"To die would be an awfully big adventure."
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
The night I died I felt everything. Then I felt nothing at all.
I loved a good survivor story as much as the next girl, but when it became your story of survival, it hit a lot different.
Storms were a drug; a hallucinogenic that had me through withdraws after long bouts without.
I had spent more of my early childhood sailing with my father on his boat than I did in the after-school classes my mother had so desperately begged I attend. Often, when Dad and I would sail out, a storm would peek its ugly head out and drench us from head to toe as the dark, brooding skies wept and the angry waters shook the boat around us. My father, as eccentric as he was, had the most beautiful soul and brightest outlook on life. The first clap of thunder that'd send me cowering in a corner would have him opening his arms and tilting his head back to stare up at the sky, as if he were asking to be rained down on. He convinced me at an early age that storms weren't bad omens-the contrary, he'd said. They were reassurance that even the sky had its moments too.
My father sailed out three years ago on a whale watching yacht with a few Marine Biologists; he came back to us in a navy-blue casket.
The night of I saw a flicker, a glimpse, of the light my father was surely standing in, patiently awaiting my mother and me to join him, was in the middle of July. The monsoon that flooded the streets and swept cars off the asphalt had been predicted to be the worst in years. Mom had had me crash in my room early and had set candles in every room in the case that the power were to go out. It did. I took her sighing and heading for the basement as my opportunity to make my escape. I grabbed the keys to my crappy, 04' silver Mazda from the hook on the right side of the door and stepped out onto the porch, watching from beneath the awning as the rain flooded the streets in sheets, pouring off the shingles of rooftops and down onto driveways.
I smiled and threw my head back the way my father always had; I embraced the storm.
Hurrying down the steps, the water was up to my calves by the time I reached my car and ducked in, my whole body a sticky, soaked mess. Brushing my hair out of my eyes, I started the car, and though I was aware that this weather was not conditions to be driving in, I pulled out of the driveway and headed down the street.
I don't remember a single thing that happened after making a left out of my neighborhood. One second, I was only a couple blocks from my house, the next the front half of my car was totaled and submerged in Lake Belle ten miles away. According to the police on scene, my car had hydroplaned at the stoplight just before the road split that leads one off the highway and toward the lake, and I'd lost full control and drove straight through the forestry and into the cold, murky water.
I had survived by the skin of my teeth is what Doctor Arnold had not-so-reassuringly expressed to my hysteric mother in the hospital room. As wrongly and heartlessly as he'd phrased it, he was right. Because I had died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. I'd been dead for an entire two minutes before they'd been able to revive me.
Those first few weeks after the accident were a jumbled, disoriented mess of physical therapy, my sobbing mother, and a seething hatred for myself for not being able to remember anything. I spent nights sitting at the end of my bed, staring at my casted broken leg trying to recall the final moments leading up the crash-to what had ultimately led me to my untimely demise. The only thing that I could fully grasp on to was the emotions that'd been rushing through in that moment, the millisecond before my heart had stopped. The devastation of knowing that I'd not only be leaving my mother a widow, but childless as well.
Fortunately, the EMTs had managed to restart my heart five minutes out from the hospital and I walked out from the accident with a broken leg, a few fractured ribs, and lacerations and scars I knew would be a part of me the rest of my life. Being the middle of summer, I'd been able to rest and recover as much as necessary, but I knew the moment I stepped foot on campus I was going to be struggling to get through the day, and that was if wandering eyes and whispers didn't send me hiding out in a bathroom stall first.
"Wen," Mom says now, her voice a quiet breath. But given the silence in the car, she may as well have shouted it. "Are you sure about this? Maybe we should see—"
"Mom, I'm fine." I was far from it, but knew better than to let her know just how much pain I was truly in. The woman was a warrior; she'd not only been through a horrific childhood and countless miscarriages with Dad when he was alive but had been pushing through the last two years without as much as a complaint. Even now, all alone in the three-bedroom house back home, she never complained of the emptiness, the coldness that was just undeniably there. In the long, dark hallways, in every room. In the kitchen and garage, and especially the basement where Dad had spent most of his time marveling over new projects and building crazy contraptions and blueprints.
"Please call me if you need anything." she extended a hand and squeezed my shoulder, her brown eyes melting with the new surge of tears entering them. "Anything at all."
"I will, Mom." I assured, opening my door. She took that as her cue to get out and walk around to the trunk where my two suitcases lay under my crutches. She pulled both bags out and set them on the sidewalk in front of me before crossing the small space between us and adjusting the crutches under my arms. "Thank you."
She waved off my gratitude and helped me navigate my way from the office the dormitories I'd be spending the next ten months. She was staring down at my paperwork with her eyebrows drawn inward, "You have a male roommate?"
"I don't mind co-ed dorming, Mom." I responded. "Hell, a guy would probably help me far more than a girl having to lug textbooks around with these crutches."
"Just be careful, honey." she muttered absentmindedly. I shot her a quick glance and frowned when I saw she was so lost in thought she hadn't bothered to even stop at the correct room. Her dark eyes were shooting everywhere in the hallway, her top teething grazing her chapped bottom lip. Every move she made was almost flighty-as if she were anticipating something to happen and wanted to put as much of a distance between herself and this place as possible.
