Ash

CHAPTER ELEVEN

December 2nd.

Dear Diary,

Today marks a week since he left me. The pain is so new and raw I can almost say that I've felt nothing prior to it. All those months I spent crying of pain and drowning in it, that was nothing. It was all nothing. This, diary, is true pain.

I hate him. I never thought I would live to write those words but the day has come. I hate him so much. I hate him for every tear. I hate him because he hurt me. I hate him because I love him.

He intentionally did this to me. He returned just so he could rip my heart out anew. He gave me the curse of twenty four hours-one day to love him just so that I could cry days after. He left me on my knees. How can you claim to love someone and do that to them?

The scenes play out languidly in my mind, and for seconds I submerge into them. They're drawn out now. They seem to be playing in slow motion. I always thought my mind was sharper than this. I must've overrated myself. I don't remember it taking so long for him to close the door. But maybe it's longer because I want it to be. Because I wanted him to stay longer, to hesitate more. It is the lack of reluctance now that bothers me, the ease with which he abandoned me on the ground. The Jordan I once loved would never have watched me weep at his feet and simply walked away.

The memory of the first time I cried in front of him flashes back to me. It was because of something stupid then, my feelings of abandonment by my father, self-hatred at being the illegitimate child of a man I never knew, guilt because Mom never remarried. I'd felt like a burden to her even in death. How stupid I'd been then. What use is it feeling anything for the dead when we can't even reach out to the living?

That day he'd wiped my tears as if seeing them burned him, and he'd held me tight and told me nothing else mattered to him about me but me. He said he saw me as only me, no strings attached. For the first time then I actually felt like my parentage didn't mar me because this stupidly handsome boy said so. That assurance carried me on. Where did we go wrong?

I close the journal and replace it and the pen on my nightstand. I promised myself I wouldn't cry today. I won't. Grown girls don't cry. Tears help no one. They only dehydrate. Dehydration hurts health.

I respond almost drunkenly to the buzzing of my phone and pick up without checking the caller ID.

"What the hell Jess?" the person screams into my ear. I remove it from my ear and check the caller. It's Jasmine.

"What?" I ask, putting it back to my ear.

"How could you? Didn't we promise we'd give each other any info we found on him? He came to you! Why didn't you call me?"

Oh. That's what she's going on about. "He didn't want to talk about you," I reply bluntly.

"Who cares what he wanted? You should've called me! I could've persuaded him to stay!"

"How did you even know he came?" I enquire. I never uttered a word about it to her.

"Danny told Jez who told me."

Oh. Thanks a lot Danny. "I'm sorry."

"You should be! Do you have any idea where he could be now?" she asks.

"No."

She swears loudly. "Oh my gosh Jess! Why on earth did you do this?"

"I'm sorry. Bye."

"Don't you dare hang up on me!"

I drop the phone on the bed. I'm not in the mood to hear her transfer her aggression to me. It's not my fault her brother's a selfish prick.

Hours pass and I'm in the kitchen making dinner. I toy with knife in my hands. The cut I sustained has nearly healed.

He once admitted to me that he had a lot of casual flings before. He called it a coping mechanism. I wonder how many girls have been his coping mechanisms lately.

I bring the knife close to my skin. It's relatively new and it's blade is sharp as it was when we first got it. Just a little pressure and it would bring blood. There's a major vein here, just inside the wrist. If I press just a little harder a whole fountain of blood would spew forth. Red. Red over gold. Red over golden eyes. I should choose red. Physical pain after all can mask emotional pain. I should, it would help me. Maybe all of this hurt would finally go away...

But I can't do it. I can't, and as soon as I realize what I almost did I throw the knife into the sink and take several steps back.

No. I'm not suicidal and I won't become suicidal over him. I won't let myself lose my mind that way. I need some fresh air.

I abandon the dishes I was washing and dash out the door. I wander aimlessly down the street. Danny was in the house. He was just upstairs in his room. What if I hadn't been able to stop myself? I would've bled perhaps to death. I could've left him all alone.

I pale at the thought and stop in my tracks. Never. Never again will I entertain such thoughts. I can't do that to him, not for anything in the world.

What is happening to me? Am I finally losing it? All these months of holding it in and now I'm finally losing my mind. This is it. My climax. My repercussion. My fall.

I stop at an empty bench outside a church. I've been here before, a long while back, but now I keep my head in my hands as the soft drizzle wets my clothes. I didn't take my coat. I'm perishing in the gusts, which seem to be directing the droplets at me.

I need help. I finally admit that I need help. I'll have to contact Dr. Meyer again. He's my therapist. He'll know what to do. But what do I tell him? That I'm heartbroken and bordering on self-harm? I'm not humble enough yet to admit to such a pathetic diagnosis, even if it's the truth. It would sound so much more serious if I could tell him all of it, how I fell in love with a shape shifter who put my heart on strains of emotion I've never before experienced, and how I was part of a twisted unveiling of family deception, and how nothing is how it was any longer.

I tango with these thoughts as the clock in my head ticks on. I can't tell Dr Meyer anything. He would never see it the way I do. No one else can understand. I'm the only one who feels the things that I do. I rise when the cold threatens to weaken me. There are already shivers in my teeth and fingertips. I really do hate the cold.

Back home I open the door to rush up to my room when I hear voices in the kitchen. I recognize Danny and Rogue's barking, but there's someone else. It's female and it takes a split second for my brain to come back to order when I see who it is.