Someone I Used to Know - By Blakney Francis Page 0,99
had begun and ended with Madeline Little.
It wasn’t a pair of green eyes I met when I looked up. My gaze went straight to Alfred who towered behind her, casting a skyscraper like shadow over both of us. I made sure he understood every ounce of the violence I was prepared to use if she didn’t get her hands off of me.
His brown hand clapped on her shoulder at the same time he murmured, “Let her go, kalkuahine.”
I didn’t know if it was his command, or the restraining hand that kept her from coming after me again, and I really didn’t care as I hurried away.
Letting my phone’s battery run down until it died had seemed like a brilliant idea when I’d been inciting every type of avoidance available to me, but as I walked, stranded, I realized it hadn’t been my most thought-out plan.
Without another option, I ended up at the front entrance that led through the studio, instead of cutting around to the back, like my usual routes did. In fact, the only times I’d ever used the public entrance were at the beginning of the summer when Cam needed to speak with someone on the business side of things.
At my bequest, the security guard seated behind the waist-high, rounded desk called a cab and reported the ten-minute wait back to me.
I sagged a little at his words, feeling the slightest relief in pressure on my chest, knowing that an escape was imminent. I glanced over at the small seating arrangement, finding only one person occupying a seat of the ten available. I should have felt relief at the lack of an audience, but instead I was stopped in my tracks for the second time that day.
“Nothing to say, little sister?” Thomas’ ashy blonde hair folded neatly down his part, just like it’d done the last time I’d seen him. He wore a little bit more weight, but he’d always been on the verge of too skinny, so the extra pounds suited him nicely. There were circles under his eyes, and mismatched buttons collecting his striped shirt together, but despite the uncharacteristic flaws in his appearance, he still looked very much like my brother.
I gaped at him, my mind as empty as the piggybank he’d tricked me into letting him have when I was five.
“Close your mouth and sit down, Adley. You’re going to draw attention to yourself, and end up summoning that flock of rabid paparazzi that’s been stalking you. If my friend Marcel over there is right, I only have about nine minutes to say what I need to, before you make your escape again.”
I weighed the pros and cons of Thomas versus the paparazzi before deciding that with Thomas, there was slightly less of a chance of sustaining physical harm. Like a petulant child anticipating the scolding of a lifetime, I sat across from him so my back was facing the glass paneling of the front of the room, where anyone strolling along could look in.
His blue-ish green eyes studied me for a long time, despite his assurances that time was an issue. I let him plaster us with silence, helpless to the warmth of being back in his presence. I had never missed him more than in the moment he sat only feet from me. If I’d dared, I could have reached out and touched him.
“I’ve had years to think up all the things I wanted to say to you. I’ve gone through just about every emotion I’m capable of; I’ve hated you; I’ve cursed the day you were born; I’ve regretted almost everything I’ve ever said to you, as if one sentence could have somehow solved all this; I’ve missed you so bad I wanted to come find you and drag you home kicking and screaming; I’ve wanted nothing more than to forget you.”
He let the words hit me without remorse. They struck the armor of numbness I wore, sticking with intensity I knew I’d feel later.
“But when that article came out, claiming that you were here in California, just minutes from us, and I knew I had to find a way to see you, there’s only been one thing that I’ve been able to think of,” he paused, daring me to try and stop him.
But what he didn’t know was that all those years he’d been hating, cursing, and regretting me, I’d been coming up with far worse things to tell myself every night. I’d spent four years imagining the moment I’d