If You Miss It

8. change of heart

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHANGE OF HEART

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"Okay, no, I didn't mean to fuck the entire stack up, it was just wobbling all over the place anyway! You distracted me."

Laughing, Dmitri popped a single fry into his mouth, his ribs aching as his laughs got louder. "Okay, no. I didn't do shit, I just kissed you. The whole fucking stack falling was on you and your inability to play Jenga," he declared, taking a sip of his water, to hopefully calm the pain in his ribs.

It had been so long since he had laughed this much. So unbelievably long.

It felt nice, somehow. Strange, but nice.

Tariq just shook his head, his eyes sparkling as he clamped a hand over his mouth, a small snort escaping it anyway. "Fuck off, you're the one who decided that it would be fun to kiss my neck right when I was pulling the fucking brick out. Your fault."

"Both our faults," Dmitri finally conceded, watching as Tariq forked his salad into his mouth, his dark clothes contrasting the lights of the dingy diner they were seated in, some place called The Diner that Dmitri had never even heard of before.

He was trying, he really was. And while it wasn't easy to pretend like everything was normal, he was doing it. It was surprisingly working, his mind not working against him for once in his life, not jumping to the worst possible situation. The change was nice. Welcoming.

"Are you tired?" Tariq questioned, his tiny ass legs kicking Dmitri under the table. Short ass. "It's pretty fucking late."

Dmitri shrugged. The war that his stomach was fighting against him had finally come to a standstill, the nausea and the feeling of his heart bursting out of his chest thankfully disappearing once he had started eating his own dinner.

"Think I can stay up for another... two hours before I crash," he decided, even though he was fully aware that once his head hit the pillow, his mind would begin its job to wage a war against the rest of his body, and he wouldn't sleep until four in the morning.

Miracles weren't something that Dmitri believed in, despite his blatant Christianity, but it really was a miracle that he could wake up every morning and not feel like his body and mind had been dragged through hell and back.

Or maybe he was just so used to feeling like shit all the time that he had grown immune to his own tiredness.

Humming, Tariq turned around, only to pull out two bottles from his bag. Oh. Quickly, before Dmitri could even see what he was doing, he downed two different pills with water, a single white one and another red one.

He's going to apologise.

"Sorry," Tariq mumbled, wiping his face down with his hand. Called it. The two of them were the exact fucking same in that aspect. "Can you drop me home? Zoya should be home, I think."

Dmitri nodded at that, quickly typing out a text to Eden, letting her know that he would be home soon. Oddly enough, she replied with a dry message, very unusual of her. But he didn't question it, because it was late and she was probably tired.

At least, he hoped that that was the reason.

"Do you live with Zoya?" he asked, fishing out some money from his wallet and having to do practically everything in his power to stop himself from offering to pay for Tariq, too.

However, as it turned out, everything in his power wasn't enough.

"I'll pay."

Fuck. Why? Why did I—