No matter how much she runs, Laura is stuck in an endless loop of her past. With a transfer of school and a curly-haired boy who seems to be wherever she goes, it's a matter of time she realizes that her universe ceases at the sight of him-and runni...
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"YOU'RE GOING ON A DATE TO THE LIBRARY?"
Weekend mornings were never peaceful—especially with Liam's head peeking through the doorway every two hours. Despite work and college sitting heavily on his face in form of slight rings at the bottom of his eyes, he hadn't managed to slip past one opportunity to make me bounce on my feet in sheer panic.
A pair of baby blue leggings toppled down to the floor. I breathed, shut my eyes, and stared.
"Liam—God. Get out."
Begging to God did nothing when you had walked headfirst into purgatory, apparently.
"Not the answer I require," he took a single step into my territory, and I suppressed a groan. "So, are you?"
I liked to think that one's thoughts didn't necessarily make them evil, but their actions did—except if my thoughts of murder right now were ever exposed to the world, I'd be behind bars for the very purpose of being a potential threat to the rest of humanity.
"Where I am going is none of your business, so stop being annoying," I forced a pair of jeans onto a shelf. Two hours remained until I saw Evan, and I was barely ready. "If you keep this up, I'll go on a million dates just to piss you off."
Now that the sentence rested in the air, it did sound like I was insinuating something.
He was quick to take note, lips quirked. "So, it is a date."
"Not—" I crossed my hands in front of his eyes, emphasizing my point. "—a date. Not."
He grinned. Picked up a book kept on my table, and knocked on it twice. "Alright, captain. I just had to get this back from you."
When he didn't leave at once, my eyes narrowed. He gave me a two-finger salute, words anything but genuine. "Enjoy your non-date, then."
I sure will, my eye roll countered with. Then the room fell quiet again, and the voices in my head started to overpower painfully, as if mulling over ways to take my mind hostage without a plan to hand it back. Even when my eyes were dead set to focus on nothing but my clothes, the box to the left of me was hypnotizing at a single glimpse—last summer flashing in fractions of distorted realisms: of what ifs and what nots and whys, until breathing had become unfeasible. I almost called out for Liam, just so his voice could float in the background and snap me out again.
My heart had felt heavy and compact all morning, as if it would both sink into the earth and dissemble all it had held to place. So I switched my gaze to the door, covered the box so nothing could be seen, and then waited for time to greet me to Evan.
▂
"To sum it up," I drew out a long breath, and his eyes caught mine in keenness. "You were travelling due to work—specifically, modelling gigs— and had barely landed at the airport that day I called you, and the first thing you did was rush to my place?"
