"What the hell was all of that mom?"
Lucas' mother stared back at him with a glazed over look in her eyes, a far away expression etched onto her face that was riddled with tears that had only fallen once Lydia ran away.
I had called out to her, and for a split second I thought that she would turn around but never did. It hurt, but I knew that she needed time to herself and away from everyone in order to process things.
I processed my emotional shit by playing football, so running was probably her physical escape.
"I came here to apologize, but I just made it worse...I always make everything worse."
Her words were whispered but the impact of their meaning was tenfold. She blamed herself for whatever had happened to Lydia all those years ago. The only question I had was why she had let that man in that had upset Lydia so much in the first place.
It was as if she was trying to pretend like the past had never happened, like she wanted everything to go back to normal.
"And Harvard? She really got in and she's going?"
My head snapped up at the mention of the Ivy League school in Massachusetts...one that was only a car ride away from Gillette Stadium where the Patriots held their home games and practiced everyday.
If she went to school there, then we wouldn't have to say goodbye when it came time to leave for football.
A swarm of hope bloomed up in my abdomen, threatening to squeeze all of the air out of my lungs if I wasn't careful. I needed to find her, so she didn't do anything rash.
I needed to go to her and tell her that I wanted to be together. I'd wait for her to be emotionally ready for a relationship. I wasn't interested in anyone romantically, and I wasn't going to stray. I had no need for meaningless flings and hookups anymore...I wanted more.
I wanted Lydia.
She had to know how I felt about her.
"Where do you think she went?"
"Hell if I know. You'd be better off running after her on foot."
"Okay, thanks man," I said to Lucas, both he and Reed staring after me as if I'd lost my mind.
I tipped my head towards their mother as I ran after Lydia, the confusion plain as day. If she was confused why I was running after her in the first place, then she didn't know just how amazing her daughter really was and the effect that she had on people. She was everything and more all wrapped up in one extremely strong and intelligent not to mention beautiful body, and I wasn't going to let her slip away.
The entire run, I tried to think like her. Where would she go?
I passed the local shops, the park where she most definitely was not at the swings, the local grocery store, and she was nowhere to be found.
I decided to cut my losses and call for help.
"Hey man, where would she go?"
"I don't know, where are you right now?"
I cursed at Lucas' ignorance of her whereabouts and told him the nearest street name, painting from the exertion of the run under the hot early summer sun.
"Oh wow, you're near her old apartment. Although I'm not sure why she'd be there..."
I leaned my head back to the sky, remembering the taser that she'd been dead set on using with Rafael, even though I talked her out of it.
"I think that's exactly where she is. Where is it?"
Lucas gave me more accurate directions and then I took off once more to stop her from doing something that would ruin her entire future forever, the fear of something terrible happening to her striking something deep and primal within me.
My footsteps beat on the hard concrete sidewalk below me, my mind drifting to the times that I'd had to run home from school because my mom had forgotten to pick me up at school.
The shadows would always jump out at me, and my eleven-year-old self would always blanch in the darkness, terrified that someone would come and kidnap me.
Sometimes I'd wish that they would take me away, thinking that anything would be better than the reality that I lived in back in my so called home.
The apartment complex came into view and I sagged in relief, ready to save Lydia from whatever she was going to get herself into.
The apartment was empty. Good.
I went to the bedroom first, throwing everything out of the bedside tables looking for the journal that was so callously stolen from me.
I grunted in frustration when I couldn't find it and brought my hands up to my head, tugging harshly on the hair on my scalp just wishing that I could pull it all out.
I sucked in a deep inhale of oxygen into my needy lungs and focused on what exactly I had come to this apartment to do.
I picked up a glass of water left out on my old side of the bed and dropped it on the ground, the satisfying crash of glass shattering around me like music to my ears.
Destruction. I wanted them to hurt as much as they had killed me.
I started in the closet where I found Nate's treasured golf clubs. The nine iron would do nicely for what I had in store.
I took to the kitchen, happily smashing everything in sight. All their dishes, destroyed in messy piles on the ground.
I was cut a little bit on my ankle but I ignored it. I trekked to the living room where I smashed a glass portrait hanging on the wall with Layla and Nate smiling happily back at me. How they had already had time to make couple's pictures was beyond me, but it gave me a small delight as their smiles became warped by the spiderwebbed glass crackled across their ignorant faces.
I swung the golf club over and over again until every bone and muscle in my body ached with exertion.
I closed my eyes as a mad smile splayed across my lips, but when I opened them again I was back in the bedroom, the glass that I thought I had broken still perfectly intact and filled with the same water that had been inside of it since the night before.
The destructive scenario played over and over in my head, but I wasn't crazy enough to go through with it. That wasn't what I had come to do, after all.
I placed the glass back on the table gently and went to their closet to search for my journal once more.
No luck.
Under the bed was a loss, too, but I hadn't checked in between the mattress yet.
I was about to give up hope and set the mattress down until I noticed a slight rip in the material, so I stuck my hand inside.
Weathered leather touched my fingers and I wrapped my hand around the small book, my heart singing with relief and joy at the fact that I had finally found it.
"Yes!"
"What do you think you're doing in my house?!"
I whirled around on instinct and paled on what I saw, or rather, who.