The Search for Lily Myers ✓

03 | Tension

When Amelia started her car, she realized that she didn't know if she intended to drive back to Colton's place or to her own apartment.

All of her work equipment was at her place, but it wasn't as if she needed any of that on a Saturday. And yet despite having no particular need to go there, she found herself craving the familiarity of being in her old space even if it was starting to look empty as her belongings slowly trickled out to Colton's. One of the more unfortunate side effects of being such an anxiety-prone person was that it was extremely difficult to let go of her comfort zone, her safety net, completely. No matter how unsatisfied with where she was now and excited she was about where she was headed, letting go of the old and embracing the new was destined to feel like she had given up a piece of her identity, her very being.

And so, feeling like she'd had enough excitement for one morning, Amelia returned to where she knew best. She rolled down the windows as she drove down the twisted roads that led away from the nature preserve and back towards the heart of town, enjoying the fresh air that brushed along her cheekbones like a lover's gentle fingers. A creature of habit, she pulled into the same parking space she always used in front of her apartment building and double-checked that she'd locked her car behind her before she went inside.

It was a little strange to be in her own home with some of her belongings missing, but if she was willing to suspend just a little bit of disbelief, she could pretend that everything was still here. Nothing that Colton already had duplicates of had been moved yet, so the majority of her furniture remained in place. And her decor still hung on the walls—they still hadn't agreed on where he was willing to let her add some of her own artistic flair to his place. She didn't have to acknowledge that her bookshelves were empty, or that only half of her clothes were here while the other half was exploding out of a suitcase in his closet. This afternoon would have been a good time to continue packing things away—she only had a few more weeks before her lease was up and she'd have to be out of here for good—but Amelia told herself that she was too tired for that right now.

A nagging voice in the back of her mind (that sounded suspiciously like her mother's) gnawed at her, telling her that her stubbornness about moving on meant that she was making a mistake. But wasn't she allowed to be nervous about things that were good for her? Wasn't that just part of the human experience? She often found herself missing him when she wasn't with him, so why not go be with him?

It would hit her eventually that there were so, so many reasons why she shouldn't be with him, but at present, she was still wholly immersed in her denial. She shut herself in the bathroom, thinking that she needed a shower to wash off any grime she'd accrued in the woods, and avoided her reflection in the mirror while she stripped out her clothes so that she wouldn't have to look at that bruise on her shoulder. The spot was still tender as she slid her bra strap off.

Once her body was scrubbed clean, she bundled herself up in a bathrobe and returned to the living room to grab her phone from where she'd left it on the coffee table. She had a text from her friend Natasha.

Wanna grab dinner tonight?

She suspected that Colton wouldn't be home until late, anyway. Being a cop was his day job, but his real passion was music, so he'd formed a band with his buddies a couple of years back. Thus far, that had mostly only amounted to playing covers of popular rock and country songs in bars and hanging out in someone's garage to "jam," but they were finally getting around to recording an EP of original music.

Amelia hadn't admitted out loud yet that she had mixed feelings about it. She loved that he was doing something he really cared about, but he was pouring so much time into it that there had only been a couple of nights since she started staying over at his place that he'd even come home before 10 or 11 p.m. It made her nervous that he was being so absent while they started this new phase of their relationship, and deep down, she knew that she resented the fact that he was choosing to go all-in on this album right after pushing for her to move in with him.