Love Letters And Coffee (Chaelisa)

1

Snow had dangerously layered the earth in a blinding white dust. Not enough to build snowmen out of, or to shutdown school commutes, but just enough to make the ground as steady as slippery ice and to remind the people of its presence. Winter had most definitely arrived.

The sanctuary of four walls was supposed to mean a reprieve from the frigid air outside. It was supposed to allow for gloves to be shed, for buttons to come undone, for scarves to be lost somewhere amongst the couches and chairs. But instead Lisa found herself tugging the thick coat tighter into her chest as she stared at the apartment filled floor to ceiling with boxes upon boxes of the life she had just wanted to escape. Though in her mind there was absolutely nothing about this new life that she had decided upon herself, instead an unhappy and forced participant.

The new key in her coat pocket was a tangible reminder of the new life she had found herself running towards. Or maybe it was the haunting memories of an old life that she was running from. She wasn't really sure and the inability to put words to these feelings nearly killed her inside.

It had been eight months, seven days and six hours since she had last written anything of substantial importance. And even those words fell flat as she forced herself to meet the deadline that she had postponed three times, three months to her publisher. Though the critics seemed to eat up the words as if the woman writing them was a visionary. A transformation they had called it. From light to captivatingly dark or some uppity bullshit.

She had written two, now three as of two weeks ago, best selling novels about a post apocalyptic land in Northern America. The land was rough, and its people rougher and yet the heroine of the story was still filled with so much hope and determination that readers felt that this girl alone could bring peace to a land so distraught with disease and turmoil. A land where the social issues of today mattered little and the biggest accomplishment one could achieve was surviving through the night. And yet her main character did more than just survive. Or at least she had until Lisa's world came crashing down around her.

In her third book, the story went from an impossible yet inevitable sense of hope to complete and utter domination and stoicism. It left readers wondering how the main character would bounce back after being betrayed by the woman she loved, a spy from an opposing clan sent to befriend and use her, managing to break her heart. A girl written in the likeness of her now ex-girlfriend who the heroine had been in love with since the end of book one, since Lisa had met Somi.

Lisa never really could completely separate herself from the characters she invested her life creating. She left bits of herself in every character, even the villains that made people cringe and begin to actually form a hared for. The worst parts of her personality magnified and left bare for the world to consume.

She had planned out the plot for her third book for half a year before she set fingers to the keyboard. And hope was again the basis through which all plot lines were written. But then half way through the novel her girlfriend of three years, the love of her life, her entire reason for waking up, decided that what they shared was no longer worth it.

Lisa hadn't seen it coming. In retrospect, she wasn't quite sure how she had missed it. How she didn't see the slow transition from blissfully happy to barely content. Maybe it was because for three years it was her and Somi against the world and the thought of anything else being possible hadn't ever crossed her mind.

But that was fourteen months ago and the two year lease on the studio loft in Sydney that they had rented had ended and Lisa couldn't fathom the idea of staying one day longer haunted by a series of walls that held both fond memories and devastating ones. And it's why she found herself in Melbourne in the cold air of winter in a new apartment whose heater had just turned on and would likely take hours to heat the room to even a livable temperature.