fifty six

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"maybe the time

wasn't
right for us."

When I left the cafe, rain drenched me from every direction and I was soon soaked wet. I didn't find it in me to care about it at that moment. I kept my eyes down on the road and walked and walked until I reached the familiar art studio.

Fortunately, I had somehow managed not to let the box of polaroids get soaked as well. The same couldn't be said for the paper cups of hot chocolate in my hands.

Andrea was already outside, almost about to close the glass doors when she saw me.

"Lia! Oh, dear, you're soaked!" She exclaimed before opening up her umbrella and rushing towards me.

"Sorry, I--" I got cut off by my own sneeze. "Where are you going?"

"Calling it a day." She said and looked up at the clouds. "It's said to storm till the evening so I don't think it'd be wise to stay here."

"Oh." I nodded, shivering a little now that I had no thoughts to distract me. "Is--Is Alastair in there?"

She smiled. "Yes, yes. He's back in the painting room though, looking through the paintings."

I nodded. "I'll go in then."

"Oh, make sure to tell him that I'll come back to get Milo as soon as the rain stops." She told me. "Milo kind of gets a little freaky if I take him out in the rain."

I managed a smile. "Okay."

When Andrea dropped me by the doors, making sure that I didn't get soaked any further, she left and went dashing to her own car. I stepped inside the studio and closed the doors behind me. A small sigh left my lips at the warmth inside.

I tried pushing my hair away from my eyes but since I already had stuff in my hands, I couldn't. So I headed for the room Andrea had told me I'd find Alastair in.

I didn't notice Milo coming out of the room towards me until I sneezed again. And then again.

"Ophelia." Alastair was sitting cross-legged on the ground, surrounded by numerous painted canvases. He looked up at me with a smile.

I tried smiling back before sneezing again. This time, however, I might've dropped something from my hands if he hadn't stepped up in time and taken the drinks from me.

"Got caught in the rain?" Alastair scrunched up his nose in a way I found quite adorable. And I smiled for real this time, swallowing.

"Yeah, I...I forgot an umbrella and then when I left the cafe with these drinks it was...raining heavily. I forgot. Again. But it's fine. I was..." I trailed off when my gaze fell down to the box in my hands. Noah's words were still ringing in my head from earlier. I forced another smile on my lips. "...probably expecting this."

Alastair was staring at me. "Are you all right?"

I nodded, more so in reflex, before looking down at Milo who seemed to be not liking the fact that I was ignoring him. "Hey there, bud." I smiled at him when he barked, rubbing his little black nose against my ankle.

"Come on. You should change out of these before you get sick." Alastair said.

And so I followed him up to his little apartment, a lot grateful when he pulled out one of his hoodies and sweatpants for me to change into.

"What's the box for?" Alastair asked as he sipped on his hot chocolate. He sat on the bed, his gaze fixated at the box as I pulled off my wet sweatshirt.

"My polaroids." My voice went muffled when I picked up his warm, dry one and shrugged it on. "I thought we should look at them. Maybe you'll remember some things if you look at them."

Once I was done folding up the ends of the sweatpants so that I wouldn't fall on my face, I sighed and walked towards him, joining him on his bed. He passed me my cup of hot chocolate but I shook my head. "I'm not...really in the mood right now."

His eyes found mine and he took a few seconds to reply. "But you bought this for yourself."

I did. But my stomach was already in too many knots for me to want anything right now. Not even the nice-looking hot chocolate.

I just nodded then shrugged. "I'll drink it in a moment."

He pushed my cup aside and I was aware of his stare on me. I kept my own eyes on the box between us. "Is something wrong?" He asked me quietly, softly.

I shook my head, dismissing it again and pulled open the box. "Here they are," I said, nudging my head at the polaroids inside.

Alastair followed my gaze and picked out the Walkman instead. "I remember this."

I smiled and leaned down to pick Milo up from the floor when he started barking a little too loudly.

"You...gave me this when I couldn't sleep." He told me, sounding almost as if he wanted me to confirm it.

So I nodded. "Yeah."

