*NOTE: Check out the Audiobook version of this chapter voiced by kaelking12 (Kristen M.)! Featuring music by Gabrielle Aplin & Paramore.
Dear Nobody,
It's been three weeks since San Diego, and...Elias is missing.
Yep, you read that right.
The mysterious Mr. King vanished without a trace twenty-four hours after we got back from his dad's.
Normally, I'd be worried to the point of calling the police, but ...worrying is a luxury of the non-guilty.
Truth is, the whole Elias being MIA situation is basically my fault.
And I know what you're thinking.
What did you do now, Alex? What stupid, snarky, or possibly Kai-related comment could have led to you not seeing Elias for almost a month?
Well, I have a confession to make, Nobody.
I'm a snoop. A cat burglar. A nosy Nancy.
And, now my nosy tendencies probably have resulted in a missing person.
So you're probably wondering what happened?
The good news is, I've finished all my homework for the week, so I actually have time to write (talk?) to you.
So, sit down and grab a blanket because this is where things get interesting.
Let's rewind back to the part where Elias and I fell asleep together on a beach.
And when I say fell asleep, I mean we were wrapped up in each other to the point where things got complicated.
Not like, sexy time complicated, but emotional history kind of complicated.
I don't know if you're in the business of falling asleep next to someone you still can't figure out how to feel about, but it's hard.
And, no, I don't mean that in the way Elias would because you can imagine what he would've done with that sentence.
I mean that once we reconnected, once he let his guard down, and I did mine, it was hard to untangle ourselves from each other.
It was hard to breathe.
To stop touching.
To stop kissing.
So, we didn't.
Not until our lips got numb and exhausted from all the ways we'd been missing each other.
And as much as I've been trying force myself to believe that I haven't missed him, I have.
I've missed everything we used to be before things went bad.
And I miss parts of who we are together now.
Is that crazy?
Quite possibly because the reality is, it was only a weekend.
I shouldn't be obsessing over forty-eight hours, but I am.
And I don't know what happened to logical, rational Jersey but somewhere between LA and San Diego she got run over by a truck.
Normally, I'd be able to step back from all this and realize that pretending to date Elias obviously isn't the same thing as actually dating him.
But just like it was a little over a year ago, I couldn't tell the difference. And, it scares me because I've seen how quickly he can change, how present he could be at one moment then be completely distant the next, and, despite knowing everything that makes Elias, Elias, I've spent the last three weeks missing the person he became the second we got into Indigo's car.
Elias seems so much older now. Heavier. Like he's carrying around as many secrets as I am and trying to convince the world that they aren't weighing him down.
Maybe that's where we connect. Where we've always connected.
We keep sadness hidden under our skin in the same ways. But what makes Elias, Elias is that he allows me to. He doesn't force me to talk about everything that's wrong with me, and it's because of that quiet respect that I can actually feel normal.
He's the only person who lets me be me--secrets, reservations, and all.
And one day, if I learn how to outrun my demons, I'll be fully honest with him.
But right now, I'm just trying to be honest with how I feel about him.
At the start of the year, I wanted nothing to do with him because all my instincts told me to run. They told me not to trust, to keep my distance, to pretend to love someone I didn't--just to stay away from the person I did.
And it worked for a while.
Bitterness always does.
But then San Diego happened, and only after, did I realize how stupid I was.
For not seeing he'd changed, for refusing to change myself.
He's grown up so much. I felt it in the way he handled me. He's more patient with me.
Mentally.
Physically.
His lips weren't hurried and hungry as I remembered them being last summer. He didn't kiss me like he wanted to take things to a point where we'd lose control.
He kissed me slowly, softly, intensely like he'd laced his lips with every word he wrote in that book.
Moments like that bring out the poetry in people. And I felt it in him.
In the way his hands were so careful with me, never desperate, never demanding, but deliberately patient.
Gentle.
You know how there are those times in life when you're completely blindsided by something you don't expect to be? Well, this is one of those times. I thought that going back to San Diego would be an escape. That we'd spend two days together, get last summer out of our systems, and move on with our lives.
But that's not what happened.
What happened was me coming to realize that despite our history, I'm...less over things between us than I thought I'd be.
I could get over someone who purposely left me after taking my virginity.
I could get over someone who was using me until he found someone to fill my place.
But that's not what Elias did.
And all the letters I've read so far are proof of that.
I guess it's just strange after a year thinking the feelings I had for him weren't one-sided. He was suffering from the silence and distance as much as I was.
And now, after three weeks of silence. Three weeks of sitting in his class staring at his empty chair while his words fill the room. Three weeks of not thinking about anyone else but him.
I don't know if I want to be over him anymore.
