Page 21 of Laila Manning
All the bullshit I threw in her direction about friendship and what I was willing to give to her without the expectation of anything in return was, well, bullshit frankly.
I wanted her.
I craved her.
I needed her.
But I’d never have her.
So, I was settling for friendship. Getting just enough to ease the consuming ache inside of me to possess her.
I’d been gone from the estate as much as possible over the last six days, trying to convince myself I wasn’t hiding from her after my drunken, loose lips hinted at how fucking bad I wanted her. But every night when I returned, I’d look at her door and try to sense if she was inside, resting peacefully or being haunted by the monsters of her past in her dreams.
But tonight, while I was sneaking down the hallway, something on my door distracted me from her. It was a piece of paper, folded and slid between the door and jamb, waiting for me.
I flicked my glance back over to her door and caught the slightest bit of movement in the shadows under the door, showing that she was moving around by the door.
Was she watching through the peephole?
Was the note from her?
I grabbed the paper and unfolded it, instantly aware that it was Laila’s neat handwriting, and looked back at her door in confusion.
Instead of going inside my place to read the note, I stood there in the hallway and dove in. The paper was ripped out of a notebook, and there was a date at the very top.
Three weeks ago.
Skimming over the words, I realized it was a journal entry from three weeks ago.
From Laila’s journal. She took a page from her private thoughts and left it for me to read.
She was communicating with me. The only way she felt comfortable.
Dear journal,
I used to love sunsets. I remember lying at the end of my bed in my parent’s home as a kid, and watching the colors of the sky melt into a watercolor painting of vibrant pinks and oranges like a movie. It was one of my favorite things to do. Every night.
Untilthatnight.
The night I was taken from my life and thrown into Hell at nineteen. I never watched another sunset again. The end of the daylight meant that the night was beginning, and every night brought pain with it. So, sunsets started representing pain and suffering to me, and I stopped watching them.
Until tonight.
Tonight, I sat on the manicured lawn of an estate I have no business calling home and watched the bright yellow ball of fire light the sky ablaze with orange and red streaks of beauty.
And I felt like a piece of my past was returned to me. With the simplicity of sitting down and watching the sunset for the evening, I regained a piece of my soul. A piece of myself.
Why can’t everythingbe that easy?
Why can’t it all happen so effortlessly?
I just want to be happy.
XO, L.
I folded the paper back in half and looked back at her door, noting the two shadows, shoulder width apart at the base of the door, as nothing but silence met my stare.
She was watching.
