ᴀᴅ ᴍᴇʟɪᴏʀᴀ ~ ᴅᴘꜱ (ꜱᴛᴇᴠᴇɴ ᴍᴇᴇᴋꜱ)

27 - scalding truth

The world I'd finally grown to love came to an abrupt halt on December 15th, 1959. I didn't find out until almost 20 hours later. The days following that moment blur together and, frankly, I have no desire to decipher them. I do, however, wish I could remember how I ended up at this small, cluttered coffee shop for the second time in my life.

Somewhere in the liminal space between that Sunday and now, I'd managed to drag myself out of bed and to a phone. I'd felt like I'd owed it to the boys to at least make an attempt at reaching out. Upon the 5th ring, however, nobody had picked up. My heart skipped a beat as I remembered the circumstances around my last phone call to them, ripping me out of my haze and flashing me with painful memories. I'm grateful for the shock, though; without it, I would have hung up before...

"Hello?"

Knox's voice carried through the phone like a tsunami, crashing down any facade of stability I'd built up.

"Knox?" my voice cracked.

"Ivy?"

I sniffled, fruitlessly trying to compose myself. "Yeah, it's me. I'm..."

I hadn't been sure how to continue. Every second I spent exchanging pleasantries felt like a performance, dancing around the point we both knew would eventually come up. It felt wrong to outrightly ask, though. I didn't have to make a decision, thankfully, because as my sentence faltered, Knox had picked up the slack:

"I know. It's hard to talk about. I'd ask how you're doing, but that just... I don't know. I think I can take a pretty good guess." I couldn't see him, but I could sense him attempting a lopsided and apologetic grin on the other end.

I hummed in acknowledgment. "I just felt like I had an obligation to reach out, to see how you guys were."

"You're probably lucky you got me, then. I don't think you'd manage a word out of the rest of them."

"It's that bad?"

He'd sighed. "Look, I just picked this up on the way to class, so-"

"You guys still have class?" I gawked.

"Uh, yeah. Unfortunately. Headmaster Nolan is trying to breeze past... everything. I think Mr. Perry has him in his pocket, honestly."

I started to say something else, but he'd cut me off. "Like I said, I'm on the way to class, so I really can't talk right now. It was nice to hear from you, Ivy. Is there someone else I can get for you? Meeks, maybe?"

Meeks. Right.

"Oh, yeah, if he's nearby, please," I'd said. The rest of the call muddles together.

Now, a day later, I sit in the small cafe and contemplate the first time I wound up here. Both times I'd entered on the brink of tears, but under drastically different circumstances. My final failed call to my parents had plagued my mind that Sunday, catapulting me into one of the most positive things to come from this horrid semester: my relationship with Meeks. Now, though, as I sit, blankly staring into the mug in front of me, I envy the simplicity of my prior problems. Another mis-matched mug steams from across the booth.

The still surface of the coffee reflects back at me.

God, I really look like hell.

Before I can critique my poor reflection too much, a bell chimes from the front of the cafe. I glance out the window to see a bike haphazardly chained to a nearby rack. The dulled metal and battered sidebars trigger memories from the trip to Chris's party. Had that really only been just under 2 months ago?