Someone I Used to Know - By Blakney Francis Page 0,65
myself that she really doesn’t mean any harm, when the urge to bitch-slap her threatens to overwhelm me.”
We filled the rest of the ride with chatter of Madeline and her daily insane antics. It was wonderful to vent, to make light of the dramatics. Sitting outside of Cam’s house with Fran gossiping and cracking ourselves up, I realized how much I’d missed having a girl in my life that I could just hang out with.
“If it’s not too much of an inconvenience, do you think I could get a ride to set tomorrow?” I asked.
“Uh oh, is Declan driving you insane?”
“Don’t you dare try and convince me Declan’s really just misunderstood too!” I joked.
She made a pensive face that my light comment had no right to constitute.
“No… I think Declan might be the one actor who is exactly who he pretends to be,” she assured me with an appreciative chuckle and an oddly knowing twinkle in her eye.
I took in her assessment like I was sipping a fine wine; rolling it around, savoring it, taking my time to decide how I felt about it. I couldn’t pretend to know him, not really. A lot of times with Declan, I felt like he dumped gallons of personality on me, with only the barest slivers of his true self hidden within them. It was like he was constantly testing me, daring me to ask for more. But the truly shocking part of it was that I secretly got a thrill from all his tests, and not just the tiny doses of his real self either, even the horrid parts were starting to appeal to me.
I shuttered, startled by my realization. Those thoughts were forbidden. I needed to take a few steps back. Emotional, if not physical, distance certainly couldn’t hurt my situation with Declan.
“It’s nothing to do with Declan,” I lied, although my next statement was certainly true. “It just might be nice to have a little extra moral support every once in a while.”
Fran agreed, and I texted Declan that I wouldn’t be requiring his services the next morning. Once I was inside, I got changed into my pajamas and pondered my plans for the rest of my extended evening. The night passed, empty of the subtle beep beep that would signal a response from Declan, but I wasn’t worried that he hadn’t got it. He always read the emails and text messages he received, but almost never responded to them. Apparently, I was just as important as everyone else who didn’t warrant a reply.
On most nights I was utterly exhausted, but since my day had been cut short, I was wide awake and alone in the echoing mansion. I attempted to curl up with a book in the library, but the first edition of The Girl in the Yellow Dress glared at me from the other side of the room, and I gave up almost as soon as I began.
I decided a nice, warm bath might be exactly what I needed to relax, but there was only a shower in the bathroom that accompanied my room. Cam had a huge bathtub in his though, and I tiptoed through his room so as not to disturb the tomb he’d left, untouched since that day over a month ago, when he’d vanished in a whirlwind, almost as if he’d never really been there at all. It took forever for the water to fill up the tub, but it felt like heaven when I slipped inside.
The silence of the house boomed in my ears. Without Cam, the house was nothing, just an empty shell. It reminded me of what the loft had been like after he left. I’d been more than eager to sell it for tuition money when I needed it. Living there without him had been unbearable.
A little smart spending had stretched that cash out for a long time, but it was nearly drained after four semesters of school. The water seemed to rapidly chill around me at the thought. I yanked up the stopper and fled, closing Cam’s door behind me and trapping the stale, untouched air inside once again. Wrapped in a fluffy robe, I slipped under the sheets in my own room, without bothering to change. I hated thinking about my financial woes. It felt like the entire crew was doing jumping-jacks on my chest.
I’d rather think of nothing at all, so I closed my eyes, and that’s exactly what I did for the next eight hours.