《Arrows & Anchors (SAMPLE)》Chapter 52: Haunted

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—EDEN

With September came more disappointment.

I hated my job.

I hated my boss.

I hated my constantly rotating hours.

I hated never being able to sleep.

But most of all, I hated being alone within the same four walls every night.

Too many terrible things had happened within those walls, and more than ever, I wanted to escape them.

"Hello?" The grogginess in my voice was apparent from the first spoken syllable. Only an hour or so earlier had I finally been able to fall asleep on my own, but the vibrations from my phone startled me back into consciousness too soon.

I always answered, just in case it was Julian.

"Good morning, is this Brooke?" The voice bellowed back, too loud for my tired ears and pounding head. Maybe I shouldn't have thrown out the last of my unused sleeping pills, I thought.

"Yes." I pinched my eyes closed while rubbing my forehead. I could practically feel the vein pounding under my skin.

"This is Officer Sansbury with the Tucson Police Department. I was calling to give you an update on your case."

"Any good news?" I sat straight up in bed, hoping that one nightmarish chapter of my life would've finally been coming to a close. Never in my life did I want to hear from or see Caleb, ever again.

"I'm afraid not," Sansbury said, disappointing me. "As you're aware, we've been trying to track down Mr. Pennyson for some time now, but I'm under the impression that he may have left the state. Now, your order of protection is still in effect, and will remain that way, but I was wondering if you could provide us with any insight on where he might be?"

"I really have no idea." Caleb needed to face the consequences for what he had done, but a part of me was relieved to imagine him being far away. I liked that idea, a lot.

"Has Caleb tried to contact you at all?" Sansbury's voice was strained and frustrated at his lack of a lead. Gratitude filled me for his attention to my case, out of the many, I was sure, he was working on at the time.

I thought about Sansbury's question, and remembered a few instances where I had received calls, only for the line to go dead once I answered. It hadn't happened often, but each time it did, I found it very strange.

"Maybe a few times," I offered the information. "But I don't remember the exact dates or times."

"Okay, Brooke, if that happens again, would you please let us know? Either call my line directly, or give your case number to anyone at the main line. We will try to trace it and see if we can find out where he's run off to."

"I will let you know, yes," I agreed appreciatively.

"Okay, Brooke, have a good rest of the day. I'll be in touch," he said in a friendly tone.

"Thank you." I hung up and checked the time. It was too-early-o'clock.

Once I had sat up in bed, though, I was unfortunately awake for the day, so I headed downstairs to make some coffee. My laptop beckoned me, so I fired it up and saw that Laina had e-mailed me a link. As soon as it opened in my browser, I gasped at the article's headline.

The gossip update website shared a recent photo of the band exiting the plane—the same jet we had taken to the Maldives—but that was not what had struck me.

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The sight of Julian made my eyes go wide, in that I barely recognized him.

Pangs ripped through my chest to see him looking ragged and run down in a baggy sweatsuit. Although he was covered from neck to toe, and he faced downward, with a baseball cap on his head, I could tell he had lost weight. Nearly nine months spent living on tour would do that to a person, I imagined.

Thursday, the band takes GIO Canberra Stadium to be supported by two local acts, with the nine-month worldwide tour wrapping up on Saturday in the sold out Brisbane Entertainment Centre.

I couldn't read any further into the article. It just wasn't fair.

I was so happy for Julian to have been achieving his dreams, and living the life he always wanted, with or without me, but to be so often reminded of him was tearing my sanity to shreds.

He was able to go on his way, and never needed to worry about seeing a reminder of me anywhere, but the person I loved most was in the ultimate spotlight, making him unavoidable for me, and around every corner.

A normal breakup would have been agonizing enough, but to find him everywhere I looked—to hear his voice on the radio, to see him on TV, to read about his success in stories—was an excruciating pain not unlike being tossed into a boiling pressure cooker while still alive. Julian may have had the tattoo, but his love left an even greater, indelible mark on me.

I wanted him to be happy, though.

No matter how miserable I felt, I always hoped that Julian was happy.

Just then, my thoughts were interrupted by a text from an unfamiliar number.

Hey, is this Brooke?

Yes, who's this? I asked.

Tommy. I just wanted to know if you've talked to Julian at all recently?

No, not since March. Why did he want to know? And how did he get my number? I couldn't believe it had been six months since I'd heard Julian's sweet, accented, silky voice on the phone.

Do you want to talk to him? Another text came through.

Yes, badly. I answered honestly.

I really think you should. You need to ring him. The confusing message read.

He doesn't want to talk to me, Tommy. He told me not to contact him again.

He will want to talk to you, I'm sure of it.

That's what Mason said before, too, and he was wrong. I wrote.

Please ring him. Tommy's message sent a chill down my back.

Have him call me, Tommy. If he wants to talk to me as badly as you're making it seem, he would call me. He told me not to bother him again, so I won't. But I'll answer if he ever wants to talk.

