Breathless Behaviour

5

Alexandra

Someone was knocking on the door, loud, hard, obnoxiously so that even the pillow over my face didn't drown out the noise. They rapped their knuckles harshly and quickly even when I groaned out loudly, trying to tell them to stop but they didn't, they only knocked harder, making it impossible to fall back asleep.

Reaching for the pillow over my face, I throw it before I roll over, eyes closed, trying to get a few more seconds of shut eyes as I find my way out the bed and to the door, to open it for whoever didn't want me to get my full eight hours of sleep.

I move, finding the edge of the bed, wanting to stand up but getting tangled in the bedsheets around my body. My hands grasping at anything, trying not to tumble to the floor, to not land on my ass or face but failing, letting out a loud oomph just as another set of knocks begin.

On the floor, eyes still closed, I count, letting out a breath before I move like I know what I'm doing, trying to untangle myself as they knock more persistently. My throat dry, words raspy. "I'm coming!" Please stop, my head will hurt, I failed to add.

Still, they don't stop. They don't falter, they knock and knock until I'm on my feet, stubbing my toe on the bed as I walk to the door or try to. The room too dark for me to see around, everything foreign to me, from the floor to the layout. I try to find my way to the slither of light coming from under the door, my mind still not in the right place, none of my senses working at this hour.

I'm not a morning person, or at least not today, or at least at this hour.

What time was it anyways? Six? Five? Three in the morning? It felt like three, felt like I've only slept a couple of hours and not what I was used to and I really needed my sleep. My body had gone three days without the right amount of sleep and I really wanted to sleep, especially when that bed was the softest thing I had ever laid on- I had noticed the first night but refused to sleep.

After walking out of Heath Alricks office, having failed at convincing my father to let me come back home, I had wanted to walk to town, to find my own way out of here because not only was this place my worst nightmare but that man- who sat and looked at me like I was a nuisance- was an absolute piece of shit.

Maybe I was assuming here, maybe he was nice as Elliot had said and only had a bad morning but by yesterday's brief exchange of words, it seemed my stay here would be absolute hell which was exactly what my father wanted.

But joke was on him, I could manage four months here- I had managed two years in a college I hated, getting a diploma in a subject I loathed just to please him- this was nothing. The only thing that worried me, that did have me contemplating leaving were my brothers.

In my state of panic, of being so self immersed in my own thinking, in my own misery that my brothers had slipped from my mind. I had forgotten about the two men in my world, that I had promised many things to like every summer. I had forgotten about them and I felt like absolute trash because I was here and they were there, we weren't together and I was all they had.

With my father's long hours, my mother off who knows where, it was just us three. I took care of them, I went to their school, I helped them with their homework, I was what they had when our parents were nonexistent. They had been excited about our trip to the sanctuary, about a road trip down to one of my friends lake house and now with my father taking care of them or rather not, they would be miserable.

Finding the doorknob in the darkness, I unlock it and pull it open, bright light streaming across the room, making me squint. "What?" I ask to whoever is standing across from me.

I expect quick words, an apology, barking, anything with the way they were knocking but instead, there's nothing but silence on the other side. Trying to adjust to the light, I slowly crack my eyes open, seeing a white shirt over a broad chest, seeing a thick neck, seeing a tight jaw, seeing cognac coloured eyes trained on me.