She felt him. She felt him all the time, every time, and anytime she did anything.

The spark in her soul had begun dying seven months ago. She lied every morning, convinced herself that she was getting better. She denied that she was still waking up in the middle of the night feening for his touch. She claimed she no longer waited for his phone calls, anticipating the ringing of her phone caused triggered by two new body beings she used to fill the void he had left. Their names, she said, were hard to remember. Sometimes she called Abaddon, Abdul or referred to Dimi as Darius. She always found herself trying to rename their existence as if a new identity would fix the destruction they were causing.

Her morning alarm had no time to screech for help before she slapped it back to sleep. Eat, first, shower without closing your eyes and standing under the water for 15 minutes then dress. The bags under her eyes reflecting back at her in the mirror told her she needed to add “sleep” to this list. It’s tiresome pretending to be okay.

She slipped the charm bracelet her grandmother gave her on her sixteenth birthday over the tic-tac-toe marks engraved into her wrist and pulled her shirt over the vines she stenciled down her arm. Her newfound obsession with playing this game on her skin started at the same time as everything else, seven months ago.

She stopped for a second. Her eyes had closed.

His sheets had felt warm that night, welcoming. She had never been upstairs before and she foggily stumbled onto his bed. He had started a movie for them to watch so both their strawberry hazed eyes tried to focus on the screen. He was thinking of her and she was thinking of leaving. Oh, how easily she could have abandoned him, abandoned Carr. How easily it seemed for her to pick up her feet, move them clumsily, one by one, out his door to find her way home.

This is why she tried to never stop, never pause when doing anything. Her eyes opened.

The car outside honked three times. Abaddon wasn’t the type to believe in having patience. He wasn’t the type to believe in anything.

Before she knew it, they were already there. They had gotten there so fast; Abaddon had to have been speeding. Just like how she ended up laying on Carr’s chest that hot summer night. It was like one minute they were two parallel lines and before she knew it she was so close that she could hear the sweat releasing from the pores on his hands. He had rubbed his hands on his pants and she pretended that she didn’t see. Instead she focused on how fast his heart was beating, knowing it was for other reasons than being nervous. She focused on the female shoes by the door that weren’t hers, the number “32” written beside the word “Birthdate” on his ID resting on his dresser, and the baby toy prodding at her back that she was trying to ignore.

Stop.

Get out the car.

Nova opened her eyes and slammed the car door. She had been doing it again.

They always got her at the right time. It didn’t matter if she emerged herself in the chaos of the world or tried to ignore it, they always made time to torture her thoughts.

Her phone rang loud enough for both of them to hear. It was a text message and she had forgotten to put her phone on silent before she left out the house. She regretted not doing this the moment Abaddon looked up at her. She knew what was coming next.

“And who is texting us?” he asked leaning over her.

Nova hadn’t even noticed that he was now standing behind her. She tended to lose sense of time when her eyes were closed.

She peeked down to see Dimi’s name glowing on her screen. She wondered what was in the message but didn’t dare to open it. He texted her on weekends only. Today was Tuesdays. Today was reserved for Abaddon.

The day she had been at Carr’s house was a Tuesday. She remembered because she had looked at her phone and saw the date. Tuesday, June 22^nd. It was 11:12 when he leaned over, introducing his lips to hers. It was 11:16 when she heard the fall of a plastic wrapper, 11:43 when the room became uncontrollably hot, then 12:59 when she realized she would probably regret what was happening the moment she was sober.

“Nobody important. You going to let me pass or what?” she mumbled with her head down.

They walked into Neighborhood, the bar and grill Abaddon spent most of his time at. Nova was two months away from being old enough to drink. That didn’t mean she didn’t already though, she enjoyed drowning her emotions and imagining that they no longer existed. Drinking made her forget what she considered to be the biggest mistake. She had spent most of her teenage years wondering how that moment would happen and whom she'd share it with. It would be special, she told herself. Nova didn’t believe in waiting until marriage because she never thought it made a difference. She just wanted it to be with someone who...

She had managed to make four more mistakes since Carr.

Nova stopped and focused hard to mentally stay in the room. Abaddon wasn’t paying her any attention anyway. She looked over and his eyes were locked on two caramel colored thighs peeking from under a table across from them. She didn’t care. He wasn’t hers.

When Abaddon was ready to go, it was time to go. They got in the car, put on their seat belts in silence, and before they knew it, they were at their destination.

Nova opened the door, walked through her living room, threw her belongings on the kitchen counter, next to psychology assignments she hadn’t finished, undressed herself while walking into her room, and sunk into her bed sheets. They felt just like Carr’s.

The images, the emotions, started all over again. She didn’t need a trigger. She was there again.

She felt everything; every touch, drip of sweat and each hot breathe. They had forgotten that the movie was still playing. She remembered how they wrapped their naked bodies in his sheets and he kissed her forehead before drifting off to sleep. She remembered wondering if the neighbors were cursing her under their breathe for all of the noise she had been making, sounding similar to a dying kitty. She remembered going on a scavenger hunt for her underwear at one point because she refused to walk to the bathroom naked and him kissing her the next day when she left like neither of them were in a relationship with someone else. Nova had slept so peacefully that night and woke up to him smiling in her face. She refused to attempt to understand what had happened to them after that day.

“Just give into it,” she thought to herself.