Tommy never replied, and I took that as proof of the fact that Julian really didn't want to hear from me. His well meaning friends probably had no idea how nasty our split was, and with Julian being such a private person, he wouldn't have explained it to them, even if they asked. Regardless, I wondered about the reason for the urgency behind Tommy's pleading messages, and felt my finger hover over Arrows several times before finally closing my phone's screen.

Looking around my place, I felt strange. Although I recognized everything surrounding me, it felt out of place.

Just not right.

So long as I stayed in that apartment, nothing would've ever been right. The walls held too many dirty secrets that seemed to whisper to me in the night. As a result, I didn't feel at home there, and I wasn't sure if I ever had.

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In the late afternoon, my mom called to ask if I'd be going home to Florida for Thanksgiving. After some contemplating, I decided that it was probably a good idea to get out of Arizona, at least for a little while. I told her I'd start looking for flights soon.

Shortly after hanging up with Rose, I felt the urge to take a small nap on the couch. Rare was the impulse for me to rest those days, so when a tired feeling washed over me, I made good use of it. From the time my head hit the pillowy cushions, I felt my eyelids begging to close, and I obliged.

But even my dreams could not bring me the peace of mind I so desperately sought.

The hotel room was dark, with liquor bottles scattered around the ground, and it reminded me of the Regal Inn. I thought I was alone at first.

My eyes caught sight of something moving from the ground, standing on wobbly legs, to slowly meet me.

"Hello?" I called into the darkness. "Who's there?"

A scarily thin figure with long, shaggy hair came into my limited vision. Instead of fear, I oddly felt relief. Looking down around me, I tried to find a patch of carpet to tread, but it was all glass beneath me. I couldn't move ahead without cutting and harming myself in the process.

Across from me, the figure slowly closed the space between us. He balanced his weary body by curving his soles, to form to—and luckily maneuver—the curvature of the empty bottles. They slid beneath his feet a few times, but he caught himself and straightened up again. Each time I helplessly watched him shift his weight, my heart would throb more fiercely with worry.

I tried desperately to make out some facial features, but I couldn't. There was nothing there to recognize. Still, I knew him somehow.

The all-black shadow of a human being stumbled toward me, making no noise, and still I felt no trepidation—only woe and guilt.

When he was close enough to me, as close as he could've gotten, the silhouette reached for me. There was nowhere for me to step in the sea of bottles without falling, so I leaned forward as far as I could, across the distance separating us, and extended my hands. The muscles in my palms ached as I stretched them.

The silent silhouette did the same, and for a blissful second, our fingertips brushed, almost allowing me to grab hold of him, until he took a wrong step—tripping over the mess beneath him—and fell into the bottomless hole below. A hole I didn't even know was there.

I peered down into the hole, looking for any sight of him, but he was too far gone.

There was no light.

There was no sound.

There was no movement.

Just blackness for all that the eye could see.

I woke myself up with a blood-curdling scream.

In my half awake, half asleep haze, I thought of Tommy's words and reached for my phone to text Julian. Even subconsciously, I desired the comfort that only he could bring me.

Somewhere deep within, I felt the need to tell him the ultimate, undeniable truth. The one thing that would never change—no matter the amount of time that may have passed, no matter how old we became, no matter where our lives took us, no matter how much distance separated us, and no matter how much he resented me.

I'm always here.

Julian didn't reply, not that I ever really expected him to. I hoped he wouldn't be upset with me for contacting him, after he explicitly told me not to, half a year earlier. We had so much history together that I couldn't just let go as simply as he had.

I needed to get out of that damn apartment before my brain exploded.

"Hello?" Laina answered after a couple of rings.

"Hey." I cleared my throat. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing really, just got off work. Why?" I could practically hear her smiling.

"Can we meet up? I really need to get out of here for a while."

"Of course. Give me fifteen," Laina said.

...

We met at the park while it was still light outside, just before seven o'clock at night. Even at that hour, the temperature was still well into the eighties. "Have to love Tucson in late September," the radio weatherman had said on my drive over.

"Well, this was a nice surprise." Laina wrapped her small arms around me.

"Thanks for meeting me." I led the way and started walking along the curved park pathway, surrounded by trees in full bloom.

"How's everything?" Laina asked, somewhat guarded.

"About the same," I said. She nodded in understanding.

"It was the anniversary of your dad... um... recently, right?" Laina tiptoed around the topic.

"Yeah." I didn't want to think about the fact that he'd officially been gone twenty years. I couldn't. I simply wasn't strong enough. "I'm completely lost lately."

"Doesn't look like Julian's doing much better." Laina referred to the story she had e-mailed me before, with a picture of him looking tired.

"He's just being worked to the bone, I'm sure." I made an excuse for his ragged appearance. The picture wasn't all that clear, anyway.

"Have you talked to him at all?" Her question was innocent, but it felt like a knife was lodged in my abdomen as I tried to answer.

"No." I stopped to correct myself, "Well, actually, I texted him today. But he never answered. Other than that, no."

"Hmm... He'll answer." Laina's chin turned up in confidence at her declaration.

