Dealing With Absence » h. styles au

29ᵀᴴ CHAPTER

                                                   29ᵀᴴ CHAPTER

                                  "Tea ... is a religion of the art of life"

Weekends have been quiet ever since Harry started car travelling God knows where due to extra work.

Sunday late-nights are when he usually comes back and knocks on Elisha's door until she blinks awake and creaks it open for him to join her in her bed and share the pictures he'd taken. The comments about them are usually saved for the morning next, when they're sitting at his bed and mirroring one another's sips of tea.

By the time Leesh falls asleep, though (always), he's already gone, only the soft caress of his curls brushing against her temple and his smell of fruity cheap shampoo and lavender left on her pillow to assure her he'd actually been there.

It's still Sunday afternoon, however, and the road is empty as the usual, all fallen leaves bundling up against the outside of the convenience store walls, stuck there as the wind seems unable to move them any further.

Leesha sighs and glances at the target pinned to the wall instead, all darts still there, anywhere but the centre. Harry's got terrible aim, apparently, and she can't stop smiling at herself.

It soon fades, anyway, because she's all on her own and it's so ridiculously agonising. The seconds seem to laugh at her during the eternity of their passage, time making fun of her agony unabashedly.

She chooses then to try harder and find something to kill time with, but the dishes are already done and in place, and she's not half enough hungry to busy herself with restricted recipes. Dorothea and Bridgit have gone grocery shopping once more; PJ completely losing himself in blurry lines of torturous articles he can't seem to find the strength to write.

Elisha needs new friends.

Without conscious knowledge, her fingers curl around a pen and she stares down at a blank sheet surged from nowhere she recalls; straight, fading lines just waiting to be filled with the thoughts she's kept to herself so far. It all comes out in the silence, though, when she finds herself glancing at the amateur pictures in the wall and the story she reads behind them; the author she keeps thinking of.

She thinks of the darkness of her room and the discomfort of it all, furniture too small to accommodate slender, gawky limbs that have claimed her space, now. She writes of the hours when she can't sleep a wink all night long, ends up outside her window instead, talking to curly-haired boys from the room just next to hers.

She writes of dimpled smiles and opaque green eyes, full of passion and yet stuffed with sorrow, too. Also with words he barely ever speaks, opts for keeping it all to himself instead. She writes of a skin too pale, always covered by thick layers of clothing and hands too big - about twice the size of hers -, fingers itchy for the use of their owner's talent. About lips too plump and too soft she completely melts against, hugs so sincere she lets herself be washed by the force of it, doesn't mind at all.

Her hand stops then, because, okay. Too intense.

There's something missing, though. She glances down at the words she's written automatically, and he's missing. This is not how she tells stories.

She's the kind to take pictures and make the moment eternal, keep it in the back of her drawer until time completely cankers the material (which she's never really experienced, so far). She's the kind to add it to her words and read it later when she feels like she's lost her essence.