Maybe I never wanted to be in the first place.
I just thought I had to be.
The thing is, nobody's ever prepared to lose anyone. We're not built to lose. We're built to love and keep loving, but then life happens. Life sets a big, fat, bear trap right in the middle of your happiness but 9/10 times you're too busy frolicking around the fields to see it.
You're too lost in a moment to ever think that you'll lose anything at all.
And then you do.
You give all of yourself to someone one day, they're gone the next, and suddenly you have to force yourself to stop feeling.
You turn every good moment backwards and tell yourself that the memories are a waste of time. You fill the hole in your chest with pins and needles, paint the world black, and go to sleep thinking that love wasn't ever a solution, but a problem.
A mistake.
Just like he was.
Just like you still are.
You become a walking, talking portrait of regret.
So you promise yourself that you won't fall for anyone again.
You pick relationships you can control.
You pretend to love people who make you feel nothing.
You make love to your ghosts.
Until they come back, still willing to take you back despite your tantrums, your chaos, despite your own self-destruction.
They love you, out loud, until you are whole.
And I think, that's what Elias is doing.
Honestly.
Earnestly.
And it's taken me a long time to believe in that.
In him.
But I'd be stupid not to.
He showed up with his heart in his hands, holding a book that breaks me every time I read it, looking and acting like the man he's meant to be, but it scares me.
I'm scared every time he looks at me.
Of everything he makes me feel.
Of falling into the kind of love I know he'll give me because I'm already there.
I am falling for the one person who terrifies me the most and what's worse is--there's nothing I can do to stop it.
I'm out of control.
I'm spiraling.
I'm a complete mess.
And it only took three weeks without him to realize how necessary being with him is.
I just hope I'm not the reason he's gone.
Three weeks ago, I woke up alone in Indigo's car, bundled up in a sweat shirt that smelled like him even though there was no trace of him to be found.
It was close. Too close to before, so...I panicked.
I blinked the sleep out of my eyes, put on my beat-up shoes, and ran down to a beach hoping to God that San Diego wouldn't turn into another Belmar.
That day is still my veins. Hiding in the places nobody sees. Kicking around my memories. Stealing the air out of my lungs. But before it could suffocate me, I ran down a new and unfamiliar beach until the crisp Southern California air filled me up with something that felt like hope. Like distance. Like difference. And the difference between that horrible afternoon in New Jersey, and that beautiful morning in San Diego, was him.
I was hardly ten steps away from the car when I found Elias.
Lying in the sand.
Still sleeping with an open notebook in his hand.
And for a couple minutes, I stood there in complete silence, just taking him in. I held my breath listening to the ocean crest and break on the shore in time with his steady breathing.
And I got lost.
Lost in him.
In the defined angles of his sand-dusted jaw, the faded flush in his cheeks, and the long curve of his eyelashes.
I lingered on the troubled furrow of his brow. His parted lips. His helplessness. His vulnerability.
Honesty.
After a year of silence and separation, in the space between seconds, I got lost in my ghost because my ghost found me.
But I guess, a ghost's not a ghost, if you can reach out and touch him. If you can spend the night kissing him. Holding him.
Reminding yourself that your past was real.
As real as your present.
And in that present moment, standing next him wrapped up in feelings about as confusing and terrifying as the price tag of my dress, I made a mistake.
I let my curious eyes roam across the length of his suit jacket, down his arm, and land on his open hand.
On the notebook in his open hand.
And I sat down as quietly as I could, and did the one thing I shouldn't have.
I read his words.
His private thoughts.
About me. About us. About everything.
Even though he should've been writing about his father, the police, or other people and things that are more important that me--he didn't.
He wrote to me.
And, for me.
And everything I saw in that notebook turned my thoughts, my assumptions, and my year-old anger, inside out.
It left me not knowing how to feel and feeling everything at the same time, and maybe if I'd been more careful, I wouldn't have left him feeling that way too.
Side note, Nobody: if you ever happen to find yourself sneaking around somebody's journals, don't get caught.
Because I did.
As soon as I finished reading everything, I started crying.
Hysterically.
Before that moment, I thought I was the kind of person who could cry quietly because I always had before.
But apparently the fates were out to screw me that morning. To make matters worse, I made a second awful discovery.
I'm not just an ugly crier, I'm a loud cryer, and Elias woke up to me sobbing big, fat, Niagara Falls level tears all over his (formerly clean) notebook.
Now, a smart person would have held it together, put the journal down, and snuck back to the car to break down in private.
But seeing as I don't have any emotional control around this man, I lost it, and startled him awake, and then had to awkwardly explain why I was crying.
