I had to see her again to make sure she was for real. All of this couldn't be just a dream, could it?
"Cindy, please. Let me go. I need to see her." I pleaded to the woman blocking the door. "She needs me, Cinderella, you know it. Please trust me with this; I can handle all her-"
"Look, Diego." She scratched the back of her neck and shook her head in hesitation. "I'm not sure if I should let you in. She's crying and clearly breaking things in there."
Just as she spoke, another shatter reverberated through the thin walls.
Pointing a chipped nail at the room, she put her fears into words. "The state of mind she's in right now- Uh." She was clearly trying hard not to say something offensive. "She's not in the right headspace, okay? I'm afraid that she might hurt you."
"Well." I crossed my arms across my chest defiantly. It was going to take more than pleading to convince Cinderella to let me go inside. "There's a high possibility that she might have already hurt herself. Have you thought about that?"
The way Cindy's mouth opened and closed without uttering a single word was enough indication that I had managed to convince her. Rushing past her, I headed towards the room, assuming that's where Lyra was right now, shedding tears probably. Knocking once, I opened the door slightly and peeked in. But she wasn't crying.
She was doing something much worse.
As if the show was never over, as if all of what happened was just a nightmare. She kept dancing around the room, spinning like she was rehearsing for a performance yet to come. Blocking her path, I tried to catch hold of her but she pirouetted into another direction. What was she trying to do? Was she trying to prove to herself that she could do it right this time? Or was she merely replaying her trauma?
"Lyra?" I whispered, not trying in the least to hide the pain in my voice. Had I lost her yesterday or had I lost my mind today? Looks like I was about to find out.
Her name past my lips was all it took her to crumble and fall into pieces again. Shedding some loose feathers from her costume with a jerk, she curled up into a ball and cried, burying her face into her knee. Hesitantly, I touched her arm once to make sure she wasn't just a ghost I was imagining. She was. All too real.
I could feel the goosebumps on her skin, the way her body felt cold just like her corpse- We were past that now. I wasn't going to think about it anymore.
Ignoring the fact that she looked terribly cute, I sat beside her and rubbed her knee. To any on-looker it would have looked like I was trying to push her knee cap out of place. Don't blame me, I never learnt how to console someone who was crying their eyes out. But my weird gesture worked and she looked at me, startled, as if just registering my presence.
"D? What are you doing here?" She managed to speak, poison dripping from her words.
I shrugged, not knowing what else to say. "Just checking up on you?"
"Wow, Mr. Diego Foster." She used my full name, uh ohh. "I wish you would have done that sooner. Before the performance." Her cries turned to sobs now and she struggled to speak, screaming at my face now. "I kept- was trying to find you. Th- That reassuring smile of yours. In the audience. I needed it. But you never showed up."
"Hey-" I tried to wipe her tears but she slapped my palm away, wiping them herself.
"The worst part is-" She was back to being angry. "-you could have told me you were busy. Probably with some girl, but no. You lied to me saying you would come and stayed with that girl while I was waiting here for you. You just-"
"What girl?!"
"Don't act fool, Diego. I know-"
I couldn't hold myself anymore. Her tear stricken face reminded me of my own and I kept picturing her in the coffin from before. The image haunted me and all my restraint vanished, unable to stop myself from doing what I did next. Locking her in a tight bear-hug, I cradled her gently and kissed her hair while running my fingers through it.
Ow, a punch on my back reminded me she hated that. Thank God, she responded this time. She was alive. I let go of her hair as she let go of her inhibitions and lost against the tears that threatened to flow out of her eyes once again. Burying her head in the crook of my neck, she cried to her contentment and I kept holding her together.
Things were going to be different this time.
"I'm not good at anything. I let Cindy down. I let Nicola down. They should never have trusted me with- I am no good. I am literally good for nothing."
She kept on ranting and Diego knew better than stopping her mid-rant, so he tucked a hand under his chin and listened to her patiently.
