Paralyzed Love ✓

fourteen

"You have reached the voicemail of the phone number..."

Jesse is in the backyard of the house. Both of his thumbs run across the number pad. He presses the phone to his ear and the vibrations feel slower and slower with the rise of his heartbeat. The same 'you have reached the voicemail' dialogue rings in his ear again and again, and with every time he fails to call Ava, his fingers tremble more and more aggressively.

His head is throbbing so hard that it starts to hurt and he feels like collapsing. He throws his phone onto the grass floor where the phone weakly lands on the earthy ground. He props his elbows on his legs and scrubs his face, groaning.

His phone is still lying on the soiled ground. He jolts his head up and picks up the phone wearily as if the phone weighs more than it should.

"Jesse?" Jacob hesitantly stumbles closer to Jesse. His cheeks are flushing red. Jesse and his drunk brother's gazes meet and Jacob turns his head away.

Jesse stares at Jacob. He clenches his fist and blood rushes to his face. "What on earth, Jacob. Did you have to do that?"

"What? I was just trying to..." Jacob looks up and sees the furious Jesse giving him a death glare. He has never seen Jesse like this. He stutters the rest of the sentence while swallowing, "Hype up the vibe."

"For God's sake Jacob, mind your own business!" Jesse's eyes are red. His expression turns guilty after he notices what he just did. He just shouted at his own brother.

"I'm sorry." Jacob frowns and raises both of his arms and puts them behind his head.

Jesse lifts his arm up to quiet Jacob. The music in the house is still playing, but they are blurred as the large, floor-to-ceiling glass window isolates the backyard from the crowd.

Jesse breathes heavily before he starts again, "Get someone to drive me to thirty four Abbey's Street."

-

Ava closes her eyes. She brushes away the unsettling thoughts.

This is a dream.

She opens her eyes again. She picks up her phone and clicks on the video. It's still there. Meara Johanson and Jesse kissed.

Her mind is astonishingly blank because her blood is coursing fast, too fast that she can barely feel that her heart is actually aggressively pumping against her rib cage. Scenes of flashbacks appear and disappear in her brain, but they come in shattered pieces as they pop out piece by piece, haunting her every single time, again and again. Silhouettes of the people and surroundings remind her of her biggest fear -- being betrayed by the people she trusted.

Jesse talked to me. Jesse befriended me.

Jesse drove me home. Jesse brought me to his favorite park that he was supposed to bring his girlfriend to.

Melanie told me that he liked me. She said that EVERYONE KNEW HE HAS A CRUSH ON ME.

And what is that now? Jesse kissing Meara?

Ava grasps her hair and screams her lungs out. She screams until her head starts to feel like cracking. She wipes away the streaming tears and screams again. Again and again and again. The screams can break every glass, they can break every heart.

She is alone in her house, her parents are out for an 'important' meeting.

She tries filling rational thoughts into her head—Maybe it's an accident? Jesse didn't mean to kiss her, right? No way, there's no way-

But as always, she loses the battle against herself.

The empty house echoes her screams when a knock place on the door. Ava stands still, shivering. She turns her head and faces the door. She knows exactly who is out there, her eyes dry in painfulness, her heart swells in agony. She shambles towards the door and places her hand on the metal doorknob. It's cold, so cold but it feels hot on Ava's freezing hand. She gasps, twists the doorknob and yanks open the door. She knows it's him, but she is still startled as she sees him right in front of her, in the dim yellow light outside her house. The gust of wintry wind swirls into the house, she feels her eyeballs quivering.