Heartbreak Hotel

T H I R T E E N

JUDE WATCHED IN silence as he watched Xenia slip out of the room. Find out who did this to her, she’d told him, as if he weren’t already going to. Oh God did he plan on finding out who did it. His gut was pointing to the man he’d bumped into on his way in, the patron, Ophelia’s, he was assuming. As soon as he left the energy in the room felt off, he hadn’t had the time to talk to her about it. Besides, he knew that Ophelia wasn’t exactly an open book, even less so around people she didn’t know that well, namely Xenia.

She had looked tense, stiff and dazed after he left, and even now, she was still visibly the same. He carefully sat on the bed, and from there, he laid next to her. The bed was fair in size, it was a queen, after all. She didn’t seem to mind his closeness. Even his own actions were surprising to him, but they had a good foot of save distance between them. “you can tell me now,” he voiced, “she’s gone now.”

As if those words were a trigger, she felt her eyes pool with tears. She blinked hard to make them go away, but instead, they slowly poured down the sides of her temples and dissipated into her hairline. She numbly, yet somehow shakily raised her hands to her face and vigorously rubbed at it, wishing she could scrape the skin away. Scrape away the injury Orion had caused, scrape away the abuse, the emotion. But it stayed. The motions made her freckled cheeks feel raw, especially with the forming bruise, but she didn’t care.

Silence. Jude could hear the light patter of rain spitting onto the pavements from the cloudy Seattle sky. A breath, another, before she held herself in. She’d just cry if she talked, and Ophelia hated crying so instead she pressed her chapped lips tightly together.

“It was him Ophelia, wasn’t it?” Jude asked softly. He didn’t know where he was going with this, but he knew that Ophelia was aware of who he was talking about: Orion.

Ophelia let her eyes slip closed. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t let it happen again. Never again would she be a victim to the destructive hand of a male. Never again would she allow someone to use their strength against her. But she’d failed. She hadn’t done anything to stop it. It was the beginning of her grand revelation: she was never really strong in the first place, she was just a really great liar.

“What if it was?” she finally said, nearly choking on her words. Her chest was burning with disappointment in herself. “What do I do then?”

Jude looked at her, eyes now a sad dark green. The colour reminded her of moss growing by a stream, maybe on a willow tree. “We can tell someone. We can report this.”

She resisted the scoff leaving her clogged throat, “no one will believe me.” The sentence felt familiar leaving her mouth, the déja vü reminding her of many situations she’d tried hard to forget.

“I do,” he told her, his voice slightly above a whisper. His arms laid on his stomach as the pair both stared at the ceiling. “Xenia does. Claudia will. We believe you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Ophelia’s tone cracked, “I don’t have proof he did this to me.”

Jude was quiet for a moment. “I’m going to get him back,” he’d said aloud. “For what he did to you. He’s going to regret it.”

“Don’t bother,” she said, “It’ll only get you in trouble. They win. They always do.”

She had a point, but that wasn’t deterring him. “Do you know why he did it?”

Ophelia laughed a little, but it sounded deflated and sad. “Because I overheard some shady s**t going on and I opened my big mouth about it to Claudia. Orion had been waiting for me in my bathroom as he overheard me telling Claudia.”

It was still and soundless except for the light rain tapping on the windows as Jude contemplated to himself. His emotions were almost all-consuming. He felt angry, he felt sad, he felt upset. He wanted to do something: anything. He wanted to hurt Orion. There was an itching need to wrap his hands around his throat until he couldn’t breathe, and that urge scared Jude a little. There were very few times in his life where he felt like this. “That doesn’t give him an excuse.”

Ophelia was quiet. He turned his head slightly, catching her eyes shut and her face a bit more relaxed: the drug had kicked in.

He took that as a sign to go. He could see her tomorrow. He sat up and was about to scoot off the bed when he felt a warm, soft hand grasp his wrist. “Stay,” she muttered. Her eyes were half open, but it wasn’t hard to tell that she was about to fall asleep.

He looked down at her hand that was touching his skin, feeling a strange sense of giddiness from it. “You need to rest, Ophelia.”

