Page 15 of Quiet Obsession
“Can you set the bar any lower or is that the lowest it’ll go?” I hand him my credit card. “Settle the bill, alright? I need air.”
Outside, it finally stopped raining, leaving puddles to dry in the autumn sun. I light a cigarette, filling my lungs with smoke, eyes on the wet ground. Poison filters through me and I exhale a gray cloud, the move never failing to calm my frayed nerves.
Hyde finds me leaning against the hood, lighting a second cigarette from the still smoldering first one.
“You good?” he asks.
“I hate that you came but I’m glad you did.” I crunch the butt under my boot.
“That’s usually how it goes with us.”
“Yeah... I fuck up and you show up even when I give you every reason not to.”
“I like hard cases.”
I take another drag, bracing for a rare bout of honesty. “I’m sorry I made you leave her.”
“You didn’t make me do shit, Creed. She sent me here.” He looks down the street toward a corner shop. “You want to grab anything before we head back? Beer?Whiskey?”
I shake my head, flicking ash into a puddle. “No.”
“Alright, good. Back to normal.”
Yeah. Back to normal... me pretending I’m fine and Hyde believing me for maybe an hourtops.
4
Millie
Me: You’ve been gone for three days and miraculously, I’m fine.
I texted Hyde that line this morning, but he didn’t appreciate my humor, reiterating that he’s just a phone call away if I need him. In his absence, I’ve familiarized myself with the campus layout and figured out the gym’s quiet window. There’s no one there at six-thirty in the morning, just me and the hum of the treadmill.
I run for an hour before the day truly starts, trying to outrun my past and the version of me that took up too much space, but once Dash shows up at my door and drags me to breakfast, any good that did vanishes.
I wish Hyde would come back for him.
He reminds me of the old me too much. He talks all the time about anything and everything he can think of, though only to me. I’ve seen him with other people, walking across campus, or huddled in the cafeteria, and his lips don’t move as much as they do when I’m around.
He must be extremely uncomfortable with my brand of silence. That’s... fine, I guess, most people are, but I wish he’d control his word-vomits because he makes me want to spill my guts, too.
I don’t mind listening. What I hate is feeling bad that I can’t trust him the way he trusts me. He doesn’t hold anything back, having never been punished for being too bubbly, and so, three days in, I know he grew up in an orphanage, he doesn’t know his father, and that his mother passed away. I know he was placed in foster care seven times, and every family sent him back within weeks. He’s extremely smart, but doesn’t believe it, even though when he was sixteen, he created an app he later sold for millions.
He calls it a lucky shot.
Noah, on the other hand, barely speaks. I love that comfortable silence after a noisy day with Dash. He takes me to his room every evening where we play chess late into the night.
Given how he makes my cheeks heat and body hum, I should steer way clear, but I can’t deny myself his company no matter how hard I try. He doesn’t feel the need to fill my silence.
It’s already past four p.m. and I lie on my bed, trying toread, but words blur before my eyes. My focus is shot this afternoon.
Abby said I could borrow her books anytime as long as I was very careful not to crease the spines or stain the pages, and I took her up on the offer. I’m three chapters into some rom-com that hasn’t made me laugh once when she comes in, two shopping bags in her hands.
“Your friend gave me a ride to town,” she announces.
Before I sayhior tell her Noah and Dash are my brother’s friends, not mine, the latter enters, dropping a bag on my bed.
“Snacks,” he explains, tipping the contents onto my gray comforter. “I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I got a bit of everything. There’s another bag in the car. If you need anything else, we’ll stock up on our way.”
