"You want me to climb through that?"
My eyes followed the fire escape all the way to the fifth floor, before I moved my unsure gaze to the blonde boy next to me.
Aaron, on the other hand, didn't look unsure at all, and he just nodded. He had the hood of his hoodie on his head, blocking the cold wind. His hands were crossed over his chest, and a tiny smile was covering his face.
"Well, if not through that, how would you get in then?" He asked, shaking his head. "The visiting hours are over, and it's the middle of the night. They would not just let you walk in there."
"You are crazy." I placed a hand on my forehead. "Those stairs, or what even they are, are in a really bad shape. I might seriously die."
"You came in here with your brother's Ferrari." Aaron commented. "You don't have a license, and you have driven a car like once or twice, and you don't know the traffic rules, and you do not definitely follow the speed limits. So, I'm pretty sure that you will be just fine."
Yes, I had somehow survived through the driving part, once again, which I had been honestly pretty surprised about too. This time I didn't even scratch the car, and good so, because Weston had just repaired the old scratches, and I knew that scratching it again would've been my end.
Now that I really think about it, this whole stealing his car again, not to talk about the fact that I left the house in the middle of the night, was still going to be my end.
"You'll be fine." Aaron spoke again when he noticed that I didn't look any more sure. "You'll climb those stairs, and I'll come open you the door, okay?"
I closed my eyes.
"Fine, but if I die, it's your fault."
"You'll be fine." Aaron repeated.
I shook my head, and he placed his hands on my cheeks before he gave me a quick kiss.
That one thing was never going not to make me feel the butterflies in my stomach. His soft lips, and the smell of mint Tic Tacs. The way he always placed his hands on my cheeks and looked me into my eyes with his light blue eyes.
"But please..." Aaron looked straight into my eyes as he spoke with a low voice. "...be careful."
"I'll try." I murmured, my eyes once again following the fire escape all the way up. "This will fail, I feel it in my bones."
"No, it won't." He shook his head. "It can't."
I took a deep breath before I climbed over the little gate which was there preventing anyone to go to the fire escape. There was also a sign with a text 'emergency only' in case the gate wasn't clear enough.
"Don't look down."
I gave a sarcastic look to Aaron.
"Thank you for the advice."
Uncertain
"See." Aaron closed the door to the fire escape. "I told you that everything would be just fine."
I shook my head, placing my hand on my forehead.
It was fine until I remembered that I do not like heights. I was probably halfway through when I looked down, and that's when I wanted to cry. I did not think it would be that high, and I most definitely didn't want to go any higher.
"You owe me a damn huge favor now." I commented. "That was horrible."
"Yeah, yeah." Aaron chuckled. "Let's just go now."
We started walking towards the door to Angel's room.
I was still feeling my heart in my throat. I wasn't allowed to be there, and I was terrified that someone would see us. I mean, I had stolen my oldest brother's car in the middle of the night, and I had climbed through a fire escape just to broke into a hospital.
"I'm dead." I spoke with a silent voice. "I stole Weston's car again."
Aaron gave me a look.
"Yes, that part was totally unnecessary."
"I know."
Aaron's hand touched mine, and just like that we were holding hands. His touch gave me courage, but the dark and silent corridor still made me shiver.
Somehow in the midst of all the tension, I was able to feel the growing butterflies in my stomach, again. I had never felt like that, before I walked into Aaron in the same hospital's corridor we were now walking. Now I felt it always when I only looked at the blonde boy, when I saw his warm smile, and when I heard his voice.
How I wished I would feel that forever.
"You two." A female voice spoke behind us, making us instantly freeze on spot. "What are you doing?"
I closed my eyes.
"Shit."
"Delilah?"
I opened my eyes, and turned my gaze towards the another, this time familiar, voice.
Avery Thompson. My old nurse, who almost caused my death, my oldest brother's old girlfriend, and the sister of our old guard, who took my innocence when I was only five years old. We had a complicated relation, should I say, and I was not sure what I thought about her. I had forgiven her, but some part of me hadn't. I knew she wasn't her brother, but I also saw his eyes on her face, and they were the exact eyes that gave me many nightmares.
"Kate, it's nothing." Avery spoke to the other nurse next to her. "They are in this hospital. I'll take care of them, you can go."
The other nurse, Kate, nodded, and walked out of the corridor to the staircase. We all three watched her movements until she was out of our sight, before Avery moved her gaze back to us.
