HEAVY HEART
1303 Words
When the three of us returned home from the venue viewings, Isolde and Adrian decided to retire to bed early, while I also headed to sleep from exhaustion.
When I wake up, it's dark outside. And I notice that my stomach is grumbling like crazy, and my throat is dry and thirsty.
Getting up, I rub the sleep out of my eyes and head for my door, opening it and going downstairs.
I don't bother to turn on the lights and just open the fridge, the bright light of it making me squint my eyes together.
Taking a bottle of water and the salad I left here earlier, I went to sit on the counter.
I dig into the salad without looking, bringing everything up to my mouth. I feel like I'm swallowing everything down at once.
Like I've never eaten anything before in my life.
Manners, Aria. f*****g hell.
Gulping down the water, I let out a sigh of content and continued to eat my salad in peace.
That is, until the light flicks on in the kitchen.
"f**k!" I muttered and looked up, feeling all the blood drain from my face when I saw Adrian standing in the doorway.
Why the f**k does he always get up in the middle of the night? Why do I?
I'll be getting myself a mini-fridge from now on, so I can eat and drink in peace.
"Sorry," he whispers huskily and dims the light of the kitchen, making it more bearable for my eyes.
I look down, focusing all my attention on the salad that has become the most interesting thing at the moment.
I play around with the croutons and bring one to my mouth. The crunchy sound of it as I eat it fills the room, making me heat up in embarrassment.
Just perfect.
I quickly swallowed it down and took another sip of my water.
Adrian walks over to the fridge and gets a bottle of water as well, leaning against the counter with his eyes focused on the ground.
Leave. Please.
And then he looks up, making our eyes meet. I'm addicted to the green swirl in them. It gives his eyes something captivating. And it makes my heart skip a beat.
My breath hitches when he pushes himself off the counter and walks over towards me, raising his hand and gently brushing away a strand of hair.
That movement takes me back to when he did it earlier, right before he'd kissed me.
It makes goosebumps erupt on my skin.
"I'm sorry," he whispers, before retracting his hand and leaving the kitchen.
Sorry?
Sorry?
What the f**k is he sorry for? That he kissed me, or that it happened? Or for putting me in this situation?
God, why must he act so weird?
Finishing my salad, I throw away the container and go back upstairs.
Once in her room, Aria opened her coach bag, exposing the two one-litre Smirnoff Vodka bottles she'd managed to buy during the day whilst the others had been busy.
Not worrying about glasses, she took a quick swig directly from the large bottle.
"f*****g gross." She mumbled to herself, feeling her throat burning in response to the colorless liquid. She was looking for a quick fix, the kind that would make her forget about what her mother had told her the night before, so she didn't bother mixing the vodka with a soda as she would usually do.
She undressed quickly and pulled a baggy night shirt over her body, which fell just below her ass. She'd reserved this particular night shirt for nights when she wanted to stay at home, get as s**t-faced as possible, and let the miseries of her life dissipate.
Entering her ensuite bathroom, she gazed at the mask of make-up covering her face in her reflection.
She began peeling off the false eyelashes that she'd become accustomed to wearing every day. She grabbed the cleanser, squirted it onto a cotton pad, and wiped off the thick winged liner she used to shape her eyes.
Next, she wiped the contour powder along her nose and at the base of her cheekbones, exposing her insecurities.
Finally, she'd removed the last layers of the Aria that everyone knew; the Aria she had spent years creating. The old Aria, the insecure Aria, the scared Aria stared back at her. A ghost of her former self.
Empty. As Empty as death. That's the only thing she saw every night she removed her make-up. How empty she'd become.
Her tanned skin was the only thing that remained fixed. Her nose is slightly larger, her lips slightly smaller, and her eyes less defined and subsequently smaller. The rosiness of her cheeks and around her nose was accentuated.
She was still beautiful, but not that sultry kind of beautiful, the one that was always associated with sin. More natural, more innocent; almost like how one's beauty diminishes slightly in death.
Turning on her heel, she grabbed the bottle by its neck and hopped down the stairs, taking a couple more swigs from the bottle; the poison was already highly concentrated in her veins.
She sat down on the black matted couch, already becoming unstable on her feet. She glanced up at the ceiling.
"Hey dad." She started, still looking up at the ceiling, almost as though she expected a response directly from this inanimate object.
"I just wanted to say thank you. I've never thanked you for being such a good f*****g dad to Matteo ." She c****d her head to the side, giggling as though she'd said the funniest thing.
"Now maybe you don't know just what I'm thanking you for, because of course, there's just so much to be thankful for.
"So first, let's start with the fact that you've shaped me into who I am today. I'm what people call a slut, and that's because of you. Because you f****d mum up so bad that the only advice she could give to her ten-year-old daughter was to use her body to get far in life. You did that, Dad, so I thank you." The tears had already begun to roll as she rocked herself forward and backward on the couch, her body beginning to shake.
Her hand was shaking to such an extent that the bottle fell to the floor with a loud crash, the poisonous contents spilling out of the bottle, and the glass shattering. She fell to the floor and, without thinking, tried to clean up the shards of glass by picking them up and moving them into the corner, pricking her fingers repeatedly as she did so, but enjoying the sight of her blood beginning to spill and her hands becoming coated in red.
"Do you want to know a secret? Do you want to know about how your thirteen-year-old daughter let an old, creepy bastard touch her to save your ass? I let him touch me in places that no thirteen-year-old should ever be touched. I did it for you, Dad.
"Does it hurt to know that? I hope it does. I hope you feel just a little, just a tiny bit of the pain that I felt when he was touching me." She sat on the floor and used the sleeves of her nightshirt to mop up the tears that were spilling.
"Do you even care, Dad? Did you ever care?" She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping the tears would stop spilling. But when she failed, and she was still spurting out like a water fountain, she gave up.
"Why don't you ever f*****g answer me?" She let herself drop onto the hard floor next to the broken vodka bottle as she began sobbing hysterically, hugging herself and rocking back and forth.
"Aria? What are you doing down here?"
- Writer
