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I’ve never hated my malfunction—my disconnect with others—more than I do right now.
All I want is to comfort her, to make up for this bullshit somehow.
But I don’t know how that’s possible.
So all I do is touch my fingers lightly to the door, pretending I can somehow reach her through it.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter.
I leave her things next to the door where she can easily find them, whenever she’s ready.
Before retreating to my room, I peel off my clothes and settle into the chair next to one of the glass walls with a tumbler of bourbon and all the self-loathing I’ve earned a thousand times over.
I never should have sucked Elle Lark into my black hole of a life.
All I can ever do is devour the goodness in everyone around me and send them spinning away, broken.
I must have passed out in the chair.
I didn’t quite get piss drunk last night, but I came close.
Now I’m waking up with a terrible crick in my neck and my entire body knotted up from being slumped in the chair all night. At first, I think I must have knocked myself out until evening from the grey-dark tint to the sky, but no.
It’s sunrise.
Something I almost never see, coming up over the horizon in splashes of spreading gold.
I linger on it with my mouth feeling dry and scummy. It’s not sour with the booze, rather the bitterness dwelling inside me.
The morning makes me wonder if Elle’s light will be dimmer, her sunlit eyes less radiant.
No. Not her.
She might burn less fiercely for a little while, but my shit could never snuff her out.
She’s too strong for that.
One fine day, I’ll just be one more bad memory she hardly thinks about at all.
“It can’t come soon enough,” I mutter.
I stand, rolling my shoulders and drifting to the window. If I’m up, I might as well take in this bizarre novelty.
Yet I’m not the only one awake.
When I hear footsteps, I almost retreat.
Elle’s up.
Standing outside, where I can just barely see her from my vantage point facing the sound.
She’s dressed in that pretty sleeveless dress again.
The morning wind blows it against her and breezes her hair back from her fine-featured face. Her coat and purse are piled on the shore, while she stands in the shallows with her shoes dangling from her hand, her face tilted to the rising sun.
The dawn paints her pink and gold.
Again, I’m struck by that crazy feeling that she isn’t fully human.