"What the hell?" She asked. "It's the middle of the night, what are you doing here."
"I'm always here." Aaron shrugged. "And she's..."
"I'm now here."
"Does Weston know you are here in the middle of the night?" Avery asked, her gaze felling on me.
"Yeah." Aaron answered for me, nodding his head.
However, that blonde guy next to me wasn't anywhere near of getting an Oscar by that performance, and it only made Avery to close her eyes, and place a hand on her forehead.
"Shit." She spoke, with a silent voice. "He doesn't know you are here."
"No." I shook my head.
"Okay." She shook her head. "How did you get here?"
"Through the door."
"Through the fire-escape."
Aaron turned his horrified gaze to me, and slapped my arm softly, making me give him a look.
"Are you guys serious?" Avery spoke with an unimpressed voice, before she sighed. "You shouldn't be in the corridor, or you'll get caught. Go wherever you are going, and be there silently, okay?"
"What?" Aaron asked, a surprised look on his face. "You won't tell."
"Why would I?" She questioned. "I never saw you two."
"Thank you." I nodded, a tiny smile on my face.
Avery placed her hand on my shoulder, and she shook her head.
"I owed you."
Aaron and I were about to continue walking before I took a deep breath and turned my gaze back to her.
"Avery..."
"I won't tell Weston either." She cut me off. "But he'll find out, Delilah, he always does."
"I know." I nodded, brushing a hand through my face. "Thank you."
Uncertain
Angel's eyes were open, but she was just staring the ceiling. Her blonde hair was on two French braids, which I had done like a week ago. She was wrapped around her blanket, and she had a teddy bear on her arms.
Her face was pale, and she had huge eye bags under her eyes. There were stained tears on her cheeks, which she just didn't have the energy to wipe. Her lips were a little colorless, and her eyes were glimmering. A steady but a little heavy breathing escaped her lips.
"Hey bestie." I whispered, a sad smile appearing on my face.
She turned her head towards me.
"What are you doing here?"
"I'm here to make you feel better."
"But I'm fine." Angel murmured, when I walked next to the bed.
"I know you are, you are always fine." I spoke, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Just let for once someone else to take care of you, to make you feel better, because you don't have to be okay, you can cry, you can be tired, you can be angry, you don't even have to say anything. Just please let someone help you, okay?"
A tear left Angel's eye, followed by another, and another. Her lip started shaking, and she placed a hand on her mouth. A shaky sob boomed through the room, and her face was completely helpless. Her eyes begged for happiness and her heart for comfort.
"I know." I nodded. "I know."
"I don't want to die." She shook her head. "I don't want to fucking die, I hate this, I hate this."
The thing was that it was impossible for me not to start crying too, and so the tears started running against my cheeks too.
Angel's voice sounded so desperate. She was praying for someone to help her, but she knew inside her heart that she was going to die. We all knew that, because the words had been the doctor's words, and the doctor's job was to be right, to tell the truth.
"I tried to forget." She whispered. "That one fucking sentence will haunt me for the rest of my short life, and I can't get mind peace, Lilah, I can't sleep anymore. And I just don't have the energy to be positive and forget about the horrible reality."
"I'm sorry." A tear dropped against my cheek, as I grabbed her hand. "I'm so sorry, Angel."
"I can't even leave this place anymore, I'll lay here until I die." Angel shook her head. "And I don't want to do that. I just want to go out, breathe the outside air, stand on the ground, and go to fucking Starbucks or something."
I moved my gaze to Aaron's hoodie on the back of the chair, where he was usually sitting. Then my gaze moved to the brand new, untouched, Jordans on the floor. Finally, I looked at the car keys on my left hand.
"I'll take you."
Angel gave me a look.
"What?"
"I'll take you." I repeated. "I have a car, and I can take you to the Starbucks and buy you anything you want."
"Oh no." Angel shook her head. "We'll never get out of here without anyone noticing, and you still don't have a driver's license."
"We'll go through the fire escape."
I'm not exactly sure why I said that, when I had just like ten minutes ago decided that I would never ever go through the fire-escape again. However, there I was ready to walk the same horrifying stairs again, only ten minutes later.
"You serious?" Angel asked, giving me an unsure look.
"Yeah." I nodded. "That's how I got here in the first place."
"Okay." She nodded with a chuckle. "Then what about the driver's license part, I'm not sure if I trust your driving skills."
