Trust me Not | ✓

10 • agony

c h a p t e r

10

agony

♔

m y r a

IT WAS VALENTINE's DAY.

It is a celebration of love, a day for admirers and admiration. It was also a day for love that bloomed amongst friends, family and everyone in between. Valentine's Day had multiple forms for multiple people, and everyone had a choice in celebrating it.

My papa used to spend quite extravagantly on Valentine's Days for my ma, considering it was the day they had met for the very first time. Now, it was just another day for me.

Lily and Mira had, somewhere along the week, mended their relationship and got back to square one, something they did quite often. My sprain had healed, too, along with the little cracks in my heart from the phone call that had led me to seek retribution in the form of track.

I wasn't an athlete, nor was I built like one. But sometimes, the demons in my head got so loud that they would consume my mind completely and render me useless. My only outlet had been pumping down alcohol in my system or running.

It was a kind of outlet that was easy to find whenever and wherever possible whilst helping me maintain the image of a perfect conservative woman. I would run until my lungs would bleed out the poison from them. I would run until the ringing in my ears would subside. It was my twisted kind of retribution, one that actually made me feel something else.

My other forms of respite included numbing of pain that would otherwise shred my heart open for the world to see, demand all of my attention and yank me away from reality, the reality I desperately wanted to cling onto. For others, it may be delusion, even a false kind of belief, but despite the presenting facts that would call it null and void, it was my reality.

However, I had miscalculated one thing.

I hadn't expected Nicolás to find me in my moment of weakness.

I was on the verge, tethered to the edge of a cliff with no return. A bit, and I could have tumbled over, but in front of the very being that threatened my mere existence? Never.

My solitude was mine and mine alone, and it wasn't something I could just share with anyone or show anybody else.

I unconsciously rubbed my ankle, relishing the smooth skin that had once throbbed in protest.

"Oh my god," Lily exclaimed, taking a massive chunk out of a burger she had procured from god knew where considering it was Wednesday and our campus didn't hand anything that wasn't a part of the fine dining menu.

"Does it taste that good?" Mira asked, while looking down at her plate of asparagus tartare, "Fuck this, give me a bite."

Every Wednesday, Knightson served its students and staff, a vegan menu to be mindful of the vegan club founded by a third-year art student as well as cater to the vegan people of the higher society. It was supposed to aim for animal welfare and various other ethical reasons.

Lily handed her beef burger to Mira, but her attention on her phone hadn't shifted until she placed the device in front of us, "Look!"

On her phone was a picture of a number of very attractive men along with Nicolás. They were lean but built like athletes. One of them had their arms around him, and he was particularly taller, with a boyish smirk lining his handsome features.