subdued subtleties ━━ keanu reeves

XIV. THE SILENCE IN BETWEEN US

❝ then he
disappeared,
and i've never seen
him again
since. ❞

CHAPTER FOURTEEN:
THE SILENCE IN BETWEEN US

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Unfortunately, Linda still wasn't gone after that shit-show.

She was still there regardless of the fact that I've basically mauled her earlier at the mall.

People were mad, of course. My father wouldn't let me talk to Linda even to say my apologies to her ─ it's all fine to me; she can ignore me all day, and I wouldn't give a flying damn.

The only problem here: Jovi wouldn't talk to me.

Ever since that day, he wouldn't dare catch a glimpse of me or even just look at me in the eye. Jovi wouldn't talk to me, and so would anyone I know.

As I rushed downstairs to eat dinner, Auntie Nida stared at me as if I've done a crime so vicious and so unforgivable. I only sit there and eat with them, trying my very best to ignore whatever the atmosphere is ringing into my ears.

They all looked at me simultaneously, heads turning at my every movement: from my descent to my seating.

I was inwardly delirious at that time. Confused, anxious and mad. Even my brother gazed at me as if he was ready to strike a hammer at me. Frozen at my seat, I break the ice by reaching for my plate.

The silence killed me as we all sat there and ate. The tranquility of the outside was a far cry from this empty void I'm entering as I took a bite from the mashed potatoes my aunt prepared. What was coursing through my body was nervosity and agitation, nothing else.

My brother just stared at me, and so did my father. Auntie Nida was busy washing the dishes since she was already ahead of us for she ate earlier. I try to brush it all off with a smile, but nothing really worked.

As Auntie Nida approached me to give me more mashed potatoes, she looks at me expressionlessly with such anger lying beneath the surface.

I smile at her, but she doesn't do the same.

"Why did you do that to Linda?" asked she, walking towards the sink to clean out the casserole.

Water running down her gloved hands, she tilts her head back to me, her palm pressing up and down the glass.

"It was... nothing."

"Are you sure that's just nothing? You basically ripped the skin out of her pretty face."

"I said it was nothing. It was just a bruise anyway. She basically scarred me here on my arm," I reach out my forearm, showing her the scratches that left a mark on my skin.

She sighed and shook her head, soaking up the sponge with the pink-coloured liquid that soon turned into bubbles of suds.

To my frustration, my dad joined in, completely ruining my mood. "Did you know what mess you just got yourself into, huh, Doll?"

"It's Linda's fault! If she weren't so stuck up to her little boyfriend then she wouldn't have gotten that shit!"

My father raised his voice, eyes widening at my foul use of words: "Watch your fucking mouth, Dahlia!"

"I don't give a damn!"

"Aren't you gonna shut that little of yours for talking back?!"

I stood silent as he just ran his mouth at me. Even Auntie Nida looked at us in utter shock as my father shouted at me like it was the first time he's ever done that.

There was a subtlety of anger within him: the way he looked at me so disdainfully only showed what was half of what he wanted to say.

"You're grounded, and that's it, you wiseacre. I don't need a smartmouth running around telling her father bullshit! You can't see Jovi anymore─"

I part my lips in shock and inwardly gasp at what my father had just said.

"You're a fucking hypocrite!"

They all look me with such judging eyes as they watched me slowly unravel to my bones and my flesh.

Silently, they all stared at me, slowly falling down to my knees.

Walking backwards, looking at them petrified with my breathing erratic and chopped, I slowly usher myself to the door, eye contact unbroken while finding the doorknob behind me.

Twisting the doorknob open, I immediately run out of the house while tears escaped my eyes.

I run faster and faster, legs on the verge of collapsing ─ tears surging like the waves of unchartered seas ─ cries so silent yet so amplified within my bones ─ I'm falling apart.

There was never much salvation left when you got nowhere to run into anymore.

But maybe when you go back to that place where you reminisce what you only wish to remember, maybe somewhere in your pounding heart, there's something that can slow the tension down.

I say to myself that now that I'm falling apart as I run away from sorrow, there's still hope left in finding home in something bound to to be broken.

Everything is the way how they're supposed to go, like crawling back to broken homes and finding joy in the bittersweet memory.

You wish it was just a hallucination you're begging yourself to wake up from ─ but it's not.

Because when I see hope, I only see a face I dread to see. Freedom was him when he's what's keeping from walking. As much as I begged myself to wake up from this nightmare, nothing good resulted from it.

Sitting in the lakeside, curled up like a ball, sweat crawling across my clothes as I bawled my eyes out, I heard a familiar voice tell me

Words slipped out of my mouth and broke when they met the surface. They were like mirrors a hundred feet up the ground. Like glass hanging on the edge of the table.

And when I said Pennytown is slowly falling apart, he dispersed into the air like ash in the breeze of the wind.

Then he disappeared, and I've never seen him again since.

Sure, I have, but he pretends as if I'm just this ghost in his world now. This voice he pretends not to hear.

It was as if we were both gone from each other's worlds ─ and it hurt me so much.