Recover: Book 2 of the Magic Mutations Series | ✓

41: Deja Vu

October 2017

Ollie's blood sat in the fridge in the days and weeks following while Ben stayed locked up in his room, avoiding me. I refused to test it. I refused to do anything with it. Because going to my uncle in this state would be dangerous, let alone we had no plan. 

In the end, it would expire. And Ben's whole stunt was just one that saw Ollie drifting from him.

How would I keep our bond invitation alive now when surely seeing me would remind her of him? I wondered at one point.

Loren, Jayce, Ivan, and Erica tried asking us what happened, but all we said was that we tested Ollie's blood and that she got upset and went home. Neither of us wanted to admit the feelings hurt in it all.

But it wasn't my place to comfort Ben for being rejected by me. He hurt my Ollie even though I was prepared to let him have her... Thinking for sure, she'd be safer with him. So, in the end, I let him stew in his misery while I continued to plan what I could do to keep us going.

After a week passed, the temptation to check on her became too much. So I visited her usual places.

On Sunday, I walked past the bookstore, glancing in just in time to watch her stare at a copy of Twilight a little too long.

And on Tuesday afternoon, I strolled past the meeting rooms where her writers' group was held. Her eyes were glazed over. She wasn't engaged. She didn't care anymore...

The next day, she didn't go to the library.

So on Thursday, I waited a block down from her house to see if she left to go anywhere.

And, sure enough, she did.

Catching the 8am bus from Highgate station, she headed off to her university—our old one—where she picked out her textbooks and started studying for classes already.

I let the days pass like that for a while, dropping in as she studied for classes, walking past the campus to see her crossing the grounds to attend another lecture. 

Some days were good for her, and some were bad. 

But as time passed, eventually the burdens of Ben on her heart seemed to lessen and the glow returned to her eyes. 

Her routines, her study, distracted her. And I enjoyed seeing her in her element once more.

· · ───── ∘☽༓☾∘ ───── · ·

Finally thinking, hoping, she had moved on, and that her bond with Ben was on the verge of breaking, on Thursday I decided to brave talking to her.

With her notebook in the middle, pens to the right, pencil case to the left, and laptop to the front, the familiar crease had worked its way between Ollie's brows as her eyes flickered between her laptop and her notebook, copying notes for whatever she was studying.

Ever so slowly, I entered the familiar library where we used to spend so much time together—at first, just getting to know each other, then, later, wrapped around each other as we looked at the works of Shelley, Bronte, Dickens, and the like.

The buzz still hadn't returned, though I never had figured out what had caused that between us in the first place. All I knew is the moment Ben came into her life, it disappeared.

Nonetheless, placing one foot in front of the other, I slowly approached her table.

She didn't even look up as I pulled out the seat across from her, sitting down and tilting my head to the side as I watched her.