tea stained newpapers. mileven au.

thirty five

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE:
WRITTEN IN MY HEART.

writing seems to come easier when your heart is hurting.

or possibly when it's yearning for something that isn't quite there yet, reaching out into the distance toward a forbidden dream.

though, for mike, it wasn't exactly forbidden. his dreams were completely obtainable, even if at this very moment, they seemed unbelievably far away.

maybe that's why he's been sitting here for the past four hours, lonesome in his writer's office. he should be drafting the second to last section for the hopper biography, but it seems his heart is stuck on the wrong hopper.

it was metaphorically written, a controversial conspiracy in his heart that made his head spin into oblivion. the way his body was full, yet so empty without her physically here with him. that feeling in itself is what made his fingertips stall on his keyboard, drift to a different tab, and open up a brand new document.

this wasn't unusual for him. in fact, the writer had plenty of drafts sitting in his google docs, all lost stories never to be seen by the world. it would be detrimental to his journalist image to admit that he did, in fact, have a interest in creative writing.

it was a dream only for him, one he'd promise to only himself.

in the grand scheme of things, there never was a story he truly felt was worth telling. his life was tragic, and sure someone could possibly find the hardships of his abusive father and broken family relatable. yet, that wasn't something he wanted to tell the world.

because his mind had just started healing from that, healing from the trauma of experiencing what love was not supposed to look like.

mike wheeler wanted to tell a story that made people's hearts feel like they were being ripped out of their chest, wanted them to pour over pages of text and explode with emotion. to write a story they found themselves in, not their traumas. one where they would find a piece to the puzzle the universe lays out in front of us to figure out.

a story worthy of hopeless romantics, dreamers by design.

up until now, he never really knew where to start when it came to writing a piece like that. he'd only collected shards and shreds of emotions that he could mimic in a broken pattern, not enough to vent for chapters on end.

though there was something about the way el hopper made him feel, the way the organ in his chest seemed to tighten at the mention of her, how her hair would fall across her shoulder, or how her eyes would crinkle at something that made her happy. the small details he had come to memorize, the ripples in the atmosphere, how love smelled like lavender and jasmine twirling in the smoke of incents.

she was his home, quite literally. and even though the thoughts in his head were absolutely terrifying to accept, they made him feel like something to someone for the very first time.

so mike wheeler did the unthinkable at this moment in time, his fingertips tapping words that only the feelings that rested quietly in the center of his stomach could have him conjuring up. he was a poet, a writer, and a journalist all in one, mixing his story into the prettiest purple spell the world would ever have the grace to read.

he sighed, his hands working to write down on his notepad, the looping of his letters becoming chaotic as every memory of el seemed to dance before his eyes. it was impossible not to miss her, not to think of her every possible second of the day.