Lost | √

Chapter Nine

But I don't move. Well actually I do move, I move forward. Away from the door and step into a situation that I know will deepen the spiral he's already in.

"Are you drunk?" I ask as my feet continue to bring me forward until I'm standing over the large couch. His long limbs fill the couch more then I ever could. He's tall. I've always known that. But his presence is always so large, so in your face in a way that consumes me that I've never taken account how tall he actually is.

His face stays angled down and focuses on the words of the book he's holding. A Stephen King novel I assume. He doesn't make any move to look at me or even respond to my question. Even though I'm pretty sure we both know the answer.

"Clayton," I say his name aloud for the first time in a while and I love the way it feels tumbling out of my lips. I love it too much.

He pauses as his hand stops in the middle of turning the page. Even though we've never spoken about it we both are fully aware the power we hold when speaking each other's names. There's a reason we don't say it often to each other. We both can feel the weight of each other's names on our tongues, and it makes everything stop. My heart, my body, my soul stops and absorbs the words until my body flames with things I know I can't have.

His head lifts and his eyes meet mine for a moment, cold and bloodshot, before they land back on his book. Wordless, not answering me letting his body fall even more into the couch.

I pause for a few seconds longer knowing I probably look like a freak just standing over his drunk frame, but I still stay. I watch him read his book before I walk over to the shelf and grab a random book. But I know the library almost well enough to know I'm in the Hemingway section, which means anything I grab I know I will enjoy. But I can't lie, I'm not that focused on reading tonight. I came in here angry and completely upset and looking for a space to feel safe and calmed by. I was looking to read until I physically couldn't keep my eyes open anymore. But instead when I walked in I was greeted with Clayton, and the moment my eyes took in his tousled hair and slouched body I knew I was in for it.

Suddenly tonight isn't about reading. It is about being close, even if sitting across the room from him, to someone who makes me feel. Feel too much, feel everything, feel so much I fear and crave being around him all at once. Hot. Cold. Hot. Cold. Just like that day on the boat, it's how I feel every time I'm around him.

I tuck my legs under me and snuggle my body into the warm leather of the chair. I open the book and realize it's a collection of short stories so I flip through the pages until I reach about halfway through, and begin to read a random story.

I want to read this, I want to get lost in the book that I don't see or feel or think about anything around me. But I know that's not possible because I can't focus on anything around me when Clayton is around. I can hear his deep breathes echo through his lungs, I can feel his eyes swipe up my bare legs, and I can't stop my eyes from flicking up from the book every few seconds to take him in.

He's dressed in plaid pajama bottoms and a simple white shirt that only makes his tan skin darker. He radiates the sun in every way possible, but he hides it like an eclipse. He doesn't let anyone see the light that fills him, but I have. At the bar a year ago, and I know I should move on from that moment and realize that nothing will ever come from it anymore. That he's obviously a different man, and I was a blimp in his timeline that he can't even remember.

But I can't. Because he does have light, even if I'm the only one who can see it right now. Even if he's trying to hide it, I see it. I see him. Maybe because I blast my light so bright so that no one can see the darkness that fills me.

I close the book I'm reading out of nowhere and stand from the chair deciding I don't want to read this. I need something to catch my attention and distract me from the man in front of me. Because when I leave this room and go back upstairs the same text will be on my phone and my anger will return once again. So I want to enjoy these next few hours and get lost in away that doesn't scare me. Lost in words.