"I'm not that bad." I rolled my eyes. "But we can walk too, if you don't trust me enough."
"Driving it is."
My lips twitched upwards, and I grabbed Aaron's hoodie throwing it to Angel, before I helped her up from the bed.
For a little moment, when she placed her feet on the ground standing on top of the new Jordans, a tiny hesitation spread over me. She was tired, and she was sick. I wasn't sure if taking her outside would be a good idea. But when a smile, wide smile, fell on her lips, I forgot about my hesitation.
How I wish I could still change that.
Uncertain
After surviving through the fire-escape, again, and through the driving part, we finally got to the Starbucks. There was only one person when we got there, although it was pretty reasonable because it was like 4am.
Angel ordered herself an iced tea instead of coffee because it was the middle of the night. I, on the other hand, ordered a coffee because it was the middle of the night.
I still didn't like coffee that much, but I felt like it was the only thing keeping me awake. Some kind of sudden exhaustion filled my body, probably because I hadn't gotten that much of a sleep, and because it, still, was the middle of the night.
Like promised I paid for Angel too, however I didn't think about the fact that Weston could see the transactions on my bank account, and obviously he would be able to see that I had been in the Starbucks at four o'clock in the morning. On the other hand, he was Weston, he had probably already noticed that I wasn't at home, and he had probably already sent an army after me.
"So, how is it going with you and my twin brother?" Angel asked, taking a bite of her cake pop.
I moved my gaze to her from the outside view, and a tiny blush appeared on my cheeks.
"I don't know, it's just, you know when you have so many butterflies in your stomach when you see someone that you get nervous, how you don't even know what to say anymore, and how your cheeks turns so bright red, that you can almost feel the heat on them, and..."
"Oh my god." Angel's eyes lit up. "You are so in love with my brother."
"Yeah." I sighed, my lips twitching a little upwards. "I think that I really am in love with your brother."
"And then there's me." Angel threw her hands in the air, grabbing her iced tea and taking a sip from it. "I'm gonna die alone."
"No, you won't die alone." I shook my head. "What about that hottie working in the hospital's café on Saturdays, huh?"
"He's gay."
"What?" I asked, giving her a look. "He's not gay."
"Oh, but he is." Angel nodded. "I saw him kissing a guy yesterday."
"But he's been literally checking you out for the past month?"
"Nope." She shook her head. "He's been giving me a murdering look, because I always leave my coffee cup on the table."
"Oh shit."
"I know." Angel chuckled. "I'm dying alone, as a desperate woman."
I moved my gaze to the only other customer in the Starbucks.
"What about him?"
Angel followed my gaze to the dark brown-haired guy. His eyes were matching with the color of his hair, and he had two piercings on both of his ears. He was writing something on his computer, and he had two empty and one full coffee cup in front of him.
"He looks like a guy full of red flags, literally." She commented. "Besides that's so suspicious, who comes into a coffee shop in the middle of the night."
"Hello?" I pointed us. "We are here too if I can remind you."
"Well, he's alone." She shook her head. "And he's probably writing a novel about how to kill the next girl, he will date, so nope thank you."
The guy raised his head up from his laptop's screen.
"You two know that I can here you, right?"
He was like few tables away from us, so I don't think it was that much of a surprise that he was able to hear us in the silent coffee shop. Angel and I were also literally staring him, which probably had gotten his attention awhile ago.
We did look at each other, and both of our cheeks turned slightly read. Also, an awkward silence filled the place.
"Ohh, and just to let you know, I'm writing a novel, and I'm doing it in here in the middle of the night, because this place is usually silent, and usually I can focus here." He spoke again. "What comes to my looks, I do not mean to look like a walking red flag but thank you very much for your honest opinion."
"Shit." Angel closed her eyes. "Shit, shit, shit."
"I'm Gavin."
A chuckle escaped my mouth, as I looked at my friend, who was now almost fully under the table.
"I'm Delilah, and that is Angel."
Gavin closed the lid of his laptop and walked towards our table, taking the full coffee cup with him.
"Mind if I sit?"
I shook my head.
"Not at all."
"She seems to mind." Gavin commented, pointing his head towards Angel. "Is she always so red or is she just blushing?"
I couldn't help but laugh.
Angel was bright red, and I mean that her whole face was red. Her eyes were still closed, and her hand was on her forehead. She was also now completely under the table, and she was sitting on the cold tile floor.