"Mom." I rested my forearm on the top of my left crutch and waved. "The room is right here."
She muttered something incoherently under her breath and knocked gently at the door before opening it and stepping inside. She immediately grew rigid and stepped aside so I could enter without a word. My eyes immediately went to the left side of the room-or more specifically to the figure crouched in front of a suitcase at the foot of the unmade bed.
"I think I should head out." Mom said quietly, but there was a hesitancy in her voice as she leaned in and hugged me from the right side. "Unless you need anything?"
"I'm good, Mom. Thank you." I squeezed her hand and kissed her cheek. "I love you."
I should have been as embarrassed as all my friends from high school confessing my love for my mother so openly in front of a guy, but I couldn't find it in me to care, not anymore. I'd learned this summer that things could change in an instant, and I'd be damned if I was going to let something as ridiculous as embarrassment prevent me from ensuring my mother knew something I was sure she question-especially with my recent behavior.
"I love you too, Wen. Call me once your settled in, please."
I nodded and watched her leave, her eyes lingering on the boy in the corner before she mumbled something and pressed the door shut gently behind her. As if my mother's departure was my roommate's cue to rejoin the living, he zipped up the suitcase and started to stand. I half expected him to stop a little over my head, but he continued until he was well over an entire foot taller than all five-foot three of me, his dark black hair and back of his dark sweatshirt all that was visible from where I stood.
"Hey." I greeted softly, careful not to startle him if he had earbuds in I couldn't see or something. "I'm Gwendolyn, you're roommate."
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of staring at the back of the tall man's head, he turned around and stared down at me with a guarded expression. He bowed his head after a second as I averted my eyes to my shoes and let out a shaky breath.
There was something so inherently fantastical about him, so dark and seductive that it was captivating. I'd wondered for a while if it were his eyes-the color of the Atlantic waters I used to sail with my father on a stormy night-not quite blue, but not quite gray either. But it wasn't until he looked at me once more I realized it'd never been his appearance that made him so fantastical, but his entire being-down to the way he breathed. As if he could hear every thought racing through my head, the beautiful man lifted his own and winked, and with the fluttering of his long lashes was my heart.
"James." his voice was as sultry and deep as the old crooners Mom still played on the turntable back home. "Hook. James Hook."
I decided on blaming my concussion-even if I'd fully recovered from it-for my inability to form a coherent sentence as I stared like a weirdo at the man across the room. He slowly lifted his hand, scarred and sporting an incredibly intricate tattoo I couldn't make out from afar, and rubbed it along the five o' clock shadow along his jaw.
"Are you okay?" he asked, curiosity lingering at the end of the word. "Maybe you should sit down."
I blinked rapidly, relieved that it happened to be what was needed to break myself from the trance. It took a lot of patience and a quiet groan, but I finally was able to lower myself down on to the bed and set my crutches on the bed beside me.
"What happened?" he asked, chin jerking toward my cast.
I swallowed the knot that'd formed in my dry throat and whispered, "Car accident."
"I'm sorry."
I offered a wry smile. "It was my own fault."
"Why'd you decide to agree to the co-ed thing?" he questioned after a beat of silence.
"I tried for a regular." I admitted, crossing my arms across my lap. "But I was too late. They were full."
He dropped on to the bed opposite of me so we were eye level and chuckled, "So you're stuck with me now."
"Could have worse company." It slipped out before I had a chance to process what'd just left my mouth. I immediately felt warmth creep up the back of my neck and into my cheeks and forced my eyes shut in hopes it would erase the entire sentence from existence.
As horrified as I was that I'd said it aloud, it was the truth. If I was going to be stuck in this dorm room with a dude for ten months, at least he was good looking. I just had to hope his hygiene and habits were as well.
"I'll take that as a compliment." he joked.
I glanced around the empty room for a second before meeting his eyes again.
It was my mistake, as the second they met mine I was drowning in them.
Unlike the vicious waters my father and I had sailed, his were inviting, as if with every blink he was drawing me in a little more.
"Did you need help?" he inquired after another long silence. "With your bags? You don't exactly look like you're in the position to unpack."
I considered the words and found myself nodding despite not wanting him to see half the stuff I'd packed. "If you don't mind."
He pushed himself off the bed and crossed the room to me, setting both suitcases on my bed so it was easier access for me. We unpacked my bags in silence, and I almost made it through the night without making a complete full of myself.
Almost.
But just as his arm brushed my elbow, a flash from the car accident shot in front of me an I slammed my head against the wall and my back went right into one of the posts on the headboard.
"Are you okay?"
The night terrors had tormented for two weeks following the accident, but hadn't had one in a while, and surely not while I was wide awake.
"Yeah, sorry." I apologized, clutching one of my shirts in my hands. "Just a little jumpy is all, I guess."
"I'm headed out for some food. Maybe you should get some sleep." he suggested.
I nodded, appreciative that he'd been sure to add he wouldn't be here. It was the smallest of gestures but had me holding on to the smallest increment of hope that maybe this year wouldn't be so bad.
***AN***
Not edited
Just kind of introducing Gwen and her life. I hope you guys enjoyed!
I'd love to hear what you thought!!
~ChasingMadness24