20 | sleepless nights

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CHAPTER 20

"Gabriel you need to hurry up or you'll be late for school!" Mum shouted from the kitchen, partially drowned out by the sound of the pots and pans she was cooking with.

Slinging the straps of my backpack over my shoulders, I bent down to tie the laces of my trainers. I probably shouldn't have silenced my alarm when it went off this morning and gone straight back to sleep.

"You slept in, didn't you?" My dad asked with a knowing smile as he entered the room, the lines in his forehead more prominent because of it.

I shrugged with a smile of my own instead of responding. He knew me well enough to know the answer to that question already.

"I thought we could walk today since the weather's nice." He said, shifting his eyes to the window.

The sky was the kind of pale blue that painted the water everyday in Cornwall but rarely made an appearance here, and there wasn't a single cloud in sight. It was clear why he didn't want to take the car. I didn't either.

"That's cool." I said, pulling the lace tight enough to make a knot and standing back up. I opened my bag again quickly, rifling through it to check that I had everything. I did, so I made my way to the door.

I grimaced when Mum gave Dad a kiss on the cheek and then proceeded to do the same to me, ruffling my hair as if I was still six instead of eleven.

My hands were stuffed into the pockets of my jeans as Dad and I walked side by side, talking about random things like we always did.

It was the best thing about him, how he could take nothing and make it into something.

"Why can't a nose be twelve inches long?" He asked as I sighed. I knew exactly where this was going.

"I don't know." I answered, choosing to humour him.

"Because then it would be a foot." He said, watching as I fought a smile. He had mastered the art of telling Dad jokes so awful they were actually kind of funny.

"Gabe wait, your bag is open." He said, eyes honing in on the zipper that had moved from its original spot.

The sound of a soft thud stole our attention before he could zip it closed, and we turned our heads to look at what had fallen.

My notebook for english class had escaped from the backpack and landed on the road, blissfully unaware of any danger and trapped in its own little bubble of white paperback.

"I'll get it for you." Dad said, head turning as he scanned the road for moving cars.

I nodded, watching as he stepped off the pavement and wrapped his fingers around the spine of the book.

The sound of tires grating against the ground filled my ears and I winced, my eyes closing for a millisecond.

They opened again and began to blur as I took in the scene that lay in front of me, finding that my feet wouldn't budge from their spot on the ground.

I was paralysed with fear.

Fear for me.

Fear for my Dad.

And worst of all, fear for my future self.

- - - -

I woke up with a start, covered in sweat and the pain that came with reliving the same memory practically every time my eyes closed.

For this reason sleep was my worst enemy, and I usually tried to avoid it as much as humanly possible.

I had been finding it harder lately though, the same vision of curly hair and dimpled smiling lulling my eyes shut no matter how much I wanted to resist.

Cora.

I groaned. It was pointless trying to fight it so I just let my mind do what it wanted to do, succumbing to thoughts of her.

I wonder if she knew how I felt when I saw her with that idiot at the cafe. I wasn't exactly subtle about it.

I couldn't help it though. The look he gave her was too familiar. It was the same one that I knew was on my face most of the time.

Especially at that picnic that I surprised her with last week. Probably the least 'friendly' thing I could've done. I might as well have professed my undying love for her.

In my defence, I had just gotten off the court with Danny and Jake and was delirious with exhaustion when we passed the vending machine and the idea began to form in my head.

The look on her face as she opened the wooden basket made the whole thing worth it though, and I'd probably have thrown a thousand more picnics just to see it again.

I dragged a hand down my face as that thought settled in my head. I had to find a way to rein it in or I would end up scaring her away.

Friends.

Those shorts she wears whenever she's painting something.

Friends.

The way her chest heaved as we stared at each other in that art studio.

Friends.

The way she—

Christ. I'm not getting anywhere with that.

I stood up and walked towards the bathroom instead, figuring that I should shower since I sure as hell wouldn't be getting any more sleep.

Hot water cascaded onto my skin and soothed the ache of my muscles as I faced away from the shower head, steam replacing the air that had been heavy with my thoughts.

I ran my hands through my hair, the curls tangling together because of the water. I couldn't be bothered to do anything about it, just stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around the lower half of my body.

I hunched over the sink, brushing my teeth and watching my tired eyes in the mirror as I spat into the drain.

Pulling on a grey shirt and a pair of joggers, I sat down back down on the bed with my body leaning against the headboard.

The alarm clock on my desk stated that it was 1am with neon blue lettering, and I sighed in irritation.

I still had around seven hours before I had to leave the apartment for an exam, so my new issue was what to do with all this time.

My eyes immediately began to scan the room for the book they were so fond of forcing me to read and stopped when they found it on a shelf, concealed by the trophies I had won from various matches. As if their golden sheen could somehow outshine the darkness it contained.

I managed to ignore it and moved my gaze elsewhere, stopping on the painting that Cora made for me.

It hung on the wall, bursting with the colour that this room had been begging for ever since I moved in and deprived it of any.

The only downside was that I couldn't look at it without remembering what happened straight after it was created, so I took my eyes off that too.

But a small smile fell onto my face as I realised that I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my newly found spare time.

I figured the safe option would be to send a text so I did, asking if she was still awake. I didn't want to interrupt her sleep just because I couldn't get any myself.

Because she couldn't be anything but completely unpredictable, Cora floored me when she replied instantly with a simple "Yeah."