As Alastair held it in his hands, almost looking a little too cautious, I held Milo in my arms and wondered whether he'd try licking my face if I placed him on my lap.

"What are these?" He asked me, holding up the only two individual cassettes I owned.

"One has got a tag on it. The other doesn't."

He looked down at it again and smiled at the one which said for when I miss Alas. "You changed the name."

I shrugged and placed Milo on my lap. He barked before rolling around and settling his little chin on my thigh. I scratched him behind his ears.

Alastair picked up the second cassette and placed it inside the Walkman. I watched him as he pressed the play button. Soon enough, the sweet piano melody filled in the silence around us, all except for Milo's occasional barks.

I sighed. I hadn't really listened to this melody for a long time now. And what was the point? It just made me sad. It reminded me of the first time I heard Rowan playing it in Oak Valley. And it reminded me of the time when Alas had had a panic attack just hearing it. So much with such a sad little melody.

"How do you have a cassette of this?" Alastair asked me, still not looking up from the Walkman even if the melody had stopped playing now.

I looked over to the window. "It keeps finding me." I don't exactly know why I said that. "Well, I first got it in the mail back at Luce's apartment. I somehow lost it or something and then I found it inside this box by the lake. When you...when they said you died, I visited the lake one last time. The box was right there. I thought you left it for me."

Alastair frowned a little. "I didn't. I'm seeing this for the first time."

When I inched closer beside him, Milo seemed to follow and stick by my side once again.

"Well, your mum said..." I trailed off when he snapped his gaze at me, his eyes widening just a little.

"I don't think she mentioned anything about this." He said, raising up the cassette just a little.

"She did." I shook my head. "When you left the hospital premises to go back to your car, she talked to me a little. She was talking about Cassius, saying that he had a box for you. He said that he wanted you to have it. And that when he sees you he'll...he would make you remember."

Alastair paled a little at that.

"What if...what if it was this cassette that he wanted to give you?" I asked him in a whisper.

He didn't say anything, just stared down at the Walkman.

"I mean, let's be honest." I raised my hands in the air and Milo started sniffing the hoodie I was wearing. "I heard this melody on several different occasions back in Oak Valley. The moment I arrive there, I get lost and find a library, and Rowan is playing this tune on his guitar. Then there was that panic attack you had in the Sanitarium when you heard it on this same Walkman. And then when we go to your family mansion, you start playing this on the piano out of the blue? It's connected to you. There's something behind it."

When I finished my rant, Alastair didn't even spare me a glance. I bit my lip, wondering if I had said too much. Had I?

"Cass taught me how to play it back when we were kids." He whispered.

I stared at him. Even Milo went still. "What?"

His grey eyes finally found mine and he sighed. "Yeah. We used to play it together on our family piano."

"You did?" I asked in astonishment, even if Alastair's mother had said something along those lines too. "How do you even remember that? I thought you didn't remember anything from your childhood?"

"I do remember some things." He sounded sad. "I am starting to."

When I noticed Milo looking at me with his tiny black eyes, I patted him on the head reassuringly.

"Your mum...she said some things about your childhood. She said that your father wasn't exactly fond of the fact that you had seen too much, whatever that means. And so they forced you to forget." I kept my voice soft. "Maybe it was some sort of...I don't know, drug-induced amnesia?"

Alastair seemed disturbed at that.

"I mean, that is possible, you know." I rubbed my nose when it started tingling. "They give you drugs to make you forget some part of your life. But it's not like they erase your memories. Those drugs cut off the chain of memories in your head. So that you won't be able to link those memories together ever again."

He placed the Walkman down a little too gingerly, almost as if scared. Okay, maybe I had said a little too much.

"Why would...my father do that?" He asked me.

I bit onto my lip again. "Maybe he didn't. I mean what I just said is total shit anyways."

"No." He said. "It makes sense, Ophelia. My family clearly wanted me to forget."

"Not Cass, though." I quickly added, staring at him. "He didn't...I don't think he had a say in it, Alas."

Alastair was silent for a while. For a long while. "I know." Was all he said.

