Distance

Guilt

NOTE: I'm not very good with aesthetics but I tried. The one above is for Leiah.
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Leiah woke up with a groan, stretching out an arm to silence her alarm. She squinted at the sunlight that filtered through the curtains and landed on her narrowed eyes. Groaning once more, she slowly sat up. With her eyes still closed she sniffed then yawned and gently rubbed her eyes. Running a hand through her hair she got up from the bed, glanced once around her hotel room and slowly made her way towards the bathroom. She brushed her teeth and turned  on the shower. She closed her eyes and sighed as the warm water cascaded down her back, her muscles relaxing under the warmth. She allowed herself to just feel the water flow down her skin, letting all her worries wash away.

Soon she finished her shower, wrapped a towel around herself and stepped out. Leiah looked at her reflection in the mirror, dark brown eyes staring back at her. She wrapped a lock of red dyed hair around her finger and sighed thinking back to the previous night. The bar, hazel, Erik.

She stared at the red haired girl in front of her marvelling at the fact that the brown roots couldn't be seen, she sometimes felt like she'd forgotten that she was born with brown hair.

"It's sad" she mumbled out loud,

"pathetic even that I'm still stuck in this never ending loop of past occurrences like a broken record. Repeating" she said, gently pulling the hair wrapped around her finger. "Again and again, just repeating."

She sighed and placed her forehead against the cool glass of the mirror.

"Goddamit Leiah" she whispered.

"Get a grip on your damn life."

She leant against the mirror, so close that she could only see her eyes.

She'd dyed her hair to forget, to escape. To somehow erase the resemblance with her father, to stop herself from tearing up every time she'd look at her brown hair and sweet chocolate eyes.

"You look so much like him" they'd say.

"She's her father's daughter." Her mother would reply.

Leiah felt that if she kept running she could avoid having to accept the fact that her father was gone. No matter how much she tried to ignore it, the truth was she'd never see him again. He was dead. It hurt to think that but it was true. She could pretend otherwise how much ever she wanted but nothing would change that fact. Even her usually patient mother had told her gently that it was time to accept and move on.

She just couldn't believe that one day he was there, smiling at her, looking forward to her college admission, smiling proudly at her dreams and ambitions and  then he was just gone.

It wasn't that Leiah didn't realise or understand it was just that she pushed aside the thought and refused to acknowledge it. She continued with her life, she studied, she got a degree, she got a job, she just never let herself cry or think about it, feigning ignorance to avoid pain.

The worst part was that in her desperation to get away, to bury the feelings that raged within her, she ran without even glancing at what she left behind and the moment she finally stopped. The moment the adrenaline faded, when it all caught up to her, the regret crashed down like an ice cold wave of water.

On impulse she'd left it all, her friends, her hometown and when she'd calmed down, when it was too late, she finally realised the importance of what she had abandoned. She could never move on because she was unable to part the curtains of regret and allow the light of acceptance to shine through. Honestly, she'd gotten over most of it. She felt that old friends are lost anyways when you go to college, no matter how much you try to prevent it. Yet there are certain people we want to keep close, people we see as a part of our future, people we feel we'll always be with, people who seem to be our forever and for Leiah that person was Erik. They were supposed to go to the same college, they'd known each other for years and she'd ruined that. They'd studied together and she'd just selfishly broken all that. As she stood there leant against the mirror, she realised the weight of longing, an alternate future and broken promises felt heavy in her chest.