"I don't even know how to balance myself on one toe after all these years of practice. How could I fall? In front of the crowd? I shouldn't have even said yes for a performance like this. There were so many people. Everyone had so many hopes from- I just keep on forgetting that I am a stupid girl who knows nothing."
This was too much for me to handle. I couldn't just sit here and listen to her insult the love of my life like this.
"I- I- Everyone will hate me now."
Cupping her face into my palms, I looked into her eyes and confessed. "No one will hate you, Lyra. See, I don't hate you."
"You don't?" She asked, seeking for words of reassurance from me again. Just like before. Just like the good times.
"No, sweetheart." A cocky grin formed on my face. This woman was an idiot to not have known my feelings for her all along. Either that or she knew and was amazing at keeping it a secret from herself.
"But you don't love me either, D. Hate is just the absence of love." She shrugged and though she was right in front of me, I missed the way her fingers did a silly little dance whenever she was explaining a philosophical theory she instantly came up with. "So, technically, you hate me and I hate you, too."
I wanted to smile, I really wanted to. My normal Lyra had returned back from the clutches of the never-ending tears. My Lyra was somehow back from death. But hugging her wasn't enough. It couldn't feel real, not when every thought in my head urged me to rationalise it. And for the first time in my life, I was terrified of waking up. Because if this was just a dream, I wanted to remain trapped in it forever.
Unable to control my emotions, I didn't realise when my eyes started flowing, revealing the secret I was hiding all along. Lyra is alive, I kept reminding myself but I was never so afraid of losing someone before. Because now that I had her again, I could lose her again, too. And that knowledge was enough to shake me from within.
My body started shivering beyond control and I was glad Lyra was picking up the things she threw earlier — too busy to notice the abnormal way I was reacting to her joking she hated me. Sighing loudly once she had picked up all the broken pieces of the vase, she sat on the bench with a thump and helplessly, giving in to the need to feel her here, I laid my head on her lap.
She was so real.
"D? Are you crying?" She placed her injured palm on my head and tingles ran through all my nerves at the contact.
Clutching her knee, I sobbed into her thigh for everything she had done to me — not letting me tell her how much I love her, killing herself in front of me, not thinking twice about leaving me all alone in this terrible world — I don't think this list was going to end anytime soon. I was angry; I wanted to hit her on the head for being this stupid. I wanted to hug her till I could be sure she was alive. I wanted to hold her hand and never let go again.
"Hey, it's okay, D." She brushed her palm across my head and I cried harder, pressing a hand over my mouth so I wasn't as audible. "Do you want to talk about it? Did you have a bad dream again?"
I wished it was. I wished all of what played in my head was just a bad dream. But I knew the verity of the situation. She was really dead and gone and buried.
Gently patting my head, she asked me where I was and why I was late. My head still resting on her knee, not facing her, I lied. If she couldn't see the truth in my eyes, maybe she wouldn't find out I was lying. "I was at home."
"Hmm." She pretended to think. "In that case, may I know if you were at home, why haven't you bathed today, again?" After a series of giggles, she continued. "And why is there sand under your shoes?"
"You caught me, Sherlock." I spoke with a broken voice and the back of my throat hurt. "I was on the beach." After all, that's where I had come from — coming back in time somehow.
Lifting my head from her lap, Lyra got off the bench and sat on the floor next to me. Wrapping a hand around my shoulder, she massaged my temple and asked. "Missing your mom, weren't you?"
I could never understand how this girl always knew what was going on in my mind. She was this mastermind who always knew what I'd do and when. As if I was a completely predictable plot twist to her. There's no way I could surprise her by the little things I did. And the day I chose to do something out of the box, she did something even bigger. By jumping- no. I wasn't going to think about that again.
I wondered how she would react if I'd tell her I travelled back in time. There was no way she would believe me when I didn't either and deciding that I didn't want to spend the rest of today in a hospital under psychiatric diagnosis, I deemed it better to keep my mouth zipped shut.
