White Lies // Discontinued

Tragically Flawed (Chapter 2)

I think I'm going to try and put a song link on every chapter because I like sharing music with people and some of these songs are so damn good that they need to be shared. Most of them have nothing to do with the plot, but oh well. This chapter is North by Sleeping At Last because I fucking love their music and everything they release is magical. So here you go.

~Abigail

***

For the next week and a half, I went to the coffee shop as often as I could manage. There were a couple of days where I came home from work and got too drunk to go anywhere but my bed. A couple of times my depression snuck in and held me captive on my couch or in bed. The days after were usually the ones where I tried my level-best to stay sober all day and head to the shop after work.

You may be asking, as if it isn't blatantly obvious, why I put so much time and effort into visiting the shop more regularly. After all, the coffee hadn't gotten better, and the poor girl behind the counter still had violet rings under her eyes. There was still dust gathering in the more secluded corners where nobody bothered to run a dustrag over the window sills. The place was still desolate for most of its business hours. Nothing had changed about the shop, not really. It was more to do with a new face in the shop, one that I really wouldn't mind seeing again.

So, of course, sticking strictly to the cliché plot line fate had apparently chosen for me, I went back in hopes of seeing that kid who had been stuck in my head for the past week and a half.

He intrigued me, and rarely did anything intrigue me, given my usual apathy towards most of society. Frank, like all of us, had a story to tell. He had a past, dreams for his future, failures, aspirations, and I found myself wanting to know all of them. I wanted to know why he had a constant tremor in his hands. I wanted to know why my twenty dollar bill made such an impact on him that he felt the need to talk to me afterwards.

I wanted to know Frank Iero, and, honestly, that scared me.

My previous experience with wanting to know someone ended with them turning into a monster that I couldn't recognize. By the end, they had transformed into some terrible creature that yelled and threw bottles and clawed at my flesh with talons disguised as hateful words. They used words for weapons as often as they used their fists.

My previous experience with familiarity ended only with distance and silence. It ended with bruises, fractured ribs, scars in places that weren't too easy to hide. For me, familiarity ended with tears on the linoleum floor of a dim bathroom and wishing that every blackout binge drinking session would end with my body in some cold morgue somewhere, locked away and safe where he could never hit me again. For me, familiarity only brought heartbreak.

I doubted Frank was this kind of person, but I had thought that about Him as well. I had given someone the benefit of the doubt before, and it hadn't turned out too well.

My thoughts ran circles in my head, tripping themselves up every other step. I had started to develop a massive headache from it all. I was overthinking every moment and decision and word that occurred on the day that I met Frank. I wasn't sure yet how I felt about him, but I knew I wanted to see him again.

When I walked through the shop's doors. It smelled like old books and coffee, but there was a strange electricity mixed in with the air. Without even glancing around, I could tell that something important was about to be set into motion on the once insignificant December 9th. It was like fate had ingrained the date into my brain, marked for something very special.

Looking around, my eyes landed on the very thing they had been searching for, the very thing to eventually set my life into motion in a positive direction: Frank.