The phone chimes again.
I fully step off, a little bit unsteady on my feet with the tipsiness the whiskey has provided me, but instead of the buzzed feelings it used to give me in my youth, all it does is take the edge off the pain.
I can see why some people turn to it in times like this. I don’t want to be in control anymore either. I don’t want to feel anything.
Bending down, I lift the phone as the screen lights up with an unknown number. When I unlock it and open the messages, they land straight on mine.
Our texts range from outright decorations of love, to sassy commands, to lust-filled desires.
No.
I can’t do this. This is a form of torture I cross the fucking line at.
Just when I go to lock the screen, the red bulb in the corner reminds me of why I picked it up in the first place. Opening the text, my brows crease even further.
What the fuck is this?
“Indie!”
I whip round so fast, I tumble to the side. Jenna’s staring at me, Rex holding the door open to the stairwell as both look from the smashed whiskey glass to the phone, and then to me.
Jenna walks slowly towards me, like she’s approaching a cornered animal. “Are you okay?” she asks gently, and if she said that just minutes ago, I’d have laughed.
Now…Now I don’t know.
“I…” I drone off, looking at the phone, and then to her.
She takes another hesitant step. “I saw you from my room. What are you doing up here?”
“I was just…I don’t know.” My slurred words are carried off in a whisper with the wind. Honestly, I don’t know why I ended up here to begin with. I’m on the edge; it seemed fitting to witness its danger.
Rex comes up behind Jenna, and I notice how she allows it. “You wanna come inside and talk about it, Indigo?”
“I don’t know,” I repeat, nothing else coming past my lips. I’m not sure why I’m clinging onto what I think I hold in my hands.
I could have read it wrong. It’s not possible. It could be another lie.
That’s all anyone seems to do.
But he would be the first to see through it.
Maybe I did fall off the ledge there, and I’ve landed in the limbo of purgatory. Neither force knows quite what to do with me yet. Do we keep her, or do we send her upwards? Juggling the vigilante killer that only tried to do right with her heinous crimes.
“That’s okay”—Jenna smiles, holding her hand out—“but it’s really cold, and maybe we should go inside?”
The phone burns in my hands, and I clutch it tightly to my chest. “I-I found something,” I say, looking at them through my lashes. “I just don’t know what it means.” My words slur more at the end, and I see the alarm rising in Rex’s bloodshot eyes.
He’s in pain too.
He just isn’t acting as lost as I am; he’s channelling it into getting those that took his best friend away from him. I should have maybe asked him how he got through when he thought he lost Jenna.
An invisible hand slaps me against the forehead.
You just answered yourself.
You’re standing in its playground.
“Is it on the phone?” Rex asks, stepping forward, and I nod my head. My trembling arm slowly reaches it out, and he equally approaches me with the same caution. When his palm reaches mine, I place it in it.
