CLARITY

||04|| Olinda

"Fine," I huff, bringing my hand to her pinky and wrapping mine around it as she showed me last night.

"Now, what did you do? And why do I feel like I should be scared or some shit?" I add.

She laughs, making my lip curl into a smile.

How does that sound she lets out make me do that so easily?

Clarity opens my door again, and my eyes instantly widen.

Within the hour or so, I was gone getting lost in the supermarket, she was here cleaning my room. My lips part as I spin around slowly in shock.

A large trash bag sits in the middle of the room, where I assume all the garbage I had in here went. For once in a long time, I can see my floor since she picked my clothes up and filled two laundry bags full of them. My bed is now made also, my cat laying on one of my pillows; On the nightstand that used to hold molded food is now spotless. Only my alarm clock sits on it.

And it smells like flowers...

"You cleaned it," I acknowledge blankly.

She nods as my gaze finally goes to her, "I thought you'd appreciate it. There was a chance you could've gotten mad. But you can't now, or I'll break your pinky."

I scratch the nape of my neck, "Thanks, Clare. I'm not mad." Her nickname leaves my mouth roughly and in a whisper. No one's ever used this much effort on me in a long time, besides my parents and sister, who are no longer around.

Well, Michael Brown, my guy since our childhood days, tried with me, but I didn't let him. I haven't let anyone in.

But I think it's depression. It fucks me up, filling my head with shit after shit as I slowly seep deeper into the wasteland I call my head. Drugs and alcohol only help so much, but it's been my only alternative, besides therapy and medication. If anything, my anxiety has been on an all-time high without any of my copes.

Suddenly, Clarity walks up to me and wraps her arms around my torso, pressing the side of her face against my chest, causing my body to stiffen. During the last hug she gave me, I cried against her neck. I can't even recall the last time I cried before that, let alone on someone.

She didn't seem to mind, though, and neither did I.

I glide my hands around her waist, pulling her closer to me.

Which was a bad fucking idea because once my hand brushes against the small of her back under her rising shirt, my body goes into flames.

I want to feel more of her. My heartbeat quickens the longer I have her pressed against me. With concern that she might feel too many things, I release her, and she releases me.

"I got you something," I tell her.

"Like what?"

Her big chocolate-colored eyes, the same as her hair, light up.

I keep trying to find something to hate about her, so I can hate her like I do everyone else. But she just keeps giving me reasons to enjoy her company. There's nothing bad to find.

"Come," I say, walking out of my room.

Before I dropped out of my junior year of college four months ago, there wasn't a girl on campus that I hadn't been inside of. It was who I was, who I am.

But I don't want to be that Olias with Clarity.

I clear my throat and enter the kitchen, shaking unwanted thoughts of her out of my head.

I reach for the grocery bags and pull out a box of Frosted Flakes.

She gasps, and I speak, "I remember yesterday you said you kill these."