New Romantics

Chapter 13

My comfort food was Thai yellow curry. My comfort movie was Howl's Moving Castle. My comfort people were Dani and Sasha. They were exactly what I needed.

But as I climbed out of bed to grab my laptop, a sudden tightness in my chest rocked my body. What the hell? Gripping my chest, I paused, painfully aware of how hard my heart thundered in my chest.

Was I having a heart attack?

I wracked my brain. No pain in my extremities or jaw. I took a deep breath. No shortness of breath. My room felt humid and small. Was this lightheadedness or a headache?

Air. I just needed fresh air.

Shrugging out of my cardigan, I opened the window next to my desk and climbed onto the small balcony, the soreness in my body feeling like sharp needle pricks to my joints. Leaning against the railing, I let my head drop, the thump, thump, thump of blood in my ears and chest being the only sensations until, slowly, the rest of the world filtered in.

There was a car alarm in the distance. Somewhere behind it, the band practiced the alma mater. Three years at OU and I still didn't know the words.

"What's a girl need to do to get a break around here?" I asked no one in particular. For the first time ever, I was thankful my apartment was nowhere near the beach. Unexpected tears stung my eyes; I didn't hold them back. "God dammit." For the first time since the waves took me, I cried.

No one liked crying. But I learned a long time ago that the more you held back the tears, the worse you felt, and that crying was a way of letting go of emotions both comfortable and uncomfortable, so that the mind and body could move on. Otherwise, the pit in your stomach grew bigger until, one day, slowly and then all at once, it would swallow you whole.

"Hello?" someone said from below. "Are you okay?"

Sniffling, I scrambled back. "Yeah," I answered, embarrassed. "I'm fine."

"Aria? Is that you?" the voice said. No, not just any voice.

"I'm fine, Leo," I insisted. A beat later, he emerged from beneath the covered porch into the lush green courtyard. With Leo's height, the distance between the ground and my balcony felt like miles and mere inches all at the same time. For a moment, I wondered if the doctor did the test wrong and I did in fact have a concussion.

"Are you sure?" he asked, sunlight softening him with a yellow glow, his white-button up shirt billowing in the breeze. Resting my chin in my palm, I nodded.

"Yeah. I'm still...well...processing yesterday." When another batch of tears stung my eyes, I pretended to look at something over my shoulder, and waited for the moment to pass.

And then, at the sound of metal and wood scraping, I looked back to the courtyard and nearly tumbled back. Leo's labored breaths were followed by him climbing onto the overhang above the patio, jumping to his feet, and then carefully walking over to my balcony.

My eyes widened to disks. "Well, you've just proven the fact that if a serial killer wanted to climb onto my balcony and murder me, he very well could. So thank you for that."

Leaning against the railing, breath shallow, he asked, "You needed someone to prove that to you?"

"Sometimes ignorance is bliss," I huffed. "Now, I need to keep a gun under my pillow."

His eyes searched my face for any inkling of a bluff. And when he didn't find one, he leaned into the railing, oddly pleased, and said, "Well, I'm officially terrified."

"Good." I punctuated the word with a wicked grin.

Leo looked taken aback, like he was going to say something more, when his eyes landed on the nasty bruise on my shoulder, and the world went still. Wrapping his hands tight around the railing, Leo jumped over the metal in one fluid motion, and I stepped back, a mixture of excitement and worry flooding through me. Excitement because Leo was on my balcony. Worry because I didn't want to talk about the water or the hospital or the fuzziness in my head.