Freefall ✓

15 | foggy

How can emptiness be so heavy?

—unknown

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Lost my Mind- Finneas

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AUDREY

The bookshop had gone quiet. It was the kind of dense quietness in which I found myself hoping that the bells would actually tinkle, that a customer would actually come in and pull me out of the murky void of thought I was gradually falling into. 

But no, the deafening silence around me only grew and grew, like a terrifying venomous fungus.

I forced myself busy sorting out newly arrived orders. The boxes were conveniently located in a corner under the staircase and I happily buried myself inside the narrow region, feeling in need of hiding from something. Probably from my thoughts. 

But how does one hide from her own thoughts? 

I shook my head, my eyes shut.

It'd been two weeks. 

Fourteen complete days. 

Three hundred and thirty-six full hours. 

Twenty thousand one hundred and sixty insufferable minutes. And not a single one slipped past without having thought about him.

It was inconceivable. The classes I shared with him were intolerable because all I could see and focus on was him. The classes I didn't share with him were even worse because still, all I could see and focus on was him.

I couldn't cope with the new indifferent expression he adopted for when our glances dared to cross. It was a cold look, a calculated look that fell at the midpoint between bitterness and total unconcern, but most importantly that pushed us apart to an impalpable distance. 

What are you complaining about? Why aren't you happy? Wasn't that what you wanted? Wasn't that what you aimed for? Distance and space, lack of distractions? 

Even the little voice in my head was annoyed with me. Aargh. I needed to get out of my mind. I needed to do something. Now.

I opened one of the boxes, my attention instantly flashing at the pack of identical thick novels right from the middle. Taking one out, I was immediately engulfed by the familiar fragrance of freshly printed paper, feeling like an experienced baker upon his freshly-baked baguette. It calmed me down. My fingertips caressed the paperback's glossy convex title lettering.

  Atonement. I remembered hearing about it for ages, and being intrigued but for some reason still not making any attempt towards reading it. Almost involuntarily, my hands opened the silent story to its first page.

The play, for which Briony had designed the posters—

"Boo!" 

My pulse leaped the moment two pairs of hands gripped my shoulders from behind, suddenly. "Ahh!!! What the—Dominic, for gosh's sake, was that really necessary?"

He shook his head and long curls along with it as he snickered, dimples protruding. "Didn't think you'd actually be so frightened of me. Who are you hiding from anyway? Clients, in need of attending?"