“Just until I fall asleep,” She told him, “just until then. Please.”

She watched his motions as he slowly nodded his head, unsure, and laid his back against the mattress once more. Just until she falls asleep, he told himself.

---

IT WAS THE middle of the night when Jude awoke. He was still in the position he’d been in when he fell asleep. Momentarily he felt confused as to where he was: the room seemed familiar but it was hard to see through the darkness of the night. There was a light sound of breathing next to him. Confused, he turned his head, taking in how it was just Ophelia.

It was just Ophelia.

He felt annoyed, he was only meant to stay until she fell asleep but he had knocked out too. He supposed he’d been tired enough to sleep this late. How many hours had it been? Five, six? What time was it? His mouth felt dry and his throat parched, he needed a drink of water to relieve it. The room wasn’t cold luckily, so when he slowly crawled off the bed and stepped onto the floor, he wasn’t covered in goosebumps. Cautious to make sure he wouldn’t wake her up, he blindly walked through the shadows towards her bathroom.

He’d somehow made it without tripping on anything, and he closed the door behind him before bracing himself to switch on the light. He blindly reached for the switch, and upon feeling it, he flicked it up. Instantly, the empty washroom flooded with pale light, making his eyes squint and burn from the sudden brightness. He placed his hand over his eyebrows groggily to shield out the excess luminessence from the candor of the overhead lamp.

He pulled up the handle for the tap and watched as the porcelain white sink started sloshing around water, leaning his face down to the basin. He let the clear liquid fill his cupped hands, holding them to his face to let the water clean his skin. He rubbed it into his eyelids to wake him up, then bringing some to his mouth where he drank some.

He shut the water off after he was done, his arm blindly reaching out to find a clean towel. There was one handing on the hook behind the door, and he lightly tugged on it to make it fall into his grasp. After patting himself dry he put the towel back, sighing hard. He tiredly rubbed his hands over his cheeks and over his eyes, looking at himself straight in the mirror.

Jude never liked mirrors that much. Something about them made him feel uneasy, as if he’d blink and something horrific would be behind him through the mirror. But nothing. It was just himself: plain old Jude, just more exhausted. His curly hair was falling into his bloodshot eyes, making the green appear more… they looked brighter, yet somehow more dead. There was deep dark circles underneath them, marking his skin, but those were from both his genetics and bad sleeping habits.

Exhaling a heavy breath, he turned to the lights and turned them off, opening the door and quietly walking back out, silently shutting the door behind him. It was still raining, but like true Seattle weather, it was only soft, but still frequent. He glanced at the door, then at Ophelia’s sleeping figure. Logically speaking, he should leave. But he didn’t have a spare key to lock it on his way out, meaning anyone could just walk right in.

He bit his lip, returning back to the bed. Now that he was awake though, there was a fat chance he’d just fall back asleep. Jude sighed once more and laid his head against the pillow.

Ophelia was sound asleep, though. She looked less hostile like this, like she wouldn’t hurt a soul. He wanted to laugh at the thought. The girl was a warrior, it was strange to see her so calm. She always had something to say, the air was never dry or quiet with her around. That was comforting for some reason. Jude wasn’t exactly the talking type, it was never something he was a natural at, so he was grateful to have a friend that never ran out of things to discuss.

A friend, right, a part of him was saying smugly. Sure she’s just a friend.

Jude clenched his jaw hard. He and Ophelia were just friends, nothing more. God how he hated his brain. It wasn’t like that. What they had was strictly platonic, anything more than that was forbidden. He forbade it from letting it develop into something more than that. This was why he was here in the first place.

Love.

Such a bitter thing. Romanticized by books and TV and shows. What a load of bull. He was stupid to believe in something so… unbelievable in the first place. Love was a lie: it only got you hurt. His mouth felt dry again, this time more with resentment. It was a stupid idea. God, who came up with this kind of stuff?

He was walking on thin ice, this was getting dangerous. The things he was feeling for Ophelia were… scarily familiar. Frighteningly so.

His eyes narrowed at the ceiling.

It was going to be a very long night.