My Painless Addiction (#Wattys2017)

Chapter 12

"Don't think too much about it." I told her as I stood outside the door of her dorm.

It was dark inside, her roommate was probably asleep, though what she had been doing in a dark part of the town, at this time of the night was confusing and frustrating. But I didn't dare to ask.

Why? Because the response to that will just be a confused expression or her trademark silence.

I shook my head free of thoughts and continued, "It is going to be hard to forget but you need to snap out of it, okay?" I asked, stepping back.

She smiled and nodded. Were a person's eyes supposed to be red for that long?

Through the time that I had spent with her, so far, which was about only a fucking hour, she hadn't said a word. After a few minutes of comforting her in the car, she seemed more in a position to stop crying and accept it. But she never spoke a word.

Was it that she was too scared to speak or was I just denying the fact that she probably wouldn't want to talk?

Ever since I met her, I had been posed with only questions with answers of reticence.

Ignoring it, I said, "So I'll see you in Literature?"

I had meant for it to be a statement but ended up asking her a question again.

Why Toni? Why?

She nodded again and I began walking back as she closed the door.

It wasn't until I reached my apartment that I let out a breath that I never knew I was holding.

I slumped against the door, letting myself slide down as I let myself curl in, on all that happened tonight.

I couldn't move.

After a few moments, when I could regain some sort of consciousness, I reached into my pocket and took out the paper she had given me. It just had the address of the frat house she lived in.

No name, no identification, nothing.

To any normal or sane person, she would have appeared to be introverted by the way she never spoke or even laughed. Or as I would call it, mute.

And as I thought about it even more, she did seem to be a mute person. But the way I had heard her scream, an hour back, stopped me. Any person with a good set of lungs, that she seemed to be screeching out when she harassed seemed to prove suspicions wrong.

Fuck, maybe I'm just over thinking this.

Euphoria due to the drugs as a lingering side effect was not uncommon.

Scowling, I glanced up at the ceiling as I let my mind wander.

She couldn't be a mute person.

It was just that she was too scared to speak.

The stuff that she wrote out on the black board during Literature really bothered me. Why would any person who could talk want to write?

And as far as I could recollect, she wasn't scared that time.

She was more likely to have been confident or as I would have defined it, fucking radiant, when she shattered my opinion.

Why did she prefer to write something out, when she could have just voiced her opinion?

This was just obnoxious.

But people were weird. The ways the struggled to prove it to the world that they were different. Everyone wanted attention. It was just simple human nature.

But the extent of the attention was what made a difference.

And as much as I tried, to not get so much of it, she seemed to be doing just the opposite.

Just like Palestina.

But at the same time, she wasn't a bit reserved like Palestina was when she first entered college. Palestina was more outgoing, I guess. This girl just like to stun everybody. With her car alarm blaring through the silent campus, her barging into class, being all clumsy, screaming her heart out and all that.

So I guess, not so much like her.

Why was I even comparing?

"What the fuck is happening to me?" I whispered, my gaze fixed on the ceiling above.

The plain white wall helped me think.

Whoever she was, I would find out tomorrow. Whether it would be from her or from another source was another matter that I wasn't very concerned about.

But Monday seemed too far. Two fucking days was a long wait.

But I had to see her.

I did recall that there was going to be a frat party this weekend probably tomorrow. Ryan had been talking something along the lines when he said that he wouldn't be going.

Frat parties were okay, just as long as they didn't give me shit about not drinking the cheap beer. Vodka was okay or something aged. The amount of coke, I had consumed, messed up my nose and possibly made my nose quite sensitive to certain smells. For example, eggs, especially scrambled. Or even the usual frat drinks which I could never bring myself to take in more than a sip.

But smoking and taking drugs, that was completely fucking okay.

Speaking of which, the reason for all this confusion and conundrum being posed in my head was because I was out of it.

But she didn't need to know that.

Maybe I could head over there, hopefully sneak in and meet her. Talk.

At least to make sure she was okay after tonight.

Whenever I looked at her, all I could see was her, with those deep eyes in which I could only visualize melancholy of my thoughts. I could only hope to hope of redemption for all the wrongs I had made. I could only gaze at her to notice the waves of her hair and the gentle sight that fell on me, which was as soft as cotton and made me feel like fluff inside.

Fluff?

What the fuck, Toni!?

This was seriously messing up my mind. I wasn't poetic.

I shouldn't be thinking about her like that.

I shouldn't even be thinking about her!

This shouldn't be happening.

I took a deep breath in and I made a decision.

Tomorrow, I would talk to her.