I looked down and realised that Milo had curled up on my lap and was almost asleep.

"Maybe we...you can visit his apartment," I suggested.

Alastair looked at me and raised a brow.

"Where he lived when he was here," I added.

"I thought we were doing this together."

Oh. "I'll go with you then. I just thought...you'd like to go there alone."

He picked up one of the polaroids and stared at it. "I'd like to go there with you."

That was settled then. We spent the next hour going through the polaroids. Most of them were ones Alastair remembered. Some he didn't and I was more than happy to tell him all about them.

It seemed to elevate his mood and he was smiling by the time we reached the last one. Milo had gone incredibly heavy in my lap, or maybe it was just that I had been sitting in this position for far too long.

"He's growing on you." Alas pointed out with a cheeky smile as he picked Milo up and settled him on the bed.

I stood up and stretched a little, pulling up the duvet over the little pup. It was nice not to have him jumping and barking around for a while.

"Well, maybe," I said.

"I was starting to have this feeling that you hated him." Alastair was right behind me when I turned around. And when he leaned down to kiss me, I let him.

"Not hated him," I murmured against his lips and his eyes brightened.

"If you say so." He pecked my cheek before pulling away. "So are we just ignoring the fact that something happened, that you're not telling me, before you came here?"

I sighed and it came out more like a laugh, letting my forehead rest just below his chin. "Nothing happened."

His arms came around me and I relaxed even further. "I thought we agreed on being honest with each other?"

"I don't...I just don't want to talk about it right now." I didn't want to talk about Noah and his stupid friends. I didn't want to talk about how his words had hurt more than they should've. I didn't want a repeat of Alastair's bruised knuckles either. Besides, I was moving on, wasn't I?

He took a while to reply, his fingers softly sliding into my rain-drenched hair.

"Okay." He said, and probably would've said something more, but the heavy rattle of the windows cut him off. We both glanced outside and I noticed how heavily it was raining right now. "Looks like you'll be staying here tonight."

I looked back at him, trying not to smile but failing pretty miserably. "Yeah?"

"You hate when it rains." He smiled too. "I don't think you'd like to get soaked again."

"Well, you're absolutely right about that." I shuddered, then pulled away from him to take out my phone from my discarded jeans. "Let me text Mum."

Alastair seemed keen on cooking some dinner while I lurked around the lounge, looking for a nice movie to watch to pass the time. Since it was supposed to be a stormy night, me being me, I picked out a horror one.

In the meantime, I got a ping of a recent text and saw that Mum seemed more than okay with me staying over at Alastair's. She, however, sounded a little disappointed with the prospect of no family dinner (with Alastair) like she had wanted. And then the next few texts of hers were of how she couldn't really believe that I had forced Dad to persuade Mum into letting this little matter go.

I smiled at that. Looks like Dad was trying. And maybe Mum was too when she texted me that she was going to listen to Dad just this time. It made me happy.

"Okay, maybe watching a horror movie at such an hour of the night was a horrible idea." I pressed closer against Alastair's side on the couch and he tightened his arm around me.

It was dead set near midnight right now. I think it hadn't stopped raining either.

"What, are you scared?" Alastair mocked me with a barely concealed grin. I couldn't ignore how dishevelled his hair looked since we may or may not have made out once after having dinner. Or twice.

I reached up to fix it a little. "No," I said. "Why would I be scared?"

Alastair grinned and attacked my neck with a soft flurry of kisses. I made a breathy sound that sounded a mix in between a laugh and a groan.

"You're making me miss the plot twist!" I exclaimed, laughing in between as I tried pushing him away.

"Oh no," he feigned innocence and pushed me down on the couch, crawling over me. "Can't let you get scared any further." When his cold hands slid inside the hem of my hoodie, I yelped. He pulled back and smirked down at me. "I always wondered if you were ticklish."

I opened my mouth to probably shriek some more, but when his fingers dug softly into my sides--intentionally--I started laughing breathlessly, the movie long forgotten.

