a nap for myself. Then I'll head to the store and pick up the groceries I neglected to buy on the way up here. In the evening, I'll cook myself some dinner and relax in front of the T.V. There's no cable or internet up here, but there's something comforting about selecting a DVD from the cabin's respectable library and tucking myself up on the couch with a blanket—I usually pick ‘Die Hard With a Vengeance,’ since it was Grandpa’s favorite. The man loved anything with Bruce Willis in it.
I fix my tea with milk and a dash of sugar, the English way, Nona says, and I gingerly carry it up the narrow stairs in one hand, my guitar in my other, trying not to spill any liquid on the way up. Thankfully, the deck is partially covered by an overhang from the eaves so I can sit out there in an old, weatherworn rattan chair with the waist of the guitar resting snuggly against the top of my thigh and not get soaked by the rain.
It comes down in sheets over the lake, pitting the surface of the water with millions of tiny ripples. Across the other side of the lake, a column of smoke rises from another chimney, but I can’t see the other house. There’s someone over there, just like me, hiding from the world inside a small, warm cocoon; they’re probably looking at the column of smoke rising from this cabin’s chimney, trying to pick the building from the masts of the trees, too. It’s so secluded here that it is mildly comforting to know there’s someone out there. Not that I’d have a hope of finding or reaching them if I needed help, but still…
I fingerpick my way through a series of chord progressions, warming up my hands, stitching a melody together, trying to keep my mind as blank as humanly possible, but it proves difficult. I can play without any real concentration on my part, so a succession of thoughts parade through my head, one by one, all demanding my close attention.
“I’m not going to force you to fall for me, Silver. You’ve already been forced to do too much. But don’t blame me if I try and change your mind.”
Alex's words had felt like a promise. They felt like an omen of some kind. He's not just going to let this lie. He's already shown himself to be a determined person who gets whatever the hell he wants. Turning up at my place after I told him our lesson was off and hanging out with my dad until I came home? Yeah, that proved that well enough. It was there in his eyes, though: a steel will, focused directly on me, telling me in no uncertain terms that I will give him what he wants when all is said and done. Does it matter that it seems to be what I want to? I'm so fearful of that—my own urge to hand myself over to him, even though I know just how dangerous it is to contemplate such a thing. I've trusted before, and in turn, I've been so badly burned. My scars are all internal, but they're there, brutal and horrific all the same. He can't see them. He can't know how deep they run.
I’m too broken and too flawed. I can’t get him out of my head, though. Like the oxygen bonded within my own blood, he’s an ever-present constant that I can’t deny myself. He’s with me, listening and watching as I play, his dark eyes unknowable, his thick, wavy hair falling down across his face, soft mouth quirked up at one side in that infuriating way of his. Even as a projection from my own head, I can’t figure out what he’s thinking as he leans against the deck’s railing in the rain, his posture relaxed and wound tight at the same time.
After thirty minutes, sifting through a litany of situations and possibilities, where I manage to overcome the damage Jake Weaving and his friends did to me and I somehow find the courage to tell Alex that I like him, I realize that I’ve only managed to convince myself just how impossible any of it would be. Not the outcome I was hoping for, but it seems to be the truth. I wake up panting some nights, soaked in sweat and tangled in my bedsheets, trying to fight off an echo of violence that has already taken its