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“So, what do you want?” I demand, looking at the three of them.
“The girls told us what you’ve been doing and we wanted to see it for ourselves.” Phoenix eyes my car and the set up I have within it assessingly. “Do you even have a place to live?”
“You’re looking at it.”
He turns his gaze on me and if I didn’t know any better, I’d say he looks almost impressed.
“Every night?” he asks, grabbing the second cup of coffee from Rogue and handing it to me.
I feel like I’ve just passed a test. Given I know the things he did to get Sixtine back, I’m hoping his approval means I’m making progress with Nera.
I take it, nodding. “Every night.”
It’s been four weeks since my first day at the culinary institute in Lyon. Four weeks since I drove back to Aubonne that same evening and tried unsuccessfully to get Nera to speak to me.
I’ve been back every night since.
Thirty-two nights.
Thirty-two mornings waking up without having spoken to me.
Every day, my afternoon classes end around seven o’clock. I clean and pack up my station, get in my car and drive the two and a half hours to Aubonne. I always bring with me meals I’ve made for her. Usually, they’re a mix of new recipes I’ve learned and her standby favorites, in the hopes that it’ll make her forgive me.
Every day, my journey back to Aubonne is always the same. I park in The Pen’s parking lot, in the same spot I usually do right under Nera’s window. I ring her doorbell and wait anxiously for her to come down and grab the food.
Every day, I find myself holding my breath when I see socked feet coming down the steps of the building staircase. Instead of relief it’s dismay that hits me when I realize it’s one of her friends.
They come to the door for her.
She never does.
Not a single one of those nights.
It’s emotional torture not seeing her. It’s even worse knowing that she’s not similarly affected. I feel like I’m losing her, like she’s slipping through my fingers no matter how tightly I try to hold on.
“Is she taking care of herself?” I ask the girls.
At first, they simply nod curtly, grab the food, and go back upstairs without a word. Over time, they mollify. They start to give me small smiles, to answer my question, to ask me how my day was or how my program is going.
Yesterday, Sixtine even gave me a quick hug.
They feel sorry for me, I think.
I’m withering away without Nera and it’s showing, physically. I knew time was never going to do anything to dull the throbbing pain, but I hadn’t expected it to make it worse either. Every day that passes without her feels like I’m falling deeper and deeper into eternal oblivion.
I live in wait for her to be the one who comes down those stairs.
In the meantime, I resist the temptation of barging past her friends, taking those stairs three at a time up to her apartment and dragging her out of her room and back into my life for good.
Every day, once her friends have taken the food back to their apartment, I head back to my car. I always throw a glance up at Nera’s window to see if she’s there, but she never is.
Every day, I sleep in my car. I keep the backseat perpetually down, that section of the vehicle now designated as my bedroom. I've done what I can to make it as livable as possible by buying a cushioned mat, a sleeping bag, and a space heater for the very chilly nights.
I even have the framed posters she gave me leaning against the back windows providing some decoration.
“Aren’t you fucking cold at night, even with that thing on?” Rhys asks, nodding at the space heater.
If only he knew. At six foot four, no space heater is large enough to heat my entire body against a subzero March winter night.