"Alas, stop!" I begged in between my soft bouts of laughter, and when his lips found mine, he wasn't trying to tickle me anymore, but he was laughing into the kiss too.

Safe to say, the movie wasn't as scary as it should've been.

******

Alastair and I fell asleep on the couch. I don't exactly remember how long though. All I remember was waking up with a loud gasp, my mind silently trying to grasp onto the little fragments of the nightmare I just had.

I couldn't exactly remember what I dreamed about. All I knew was that it was horrible. As horrible as the one I had the last time, the one in which I was drowning back in Oak Valley.

Slowly growing aware of my surroundings, I tried blinking back the darkness around me and couldn't really when I realised that the lights were off in the lounge. Just a small light was switched on in the kitchen.

The second thing I noticed was that there was no Alastair around me.

My heart sped up for some reason and when I stood up from the now-empty couch, I took the duvet that had been over me a few seconds ago and wrapped it around my shoulders. It was shit cold right now. My nose had already numbed under the cold.

Wrapping my arms around myself, I carefully made my way towards Alastair's bedroom and didn't really see him there either. Only Milo still asleep on the bed. I frowned a little and would've left if I hadn't seen a silhouette by the small balcony on the other side of the room.

I quietly walked towards it and found Alastair leaning against the railing, his hair ruffling along with the wind and the rain.

Still raining, I realised. It had been raining for too long. That alone made me uncomfortable.

So I stuck by the entrance and didn't really venture inside the small balcony. Alastair, on the other hand, seemed more than contempt to let the rain fall over his face.

Then I sneezed and the silence broke.

Alastair turned around with slightly wide eyes. I rose up a finger and sneezed again. "Sorry. Didn't mean to--" Sneezed again. "--scare you."

He leaned back against the railing, only this time he was facing me. "Oh. You're awake."

"Why aren't you asleep?" I asked him curiously.

He nudged his head back towards the sky, but I only raised my brows cluelessly.

"It stopped, but then it started raining again." He told me. Almost as if that was answer enough.

"Oh," I said, then walked a little forward before sitting down and leaning back against the wall across from him, bunching up the duvet all around me. "Right. I forgot you loved the rain."

He gave me a lazy grin and straightened up to come, sit down beside me, our shoulders touching just a little. "Isn't it strange? I love it just as much as you hate it." He spoke up over the soft pattering of the rain.

I hummed. "Maybe."

Then he nudged his shoulder with mine. "How did you wake up?"

I rubbed my cold nose against my pulled up knees. "I don't know. I think I had a bad dream."

"What about?"

I shook my head. "I don't remember."

Alastair regarded me with a small frown, almost as if he thought I was lying. I wasn't. "So you've been having nightmares lately."

I leaned against his side. "Yeah. It's kind of...scary. Because I never used to have nightmares or dreams even. Even if I did, they were never bad enough to wake me up in the middle of the night."

Alastair listened to me quietly.

"I had this...one nightmare recently that I still remember though," I murmured. "Remember that one time I nearly drowned back in Oak Valley?"

I felt Alastair stiffening a little against me and when I glanced at him, he had his brows furrowed. "I remember bits."

"That's fine." I shrugged. "It's just...it got me thinking, you know. I remember when I fell through the frozen lake, it had felt like someone grabbed my ankle from under before pulling me in as well."

Alastair bristled. "I remember you telling me that."

I nodded. "What if Cassius's body had been inside that lake all along?"

Alastair inhaled sharply. He didn't say anything in response.

"Sorry," I whispered, gritting my teeth. "Let's just forget I said that." Because yeah, it was horrifying. And disturbing. And I had just woken up, for fuck's sake.

Alastair sighed and tipped his head back against the wall, his gaze fixated on the sky in front of us.

"What if you're right." He murmured after a while, sounding a little distressed. "If only I had known...if...I'm pretty sure my aunt would've."

"Have you talked to her about any of this yet?" I asked him.

He raised his hands and raked them roughly through his hair. "I'm never seeing her again if I find out that she knew about this all along."

"She's still your family," I whispered. The

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