sara's doing?  I doubted she'd know where to hide my things that well, surely her mother would've found it...unless she was in on it too?

Could it have been my father, trying to teach me a lesson?  

Whatever or whoever it was, I was starting to have a mental fucking breakdown as I realized with mounting dread that the desktop monitor held every single piece of music I'd ever recorded, from stupid little snippets to some of my proudest pieces, including entire songs drafted from thin air and multiple layered vocals and hand input synth and drum beats that had taken hours upon hours to learn and perfect. 

Tears swimming in my vision, I had no idea what to do.  I was effectively trapped. 

My father had set this up, I soon realized.  He had won, got me to return home, sugared me up with my favorite desert, and just like that snatched away the thing that I held closest to me. 

He had hurt me because he could.  It was a power trip, to show that if I didn't listen to him or do what he wanted then he could take everything away in the snap of his fingers. 

Without thinking, I pulled my phone up and my email app blurred in front of my eyes from the tears threatening to fall. 

The message wasn't hard to draft, it was the sending that was the hard part.  

Surely, they wouldn't still hold my scholarship, but maybe the New York Conservatory of Music and Fine Arts would look past my deferring and allow me to audition for it again?  There was no way that I was staying one minute in this household with my father, without my freedom. 

If there was one thing that he shouldn't have messed with, it was that. 

He knew that my connection to it stemmed from my mother, my interest piquing at a young age listening to her crooning away in the kitchen while she cooked me blueberry pancakes and danced along to the beat while making up funny lyrics to songs we already knew all the words to.