𝐈𝐍𝐊 - JAMIE CAMPBELL BOWER

19

  The typewriter is still at your desk and it's collecting dust. You've been too afraid to use it again. You didn't need another Jamie running around wreaking havoc and frankly, you were fearful of what other strange powers it had.

     It's been three days and you haven't heard much from Tom. None other than the text he had sent you almost two days ago, saying that Jamie's illness had cleared up completely. That was the best news you'd gotten in forever.

     But now that he was gone, you weren't sure what to do. Even as you drag yourself out of your room to join Xander for a morning meal, you felt entirely empty. Like an important part of you was missing.

     "Hey..." you say to Xander, reaching to swirl the straw of your smoothie. It makes a nasty sloshing sound, but the fidgeting calmed your anxiety and it sure did beat drinking it. The grey liquid was a weird concoction of protein powders, and vegetables....it may as well have been dirt.

     This was what he called breakfast.

     "Hey," Xander responds, glancing up from his phone for half a second. The canyon grows larger.

     How in the world you made it through three days without breaking down, you weren't sure. There was so much you needed to sort out with him. So much you needed to sort out with yourself.

     You ache to grasp the feelings that were once there for him and fail. Actually, you were beginning to wonder if they were ever there at all.

     "Can we talk?" you ask, hesitantly. He still hadn't given you so much as a glance. His dark eyes were trained on his phone, fingers tapping busily away at whatever was on his screen. There was a canyon of emptiness between you two and you were worried it was going to swallow you whole.

     You felt like strangers now. As much as you tried to tell yourself it was all in your head, there was no denying it. A whole lot had changed.

   "Hm?" he responds, glancing up from his phone for half a second.

     You try to smile instead of sighing. No need to rouse anyone up. "Can we talk?"

     "Sure," he shrugs. Your heart uplifts at the thought of him putting his phone down, but he doesn't. It starts to ring to which he frowns and draws his eyes back to the screen. "I have to take this. We'll talk later, 'kay?"

     "But I think we should—"

     "Later," he adds in a tone that told you he wasn't negotiating. From there, he takes his greyish smoothie and his business phone and leaves the kitchen briskly.

     Ah, yes.

     This part didn't feel foreign or strange or out of place. You remembered what this felt like, constantly being ignored and neglected. A chuckle escapes you when you acknowledge the entirety of it all. That little dream of a life with Jamie was gone and here you were, woken up exactly where you'd started.

     It's not that you were even thinking of Jamie romantically. It was the fact that Jamie made you feel appreciated and cared for and more special than just about anyone else in your life. Besides Tom, of course, but Tom didn't live with you. Tom wasn't always there to see you at your best or your worst. He wasn't there to dry your tears.

     But then, Jamie existed, and now you couldn't even have that.

     Xander was already walking away. You bite your lip and tell yourself a million times not to say anything more. Keep quiet, don't make him angry, it's better this way.