"I don't know, Laina. I really don't think he will." Two bicyclists honked and swiftly passed us on the narrow pathway.

"He loves you." Laina seemed so sure of it.

"Loved," I revised her thought.

"Loves," she argued, raising an eyebrow at me. "I still remember the way he stared at you when we first met him and Mason in the parking lot. That kind of attraction doesn't just go away, Brooke."

"If someone is hurt deeply enough, it does." I offered the alternative, much more painful, truth.

"No, not even then." She shook her head, convinced in her opinion.

"Laina, you don't understand—"

"Brooke, I'm saying this as your best friend, because I love you..." Laina eyed me. I waited for her to continue. "Wake. Up."

"Huh?" I chewed the inside of my cheek.

Laina stopped on the sidewalk and put her hands on my shoulders.

"You can't wait anymore. Stop waiting. You're going to let him slip away, and I know you won't ever forgive yourself if you do." Her hazel eyes peered up into mine with brash assurance.

"He told me he didn't want to talk, Laina. What more can I do?" I kicked a small pebble by my right foot.

"If he doesn't want to talk this out, I mean really talk it out, fine. But you haven't tried since March. And he was riled up by Eric being there, so of course he must've been provoked and pissed off. I wouldn't have wanted to talk then either."

"It was never intentional—" I started to speak, but she cut me off.

"I know," Laina said assuredly. "But I think enough time has passed to let things cool off, and you need to try again. If you're thinking of him this much, he's thinking of you, too."

Laina's hidden talent was nearly always being able to cheer me up, no matter the mood I was in.

"Aren't you sick of seeing me mope around over failed relationships?" I attempted a laugh but it sounded uneasy instead. "I was this way with Caleb, too."

"No, this is way different." Laina's sing-song voice blended in beautifully with the chirping birds that lined the trees around us.

"How so?" I was glad to hear her say that, but I wanted to know exactly what she meant.

"With Caleb, your sadness came from being with him. The further he drifted from your life, the happier you became." Laina seemed deep in thought. "With Julian, your sadness comes from being apart from him. The further he drifts from your life, the more miserable you become."

"And you can tell?" Was I that easy to read?

"You're an open book sometimes." Laina answered my unspoken thought, nudged my arm, and chuckled. "Everything is going to work out, Brooke. I never saw you so happy as you were with Julian. That's how I know he's the one for you. It's going to work out fine, you'll see."

"Speaking of the one." I had enough of hogging the center focus of our conversation. "How's Wes?"

"He's great. Really great." The look on Laina's face didn't reflect her words.

"What is it?" The heat from the day was still in the air, making us both start to sweat a bit, so we found a bench in the shade and sat down.

"Well, I wanted to wait until I was positive about it before I told you, because you've had so much going on." Laina wouldn't lift her gaze from the ground.

"You can tell me." I was prepared for the worst.

"You know Wes's sister? The one who got married? She's pregnant." Laina twiddled her fingers.

"Really? That didn't take long." I couldn't understand what was so terrible about that. "That's great news, then, right?"

"Wes has been talking about transferring to Chicago, to be closer to his nephew once he's born." Her voice was meek.

"And you'll miss him too much?" I didn't quite understand.

"I'm going to move with him, Brooke." Laina finally looked into my eyes, and they were slightly wet with tears. "I'm going to move to Chicago. I've been trying to put it off, because I know you need me here—"

I got up and rounded the table to sit directly next to Laina. My arms tightened around her back.

"I'm so happy for you." I kissed her cheek. "Don't even let me be a passing thought in your mind to keep you here. You have to go."

"Are you sure?" Laina's voice was gaining back a bit of life. "I mean, you'll be okay here? I can always come back to visit you. And you can visit us anytime."

"I'm positive. I will be just fine here." I wasn't sure if I would be, but I'd never dream of stopping my best friend from following her heart, wherever it led her. Although I couldn't ignore the fact that Tucson would've felt even more lonely without my best friend in it. "When do you leave?"

"Wes wants to move as soon as possible." Her brows pulled together. "I've been the one stalling it."

"Well, stall no longer." I grinned at her, genuinely feeling excited for her. "Chicago. Chi-town. Badass pizza."

Laina rewarded my lame attempt at a joke with a laugh, and stood to call Wes with the good news. I used the opportunity of a break in conversation to check my own phone, only to find Tommy had called me three times, about an hour earlier. I hadn't felt my phone vibrating in my pocket as we walked the bumpy trails.

I called Tommy back, again and again, with no answer. If it was that important, I concluded, he would've left a voicemail. Maybe he had called me on accident.

Yeah, it must have been an accident.

1. "Colors" by Halsey

2. "Amnesia" (cover) by Anthem Lights

3. "Say (All I Need)" by OneRepublic

4. "In Circles" by Ashley Barrett (Transistor Original Soundtrack)

5. "Say Something" (cover) by Anthem Lights

6. "And She Will Miss You" by Gracie Abrams

7. "woah" by EDEN

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