"You okay down there?" I asked.
"I don't actually mind about you saying that I'm a walking red flag." Gavin shook his head with a chuckle. "But I would like to give you my number if you some day decide that I wasn't as red flaggy as you thought."
"See." I nodded my head, patting Angel's head. "You might not die alone, now get up and pile yourself or you will lose your chance."
Angel got up from the floor.
"Sorry about the red flag thing, I didn't mean it."
"So, I can give you my number?"
Angel looked at me, as if searching for an answer what to do. I nodded with a tiny smile on my face, watching how Gavin wrote his number on Angel's napkin and passed it to her.
"Would've loved to talk to you two longer, but I must leave now because my morning shift starts in..." Gavin looked at the clock on the wall. "Two hours, and I haven't gotten a single hour of sleep yet."
"Right." Angel and I spoke almost simultaneously.
Without another word he left the place just in the blink of an eye, leaving the almost full coffee cup on our table.
We first looked at the door, then we turned our heads towards the coffee cup, then to the napkin in front of Angel, and then we finally looked at each other, a chuckle escaping both of our mouths, followed by another, and another.
"What the fuck just happened?"
Uncertain
The chilly late summer air tickled my skin, as I watched how my best friend was climbing up the climbing frame. Her chuckles filled the silent park, next to the Starbucks where we had just been.
We had been leaving when Angel had noticed the park, and she had insisted to go there, because apparently it had been ages since she had last been able to be in a park. She was like a little child, when she tested all the nice scaffolding in the playground. She went down the slide at least four times, and she climbed the climbing frame up and down at least three times.
"Angel, maybe we should go." I commented when she walked towards the tiny in-ground trampoline. "I don't think that's a good idea."
"I haven't been jumping on a trampoline literally since I got diagnosed with a cancer." She shook her head.
I sighed when she started jumping on that trampoline, despite my wishes. She was just jumping up and down, and her laughs made me smile a little too.
It was like a slowed film when she suddenly stopped and placed a hand on her chest. Her face has turned pale a while ago already, but I hadn't noticed it. Her hand started shaking a little, and a pure terror filled her eyes.
I rolled my eyes.
"Very funny, Angel."
"I can't breathe." She spoke, sitting down on the cold ground. "I feel a little lightheaded."
"Okay." I shook my head. "That's not funny."
"I am not fucking joking."
"What?"
"I said that I can't breathe." A tear fell against her cheek. "I can't breathe, Lilah."
"What?"
"Do something."
For a moment she was looking at me, and for another she was laying on the cold ground. For a moment she was there, and for another she wasn't. And for those moments, I was only staring, I was staring my best friend who was laying on the cold ground. I just couldn't move, I couldn't move my fingers, I couldn't even twitch an eye.
I knew I had to do something, but I couldn't, and I also knew that it would be the thing I would regret for the rest of my life.
It took ten seconds, ten seconds too long, when I realized that she was going to die if I didn't do something. So, I grabbed my phone from my pocket with shaking hands and dialed the emergency number.
It was almost unreal. The feeling of hearing the voice on the phone, telling me to stay calm and tell where I was, seeing my best friend motionless laying on the cold ground, and all this only like ten minutes after we had been spending our best time in the Starbucks.
Somewhere deep inside I knew that this was my fault, this whole thing was my and my stupid decision's fault. We should have never left the hospital. I was her friend, and I should've known what the best for her was.
I couldn't speak, I couldn't speak even when the person on the other side of the call was trying so hard to get me to tell what was wrong.
I just couldn't.
"Honey, can you tell me what's wrong?" The voice of woman spoke. "Is someone hurt?"
"Yes."
"Okay, are you hurt?" She asked.
"No." I whispered. "Please, come quick, I don't know what to do, I don't know, oh god, I'm not even supposed to be here, I don't fucking, I can't..."
"Yes, I have sent an ambulance." She spoke with a calm voice. "You just need to calm down and tell me what do you see, where you are, and what has happened."
"Please hurry."
I mean....
This was a confusing chapter, I know. I do not in fact like this chapter very much, but the next ones will be better, I promise.
Be prepared because the next chapters might be a little emotional...
Happy december guyss!!
I don't have much school left anymore before Christmas, so, I will hopefully be able to be more active with writing.
Remember to vote, follow, and comment your thoughts about this chapter!
Loads of love,
Author <3