Disclaimer: Please don't sue me. Or if the cast of Pitch Perfect were to have to turn up for a hearing, do.
So, I've progressed from 150 to 500 odd words. This is a bit like going from black&white to colour overnight. God forbid, I might actually break the 1k barrier before May.
This is meant to be a multi-chapter story. Of course, that means absolutely nothing to me: I write and abandon at the whim of my capricious muse.
For those who have read Waiting, you know a bit how this is going to go (though it isn't in reverse): I swear this shouldn't be anywhere near as traumatic-after all, Mirandy are unique in their angst.
Finally, fuck you for not doing paragraph breaks for some reason: I've had to use the break line, which sucks-I hope you're happy.
They didn't really speak.
Many years later, she accepted that if they had, she would have walked away without a second's glance.
Maybe she would have regretted it.
But it was not what she needed.
Not back then.
Oddly, it was not the silence that drew her. Hard to find any in the middle of a thumping bass. Unlike loneliness. But that was why she was here. Because she wanted to fit in. Because for one moment she wanted to feel a connection; a slender strand to one day guide her through the looking glass.
It was a bit like wind chimes.
Persistent.
Annoying.
Creating discord in the middle of a perfectly tuned beat.
Relax. Even as she chanted the familiar mantra in her head, she could feel the muscles in her cheeks tighten, her teeth clenching together even as her hand rose in a valiant attempt to cut out the noise.
It never reached its destination, caught frozen in mid-motion by the redhead's fluid spin.
That smile could pardon a lot of sins.
She accepted that in moments.
Aubrey didn't do religious. She didn't do fanciful either. Her father always told her truth was economic and precise, not open to interpretation.
But no curt words she knew could explain away this brightness. The way it made the redhead's face glow, almost from within. The way it warmed the ice blue of her eyes, melting what could have been a glacier to a summer's ocean. The way it tinged her skin so pliant that the very hand that still lingered awkwardly between them was filled with an altogether different longing.
Familiar tickle rose with a welcome discomfort, the movement to leave an ingrained habit.
"Don't."
Someone jostled Aubrey, making her reach out for the sticky surface off the bar, temporarily breaking her focus.
Nuances.
Those she had yet to fully understand.
Don't... touch me?
Don't... talk to me?
Don't... look at me?
"Don't go."
She hadn't been wrong about the warmth. It pulsed. She couldn't be sure to whose beat.
Her heart.
Her own.
The music.
Maybe to the measured rhythm of the foreign silence in her head.
The steadfast clasp around her wrist loosened to slide (caress) along her palm. "I am Chloe."
"Not—with me."
The tranquil aqua briefly brewed into a storm. Watching the redhead's irises darken, Aubrey almost reconsidered. She should have. She did. "I-"
"Okay."
Had never been good enough before.
It was tears in the bedroom closet when she was five.
Wretching in the bathroom when she was eleven.
Tasting the copper on the inside of her cheek when she was seventeen.
"Okay." The reiteration from lips so earnest that she allowed herself to wish that they could wash away the bitterness that one word always trailed in its wake.
With a jerky nod, Aubrey swallowed down feelings bursting to get out, plastering a practiced smile on her face.
Anxiety.
Panic.
Fear.
And later in the middle of the night, her back flush against the wall as she dissected Chloe's loose-limbed, slumbering sprawl—envy.
"Thank you", dressed again, she bent to whisper as the morning sunlight gilded auburn strands a fiery halo; I'm Aubrey locked behind impenetrable bars.