❝ i'm jealous of the rain, that falls upon your skin.
it's closer than my hands have been, i'm jealous of the rain. ❞
Laurel had 3 things that she enjoyed doing in her small town. Read, listen to music, and gaze at Nancy Wheeler. Apart from the fa...
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The question hung in the air, desperately waiting to be answered. Guilt rose in her stomach as the words fell off her tongue. "4 hours." It wasn't even her fault, but somehow she felt to blame. Maybe she could have tried harder, maybe she should have done those calming exercises she was taught.
So the blame stuck with her.
The woman in the chair across from her blinked slowly, a small sigh escaping her thin lips, followed by a tight smile. She always did that when she felt disappointed, even when she didn't want to show it. "You only slept for 4 hours, why do you think that is Laurel?"
The brunette who sat deep into her preferred crease of the old leather couch stiffened a bit, shrugging her shoulders. Lillian always hated when she did this. Don't shrug, it just means you're hiding the answer.
Before she could speak those exact words, Laurel spoke up. "It's basically been exactly one year ago since..." The words got lost on the way out her mouth, but Lillian caught them for her.
"Since Will's disappearance?"
Laurel's stomach twisted into familiar knots, the ones that came up whenever she spoke of Will's disappearance, almost as if she continued talking about it it would happen again. She always tried to talk about lighter subjects. "Yeah," she responded, her voice quieter than a mouse as her hand subconsciously scratched her stomach.
Lillian nodded sympathetically, writing a few things down on her clipboard. Laurel never got to see what was written, something that subconsciously bugged her, like an itch at the back of her mind; knowing that there were things being said about her within arms reach but not being able to read them.
Lillian looked back up to meet Laurel's gaze, which was staring at her collection of cat figurines on her shelf. "What happens when you try to sleep?"
Laurel sighed, pulling her gaze from the shelf she often looked at to avoid Lillian's sad, green eyes. There was no doubt she liked Lillian, she was a great therapist for the past 5 months she'd been seeing her, but she always looked at Laurel with pity. She hated when people looked at her like she was helpless.
"It's either...my mind is like...racing with thoughts, so fast and so...so incoherent that I can't stop it. It's like my mind is dreaming, but my body isn't. Or some nights I feel like I'm not alone in the room, and I'm too afraid to shut my eyes." Laurel said slowly, choosing her words wisely as she picked at the nail on her finger. Joyce always hated when she bit her nails, which she now didn't do often, but that didn't stop her from using her other fingers to tear them off.
"I see..." Lillian replied, writing more unknown words on the paper in her hands. Maybe if I stare at her fingers long enough I'll be able to tell what letters she's drawing.
