Past Present Future

.17

Emory Allen's POV
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The room was still a complete mess. I flipped the page of Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare, sinking into my pillows as the rain plastered against my bedroom window.

"Will. For a moment her heart hesitated. She remembered when Will had died, her agony, the long nights alone, reaching across the bed every morning when she woke up, for years expecting to find him there, and only slowly growing accustomed to the fact that side of the bed would always be empty."

This wasn't a novel I should be reading, but lately I was becoming attached to depressing things. Cassandra Clare was connecting with me on a topic I was supposed to be getting over. My sister would be upset if she knew I was lying in bed on a Friday night reading a sad romance novel, instead of getting out, and mingling like she had insisted so many times before.

I flipped to the next page,

"The moments when she had found something funny and turned to share the joke with him, only to be shocked anew that he was not there. The worst moments, when, sitting alone at breakfast, she had realized that she had forgotten the precise blue of his eyes or the depth of his laugh; that, like the sound of Jem's violin music, they had faded into the distance where memories are silent."

Suddenly my heart was going back to him, to a place it hadn't been in so long, yet missed so deeply. I was the princess in this novel - remembering the color of his eyes and the sound of his laugh.

I slammed the book and placed it on the nightstand beside the bed. My baby sister Kristen was right about one thing, depression is an easy hole to get stuck inside of. Her wedding party was in three weeks and I knew she was expecting me to bring someone as my date. I could imagine her face when I showed up to the lunch alone, she'd look at me with those piercing blue eyes and say something insulting in front of all her Barbie friends. Not that she was trying to insult me, it just happened to be the type of personality she had. On top of all of that, one of her Barbie friends happened to be my ex.

Benjamin jumped onto the queen sized bed and purred as I rubbed his coated fur. I thought of the tall Carmel skinned woman who used to be my universe. Lacey and I dated for over a year and swore we were soul mates, then life did its thing and twisted my world upside down. Now she's my baby sisters best friend and my fellow brides maid, absolutely wonderful.

I was seriously contemplating picking up someone at a bar just to bring them with me. I would even go as far as paying them by the hour, anything to avoid my sister and Lacey mocking me for the entire lunch.

"You'd be the perfect date, wouldn't you Benji?" I kissed my cat on the nose and he meowed in response.

Sitting upright, I found my disgusting reflection in the mirror across from the bed. Bed head, baggy clothes and bad breath - almost like I hadn't left the bed the entire day. It was nearing eleven o'clock but it didn't feel like time was moving. I kept thinking about the stupid party that was still weeks away; there was most likely no way that I'd find someone to bring with me, not with such little time. I should've tried harder earlier, or accepted that guys offer in Walmart when he asked me out.

"Ahhhh," groaning into the pillow, I tossed off the covers and stepped out of the bed right onto a heel, "Oh, shit!" Benjamin purred and I rolled my eyes after tossing the damn heel towards the closet. Cleaning wasn't my forte as I was generally an unorganized person, somehow I managed to seemingly keep myself in line on the outside.