Spaces in between (Stockholm Syndrome: Extended chapters)

May 2017

~Archer~

I was overdue. Mom was livid.

It started off with Felix's meeting with a buyer being rescheduled to a week after it was supposed to take place. That required Felix to be in California for an extra week. I thought I could spend a week away from him, he thought he couldn't.

And so I told my mom I was staying in California for another week to "fix some things". I didn't stay for a week. I stayed for three weeks.

Felix had made plans to leave with me to our hometown for the summer break. When his meeting was pushed forward, he wanted me to stay. We'd never spent more than a week in different places. He promised we'd leave as soon as his meeting concluded.

It concluded, with him pocketing a lot of money. We didn't leave. We found something else to do; something that ensured my mom almost burst an artery.

"Stella says hi", I said to Felix, who was typing away on his laptop. It was the day after he had his meeting.

We were in his apartment in the living room, late in the evening. He was seated on one couch and I was scrunched over the one-man couch, going through my facebook and texting my friends. Both Stella and Clark had gone home.

"Hm", he said. He didn't look up.

"Booking tickets is really that hard that you can't talk?" I asked.

"Kind of", he said quietly.

You see, when you spend quite a lot of time with someone, you learn their habits and the small gestures they do that tell you a whole lot. Felix and I had spent a lot of time together. At first I had an obsession with his injury but overtime I realized I just liked seeing him. And so I spent almost every weekend with him and he made spontaneous trips to my apartment.

I'd learned something. He was almost perfect at hiding things. He had just one flaw, his voice assumed this characteristic low tone when he was doing something he shouldn't be doing and a small muscle near his dimple twitched slightly. To many it was inconspicuous.

"You aren't booking tickets, are you", I said. It was more of a statement than a question.

He looked up for the first time. "I'm booking...something", he said with a smile.

"Will it get me home?"

"Um...no"

"My mom will kill me"

He shrugged. "She can't kill you if you are here"

I stood up from the couch and dragged my feet across the grey Saxony carpet to sit next to Felix. He put an arm around me and pulled me close. I scrunched up my legs and peered into the laptop screen.

"Archery center? Archery...that's what you are booking?"

He'd filled in my name and his. He'd been filling out his credit card info, hence the concentration.

He looked at me with a grin. "They have an opening tomorrow, and a great spot".

"Tomorrow? So um...I'm not going home, am I?"