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Was it that terrible? Terrible enough for a part of me to decide I was safer without the memory?

Do I even want to know…

It’s easier not to name things out loud or in my thoughts. Naming them makes them real enough to lose control. And I’d be damned if I lost control now, especially when I’m so close to achieving everything that I’ve set out to do.

I like what’s happening with Damien. I do.

There are hours that feel borrowed now, as if I am only temporarily inside my own life. And they always feel peaceful when I’m with him. So I savor them slowly. They might end, they might be temporary but they’re real now and that’s all that matters to me.

By the time the weekend arrives, I am already in motion again, already doing what I always do, and pack to go back home.

My father is still somewhere out there at sea, moving from port to port for months. He’s coming back soon, but I’ve stopped measuring time around his return, and I don’t know what to do with the fact that things feel quieter when he’s gone.

Milo talks too much, laughs too easily, reaches for me, hugs me and makes life more bearable. Damien is there too. He drives, he waits. He is… present, in the same space, as if it has always made sense for him to be included in parts of my life that were never meant to overlap with anything else.

And it always ends up the same way, we end up at Heath’s coffee shop before going to classes again on Monday. We talk and he always picks up a new CD from there to try. We listen to it on the way back to St. Ellesta. It just happens the way repeated things start to feel inevitable and comforting. Same table, same distance, and same presence by your side.

The case exists somewhere behind it all. It’s held back, as if we both agreed without saying it that there are hours where certain things are not allowed to exist apart from us. And today, we came back earlier to sit on the cliff. Blue picked him as his personal heater now.

He’s still trying to understand what’s wrong with me and all I want to do is show him and let him decide if it's worth the pain. But instead, I draw and let him occupy my mind.

The flowers look more alive now, less petals are missing, and I’m not forcing it out of me.

We stayed there for hours, and then it was over. When he gets up to leave for his first class he gives me a small note shaped as a star. And it makes me smile.

“Don’t open it now, wait until I leave.”

I nod stupidly amused by this, “Okay.”

He disappears from my vision and I look down without thinking much of it at first, expecting nothing. Then I see it as I open the star.

Same place, same hour.

-D

77

Damien

Play - Purple Rain by Prince

Let me understand you

I had gotten good at noticing things she tried to hide. We’ve been spending more and more time together for no particular reason. But every time she smiled, and pretended everything was normal, I knew she was lying.

The silence that comes after a relapse and the way someone could be sitting right in front of you and still feel like they’re somewhere else entirely is a really strange experience.

She’s trying so hard to pretend she’s fine after that night, because she promised herself she would never do it.

Something bothered me about this. I can recognize the signs, the shaking hands, the avoidance when she looks at certain things for too long. But it wasn’t enough to understand.

And if I don’t understand what she’s running away from, how am I supposed to help her stop running?

I tried to focus on the note, the one with his signature, even if it was a joke, or something else, I should have focused on it and let it take over everything.

Instead I find myself watching her and realize that two fears are sitting beside me. One is the person out there who could hurt her. The other is the part of her that already knows how to hurt herself. Now that we’re in my car, I know I have to understand her to protect her from both.

“What’s going on?” I ask as I glance at her.