tangled up in blue

17

broken- jake bugg

Noah

Darren drove me to therapy that day, after Jace decided sleeping was more important than his mental health. I had been successfully avoiding him for hours.

Well, after I woke up in his arms.

"Have you been doing the mindfulness activities I set for you?"

"Yes."

"So if I asked you what they were, you would remember?"

"Absolutely not, no."

Dalia sighed at me. Sigh, sigh, sigh. That was all people seemed to do when they saw me. Did I inspire exhalation of breath? Did I put strain on the lungs with my presence? Or was everyone as thoroughly disappointed in me as I expected? There was a high chance that it was the latter. Actually, it was definitely the latter.

"You seem distracted today. What's on your mind?"

Now it was my turn to sigh. What was on my mind was the only thing on my mind, all the fucking time. An infuriating smile and a pair of golden brown eyes.

"Is it normal to think about someone that you hate? Like, all the time?"

She frowned. "I don't think it's normal to think about someone all the time if you don't care about them."

I frowned back, harder. "But I don't like boys."

"He's a he?" She said, fixing me with a calculating stare. Dalia and her calculating stares. Ugh.

"It's not like that," I blurted. "I'm straight. Of course I'm straight, I'm just thinking about him. Only because he's annoying me and is like, suddenly in my life every day and stuff, but I totally like girls, pretty, feminine, non muscular girls, and there's even someone who I think might be into me and she's popular and-"

"Noah," she said with a slight laugh at my nervous rambling. "I'm not accusing you of anything. But it doesn't matter whether you like Jace or not. You're valid regardless, and this is a safe space so-"

"Wait, wait wait," I interrupted, panic flaring in my chest. "How did you know it was Jace?"

"I didn't," she replied with a smile. "But now I do."

I glared at her, my cheeks flaming up. "See, this is why I hate therapy. All you do for an hour is make up complete lies and assume that they're true."

"Uh huh. Isn't that the jacket he was wearing last week when he actually showed up for his session?" She queried with faux innocence, pointing at my clothes. I realised with a jolt of nausea that she was right, and I shrugged it off immediately. I hadn't even noticed that I'd put it on that morning, having scrambled out of Jace's sleeping arms in a panic and subconsciously picked an item of clothing from his bedroom floor to look at least a little presentable for my 10am meet. The comforting smell of sandalwood hit me as I hastily pulled my sleeves out of the dark denim.

"I just, um, accidentally picked it up after we er, slept together." Her alarmed face made me back track in panic. "No, no, not like- we just fell asleep because I was crying and uh, n-never mind, but we didn't, we wouldn't-"

"It's summer."

I looked at her, caught off guard. "Uh, yeah. Sadly. What's your point?"

She rolled her eyes, her lips tilting upwards slightly. "My point, is that you wouldn't put on a jacket without thinking, because you wouldn't have been cold. Did you ever think that maybe you put it on for comfort?"

"What? N-no. Jace isn't a comfort to me. Like, at all."

I thought about the way I'd drifted off against his chest, his fingers stroking the loose curls of my hair and twirling the strands absent mindedly.