The sunlight shone right into my eye from the window in front of me — like it was reminding me about my second chance. To live with her all over again. Thanking it, I hugged the girl I was madly in love with and closed my eyes, hoping I could pause time forever. To stay with her. Even if that meant being stuck in a single moment for the rest of my life. As long as she was by my side, I could deal with anything.
Breathing in her sweet scent as her arms wrapped around me, I made sense of the turn of events. My life had somehow turned back to 9th March, 2015. About three months before the incident. Maybe because this was the time Lyra started having suicidal thoughts?
It didn't strike me at first, but now that it had all happened, I knew what I had to do differently. Because I already knew what was going to happen ahead. And now, I will change it all. I will see to it that she makes it this time, alive. With me.
I had somehow already taken my first step in that direction. The last time, I remember leaving her alone after the performance, thinking I would invade her privacy by staying with her when she wanted to be by herself. But this time, I knew what to do right. All I had to do was make her feel loved. This is perhaps the only way I will let love win over death.
"Lyra?" I whispered in the dancer's ear. There was no holding back this time.
"Yes?" She broke the embrace and raised her chin to look at me.
"You look really pretty in this- whatever you call it- costume or something-"
She let out a long, exaggerated laugh, shaking her head at her stupidity from before. How could she possibly think I was with some other girl? There was no one in the entire world more precious to me than the woman smiling at me right now.
"Let me finish. And before you fell-" I cringed at the last word because fell now meant something else to me. Something way too dark and scary. "You were stunning. That dance was so graceful and perfect." I locked our fingers together.
"Thank you, Diego." She smiled again, resting her head on my shoulder.
"Just to clarify, I wasn't with any girl yesterday like you thought. I can never put anyone over you. You will be my first priority, always."
She looked at me with an emotion I couldn't decipher — as if I had touched a dark corner of her soul — and instantly lifted her hand to wipe the tear before it could flow again. That's when I noticed the cut on her palm was still bleeding. Probably from the dance where she had injured herself earlier. Yelling at her for not dressing the wound in time, I got up to find the first aid kit and washed her wound with antiseptic, slightly blowing on the wound when she winced at the painful touch.
Applying medicine on it, I wrapped a bandage around the injury and her eyes never left my face. As if she was trying to figure out what changed in a night.
Little did she know, my whole world shook off of its axis in a span of a few hours.
But not again, never again. Because this time, just like I was dressing this wound, I was going to make sure no pain of hers was ever left unnoticed. This time, the scar on her hand would heal. This time, Lyra would live. This time, I would get to tell her that she's not just a best friend to me. She's my whole freaking world.
Each day I wake up, it is just to see her face. Each time I hear someone sing, I miss the sound of her voice. Each time I see something funny, I want to show it to her. Because she's the Yin to my Yang. My half pendant, the maroon to my greys, the ruby in my worthless life. She's the love I never had and she's the only person who can stab me with all her hatred too. Because all her emotions are mine, as if all of her is made just for me. Nothing else matters.
"Go to sleep, D." She whispered when my eyelids started drooping again.
"No." I lied. "I'm not sleepy." Truth be told, I was afraid that if I slept right now, she would be gone when I'd wake up. The illusion would shatter and I would be alone, all over again. I had lived through the pain once but I didn't have it in me to go through it again.
As if sensing all my thoughts, she rubbed the back of my neck and whispered into my ear. "I'll be right here when you wake up. I won't leave you alone. I promise."
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Random Question: What's your favourite sad memory?
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Author's Note - Heya, peeps! I am back with another chapter as you can see. Yes, I know you all are disappointed since I preach realistic ideas and Diego's seemingly impossible wish came true, but trust me, there's logic behind this madness. Just be patient, please?
What do you think will happen now? Will Lyra make it this time?
I may not have answers to these, but I assure lots of drama and- I shouldn't reveal more. You read ahead. Hope you enjoy :P
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