Fresh Start

S e ve n t e e n

   I wake up to voices in the hall and an empty bed. I rub my eyes as I look towards the closed door, searching for the muffled voices. I can't make out the voices, especially in sleep clouding my head so I sigh and let my head rest back on the pillow, my eyes closing again.

A few minutes later (possibly more), the door cracks open again, making me blink my eyes open. "Hey." Maia greets warmly, smiling at me.

I force myself into a sitting position as she sits at the end of the bed, her body facing mine. "Who were you talking to?"

"My brother, we've just got some plans to see our mom later today." She says, pulling her legs to sit criss-cross.

"Oh shit," I start, "What time is it, do you need me to go?" I ask, already reaching for my phone.

She stops me, placing her hand on my forearm, "It's like ten am, we've got time to kill." She says, making me give her a questioning look.

Maia climbs off the bed, walking to her closet. As she throws open the doors I find my jaw going slack slightly, mostly out of shock, a little out of excitement, and the littlest bit out of fear.

Behind the double doors lays a large bookshelf, all the items in colour coded order. The closet has no clothes, which probably lay in the dresser beside her bed.

Her eyes scanned the bookshelf before she stood on her tippy toes, jumping up to reach the top shelf, doing this action a few before she finally grabs a small book.

"Stop looking at me like I'm weird." Maia mumbles, looking at the floor as she walks to the bed, climbing back onto it, this time sitting herself beside me, leaning against her head board.

"I definitely don't think you're weird." I inform her, turning my head to the side in time to see her smile shyly at the book below her.

"It's by Shakespeare, I thought you might like it." She says, passing the book to me, the title reading 'MacBeth'

I gaze down at the worn down pages, my mind flooding with memories of the countless hours I spent in that library. Reading these books. Enjoying that silence. God it felt like a lifetime ago. In reality it almost is, it's been a whole year ago since I felt the rough yellow edges of books like this, over a year since I was able to enjoy the contents of them.

"You don't have to read it or anything, it's just- forget it, it was stupid." She says, apologizing quickly as she reaches for the book again.

Still I don't look up at her, almost mesmerized from the book as her hands lay on it, "It's not that." I mumble, making her stop and even retract her hands. "I actually just remembered something." I chose now to meet her questioning gaze, "Used to fucking love these books, I spent hours on end reading and re-reading them. Personally Romeo and Juliet is my favorite but you don't lose points for choosing MacBeth."

"It's not my favourite." Maia defends quickly, "I thought you might like it."

"I do-or did I guess." I mutter the last part, remembering the reason I stopped reading them.

"So you don't like them anymore?" She questions.

I shake my head, smiling at her before looking down at the book. "I haven't read anything besides textbooks in a long time." Maia gives me a soft look as if she's curious but doesn't want to push the topic further so she simply looks at me, conflicted. "They comforted me through my childhood but then when senior year hit comfort seemed to be...expendable."

"Comfort's never expendable, Kris." She reminds softly, again placing her hand on my bare forearm. "Also you really shouldn't be saying MacBeth that many times."

I find myself letting out a chuckle at her words before questioning; "What because of the curse?" To which she simply nods at, "You can say it, just not in a theater."

She squints her eyes, almost trying to see if I'm lying, "What if you're doing the play in a theater?" She challenges, and I find myself smiling at how she still doesn't say the name.

"While if it's in the script you can." I explain, opening and looking down at the first page in the book, finding a blank and old yellowed coloured page.

"Okay now you're just making shit up."

I simply laugh at her denial before flipping to the next page, slowly I watch her hands draw to the edges of the book, making me look up at her confused.

"If you haven't read one in a while maybe we should ease back into it, want me to read it to you?" Maia offers, smiling a genuinely, intoxicating smile at me. I let her take the book from my hands, shifting up the bed until I'm pressing against the headboard. "This is great, now you can hear all my amazing voices for them." She states happily, flipping until there's a page with words on it.

"Please don't tell me you use voices for a Shakespeare book." I say, watching as she smiles in a way that tells me she most definitely does. "You're unbelievable."

I don't mean it in a mean way, and it doesn't come out like that either, instead the words are wrapped with enough affection that you'd think I'd have said 'you're amazing', and in a way I did.

The whole time she read I was so focused on her stupid voices and how she still refused to say the name, instead choosing to skip over it everytime it appeared on the paper-which was a lot because he's the main fucking charector-that I didn't even think of the last person I read with. That person being none other than Luca.