I thought about lying. Elias looked so tired and worried when he first got up that I considered telling him I stepped on a crab or jellyfish or something.
But the likelihood of me being attacked by a wild sea creature while I just so happened to be reading his entry about me was slim to none.
So I fessed up.
And he turned Christmas stocking red, politely asked me if he could have his journal back (I mean what kind of person nicely asks a thief for their belongings back?), wiped the tears off my face, and walked me back to the car.
I said I was sorry probably about 742 times on the drive to Starbucks, and he just smiled at me, waved it off, and asked what size Chai I wanted.
We shared half a pastry in silence as he pulled onto the I-5 North. Once he finished eating, he wiped away the crumbs on the pant legs of his gajillion dollar suit, reached over, and held my hand.
And it was natural, and easy, and comfortable--even though the whole gesture made zero sense.
It was nice.
So nice in fact that he shocked me out of talking.
I had a million questions, and about a million more apologies I felt were 100% necessary to say.
But I couldn't say anything.
And neither did he. He didn't say much of anything outside of placing our orders at In-N-Out when we stopped for lunch.
But he didn't seem angry, or annoyed, or frustrated with the fact that I was a journal reading traitor. He was calm, especially for someone whose trust was violated by his ex-girlfriend, his father, and the police over the expanse of a single weekend.
Meanwhile, I was trying not to show obvious signs of Elias-induced anxiety for two hours straight. This, my friends, was extremely difficult, and by the time we got back to UCLA, I was surprised all my hair hadn't fallen out.
We parked on the street next to Canyon Point and called Indigo to let her know her car was back in one piece.
And things seemed, normal, silent but normal, until he put down the phone, and kissed me.
God, did he kiss me.
He kissed me with everything he didn't say.
I kissed him back with everything I couldn't.
And then he left.
Just got out of the car still wearing his sandy suit and disappeared down De Neve Drive.
That was the last time I saw him.
And, quite possibly, the last day my sanity was actually intact.
Since then, I've mildly turned into a crazy person. And yes, I know I'm already crazy, but I check my phone 6,000 times a day just to make sure he hasn't texted.
That's the thing. He hasn't texted. Or called. Or Snapchatted. Or Instagrammed. Or social media'd in general....which tends to mean in modern terms that he's either kidnapped or dead.
Now, I have entertained the wild idea of possibly reaching out to Tanner to make sure his brother's still alive, but the idea of talking to Tanner seems, how do I put this, terrible.
So I haven't.
Plus, if something was really wrong, Tanner or my charlatan of a cousin, Caleigh, would've told me.
Wouldn't they?
They're known to keep important secrets.
Jerks.
Ugh. Whatever. I'm sure Elias is fine.
Maybe he's avoiding me. Or secretly angry at me.
I'd be angry at me.
Journal snoopers are the worst kinds of people, and he woke up next to one.
Maybe that kiss before he left was some kind of weird, benevolent, coping mechanism.
Or maybe that was his way of saying goodbye?
Maybe he's in trouble with the government?!
I-I don't know.
But I want to.
I've been looking out my peephole and listening to see when he comes home for the past couple days. But I can't creep past because I have midterms to study for and scholarships to maintain. So it could be that he's been here all along, but I've been too frazzled with school work to notice it, or he could be a potential Law and Order case.
I'd like to say that I've been trying not to obsess over it too much, but I've been thinking, and overthinking, and binge reading Elias's novel everyday.
Because I miss him...I guess, and it's weird because I've accepted that I miss him instead of fighting myself over it.
But missing people sucks.
There are points where I kind of hope he comes back and I find out he's been sleeping around Los Angeles so I can go back to hating him again.
But unfortunately, I don't think that's an option for me anymore.
Instead I worry, and read, and worry some more, and read some more.
These are the chronicles of Alex as of right now, and I'm starting to think I need to break the cycle.
This means either calling him in the next couple minutes, or putting on my big girl pants, walking over to his door, and finding out where the hell he is.
It's on a Sunday, so chances are, if he's not in a body bag somewhere, he's probably in his dorm.
Time to find out.
Heads for phone call, tails for house call.
For old times sake,
Call it.
-Alex
***
(Thank you guys so much for reading as always! Kristen and I hope you guys enjoyed reading and listening to Alex's entry and got a little more insight to how her feelings are starting to change! Any predictions for the next chapter? What do you think will happen when she opens the door? Will Elias be there or not? Let's hear your thoughts!
PS: Thanks to everyone who listened to the audiobook! And...I'm on vacation this week so I don't think I'll be able to swing an update on Tuesday because we won't be able to record but we should have another update for you by next Sunday as always! I will keep you guys posted if anything changes.)