Come What May

23. suppress

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

SUPPRESS

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• wednesday, april 21st •

I was so, so right.

Everything is going wrong, and everything is falling apart, and the piercing burn in my throat doesn't seem to be disappearing, no matter how many glasses of hot water I drink.

Coughing into my arm, I groan, the floor tilting underneath me as I stumble over towards the couch and throw myself on it, wrapping an arm around my stomach, as if that'll quell the nausea that seems to have increased tenfold in the last five minutes.

I can't afford to get sick, but unfortunately, I already am. I'm definitely sick, if the blocked nose and the stabbing headache and the heaviness of my eyelids and the ache in my chest is anything to go by. Though the ache in my chest might be the result of the... everything that took place three days ago.

Mom. Radhika. Jen. Lipstick-stained coffee mugs. Asexuality. Laying awake in bed until my vision goes blurry. Crying myself to sleep. Waking up with a stuffed nose and a damp pillow.

My mind has gotten used to copious amounts of stress; it's all part of having the job that I have. My body, on the other hand, is still struggling, despite the years of conditioning myself to remain healthy, to not let anything get to me to the point of illness.

Again, I cough, hastily checking my phone for the time just to make sure that I won't be late to the "practice shoot for the video", as Russel had said.

I'm not entirely sure if my body can even handle a shoot, practice or not.

Ignoring the numbing pain in my head, I lay on the couch for a few more moments, only pushing myself off it when I'm certain that I'm not about to crumple to the floor that still needs to be fixed.

"God," I mutter, tugging on the t-shirt that's been strewn on the floor of the living room for two days now, the one that I had almost ripped off my body yesterday because of how trapped I felt in a simple cotton t-shirt.

"Okay, okay." Letting my eyes wander around the room, they finally land on my glasses and Storm's jacket, the one that they gave me at the beach. I shrug it on, but it does nothing. No comfort, no warmth, just confinement and cramped up spaces. "I can do this."

I don't know who I'm trying to fool, but if it's myself, it isn't working. Not one bit.

Through foggy vision and foggier glasses, I make my way out of the house, the bone-deep ache in my legs only increasing with each step I take.

For the first time, I don't greet the old ladies below me. I want to, but I physically can't, the words refusing the leave my mouth. But somehow, I muster up a weak smile to the dog that greets me every time I leave the building, because no matter how horrible I feel, I can't not smile at the dog. That would just make me feel worse.

I take a taxi to the location we're supposed to be filming the video because I can't be trusted behind a wheel right now. And it's proven to be a good decision when my eyes flutter shut a lot more than once on the drive there, the seven hours of sleep in three days and the three meals in three days just aiding to my tiredness.

The first thing that I notice when I step out of the vehicle is that Radhika isn't here.

Usually, she's in the dressing room, dabbing glitter on her cheeks because as she says, "Glitter only looks hot on dark skin, so fuck Oscar Williams and his glittered up nose. If he can have glitter, so can I".