Half Hearted ━ JJ MAYBANK

TWELVE, "HALF OF MY HEART"

...Lost in the water...Can't find her...

Her head had snapped up then, her brows pulling together. It was a miracle any of the words ever made it through the water inside her head in the first place, but for some reason these ones did. 

What?, she'd asked softly. 

She got lost in the storm – lost in the water. They haven't been able to find her, her father had repeated. They're saying she's gone.

Lani had blinked, and she opened and closed her mouth a few times but no words came out. It didn't feel real. Can you – can you tell me again? What happened?

Why? her mother had asked. 

Lani hadn't heard anything they'd said prior, and she wanted to scream at her mother to just tell her. Instead, she picked at her bottom lip until it was about to crack open and said, I need to hear it again. Please.

To know it's real.

It's not a long story, but it literally ripped her heart in half to hear it. Her eyes were burning, begging for some sort of release. Instead of obliging to the burn, she sniffled and wiped the sleeves of her sweatshirt over her eyes. I'm gonna – I'm gonna go upstairs, she'd mumbled. Somewhere she could be alone.

Lani – her father had started to say something, and she could hear the sorrow in his voice. She didn't want to hear that. 

She'd made it up the stairs without stumbling, her hands shaking as she tried to breathe. Reality hadn't hit yet. It hadn't clicked in her head that Sarah was dead – gone. Never coming back. Lost at fucking sea where half of Lani's heart drifted with her into the depths of the cold water.

She'd slid the bottle of tequila from under her bed and collapsed on the floor. She tipped the bottle back, the burning of her throat matching the same feeling in her eyes. It had spilled from her mouth, sliding down her neck and soaking into the sweatshirt. She didn't wipe it away.

And she drank more without wiping the sticky alcohol from her skin. She drank, and drank, and drank some more, until the room was spinning around her and she could barely get to her feet or even think. 

That was the second time she drank to numb her feelings, but it wasn't the last. 

🍒

Lani wakes up alone the next morning, her body tangled in the sheets and a crinkled, white slip of paper perched on the pillow beside her. Wiping the tiredness from her eyes, she reaches for it. 

JJ's chicken scratch reads, Left before the 'rents woke up. See you at the Chateau. Last night was fun. Let's do it again. 

Her fingers run over the words, and her face flushes as she thinks about the previous night — how much was shared without any words being said. An unspoken connection. Premature enlightenment. 

She hadn't felt that before. Not with anyone else. 

Her eyes scan her bedroom – the pictures that line the walls, the messy vanity to her left, a sketchbook of clothing designs inside the drawer, all her makeup strewn across the white surface with old concealer and powder stuck to it. Glitter flakes across the surface, stuck and unmoving; something so unlike her current predicament. A story written across it – one of a girl that woke up every day at sunrise, who'd create a character of herself for the public to revel in. 

Lately, she's a melting iceberg trying to leave her family's flow with strong resistance. Constantly pulling without success. 

But that's just her life, and she's trying to change it. She stands from her bed with a stretch.