Before my brain could even question why she hadn't been able to get any sleep either, she sent another message. "Can I ask you a favour?"

"Of course." I replied. I don't think I could say no even if I tried.

"Would you videocall me?" She typed. "Looking at faces makes me feel more settled."

"Sure." I said, thinking about that message in more detail. What had gotten her feeling unsettled in the first place?

My phone screen lit up with the image of my face as it rang, before being replaced by hers when she accepted the call, all big brown eyes and barely there smile. "Hi." She said sweetly.

"Hey." I said, not bothering to fight the grin I knew was on my own face.

I brought the screen closer and looked at it carefully. She had propped her phone up on some kind of raised surface so I could see from the pyjama top she was wearing up to the curly hair that she had restrained in a bun on top of her head.

Her hands were under her chin as she stared at me, and I grinned wider when I noticed the glasses she had on. That's new.

She looked like a librarian. A librarian that I really wanted to—

"Gabe?" She called, brows furrowing in a way that told me it wasn't the first time that she had said my name.

"Yeah?" I answered, playing it off as smoothly as I could.

"I asked why you aren't asleep." She repeated.

Only me and that stupid notebook knew the answer to this question, and I would do everything in my power to keep that way.

Even my mum didn't know that I still had nightmares about that day. I hadn't told her because I couldn't bring myself to burden her with my own problems.

"I'm not sure." I lied.

She nodded, eyes glazing over slightly as if she was a million miles away, before she drifted back to me and they returned to normal. "Yeah. Me too."

As our conversation went on, the topics became increasingly random and her voice started to become clouded with tiredness.

"Have you ever thought about how many people you would poo on if you were a bird?" She asked me with a sleepy smile. "Everyone that's ever made me angry would need to watch out."

I fought back a smile of my own. "I can't say that I have."

She yawned as I glanced at the same clock from earlier. It was now displaying 3am.

We had been talking for 2 hours. No wonder she was half asleep and talking about birds.

I looked back at my phone to find Cora's eyes closed and lips slightly parted. My suspicions were confirmed when her head lolled back slightly and she rested it on a pillow behind her.

She had moved out of the frame a little but I could see her. I didn't want to sit here and watch her sleep because it felt creepy, but I also couldn't bring myself to end the call.

I made my mind up when she said something in her sleep that sounded eerily like my name, curling in on herself and smiling slightly.

"Goodnight candyfloss." I whispered into the quiet of my room, directing it to nobody in particular.

- - - -

I opened the door of my car, stepping out onto the pavement and pulling the baseball cap further onto my head.

My eyes found the building that I had spent countless hours in ever since I started University 3 years ago, blindsided when I received an offer for a sports and academics scholarship.

I strolled through the hallways towering over most people like I usually did, and stopped outside the door of room 25B.

Our professor had sent my class an email that stated this as the location of today's exam, hence the conga line of people that snaked all the way into the next corridor.

Worry radiated off the bodies that were near me, and I could hear people hurriedly reciting some of the key terms that we had been taught over the last few weeks.

I hated watching people panic so I shoved my earbuds in my ears, shuffling my playlist until it landed on a random song.

The twang of a guitar filled my ears as I checked the title. 'Corduroy Dreams' by Rex Orange County was playing according to the tab at the bottom of my phone screen.

I listened as he articulated everything that I had been feeling since I laid my eyes on Cora with only a raspy voice and a guitar, resisting the urge to rip the cords out of my ears and walk back out in the direction I came in.

I hated how I had to pretend.

Pretend that I only saw her as a friend.

Pretend that I wasn't smiling because she was in the same room as me, and that it was actually because of something else.

Pretend that she wasn't the only girl I wanted.

"Gabriel Madden, Warren Mulch..."

I glanced up as my name was called, turning the music off and forcing my thoughts back onto economics, walking past the door and into the room.

The desks had ridiculously large spaces between them, and that coupled with the lack of natural light made the whole scene feel like something out of a prison.

I sat down at the one assigned to my name, waiting for the go ahead to begin and turning my paper over, finding that the questions were as easy and mind numbingly boring as they always were.

Stochastic Calculus.

Differential equations.

Transition Probabilities.

My pen filled in the last answer and I looked at the clock. 20 minutes to spare.

Checking my answers over took me less than 5 of those minutes, so I sat at the desk and counted the seconds out until it was over.

We left the room in the same order we were called into it, a surprising amount of people crying as they did.

I pushed the wooden doors that lead outside the building open fully, basking in the air that had been missing from that exam hall.

"Gabey!" A voice cooed from somewhere behind me.

My jaw clenched because I knew exactly who it was. Only one person called me by that name no matter how many times I told her I hated it.

Jenny bounded up to me, wrapping her arms around my chest and letting the strong perfume she was wearing force its way into my nose.

Once she had untangled herself from me, she started to pout. "I've missed you so much. I never see you anymore."

Because I've been purposefully avoiding you.

I nodded awkwardly, not sure what I could say that wouldn't hurt her feelings.

She must have seen that as some kind of indication that she could take things further because the next thing I knew, her lips were on my cheek.

"Jenny-" I began, my voice heavy with annoyance.

I stopped in the middle of my sentence when my eyes found those of the only girl whose lips I wanted on me, watching as her face slowly fell.

This chapter was so hard to write :(

Also don't think that this is the only explanation you'll get of what happened to him and his dad - this was only a sneak peak and I wanted to keep it quite vague <3