Transcend

At some point in the night I'd kicked off the covers from over me, knocking them to the end of my bed in my sleep as I shifted uncomfortably due to the heat of the house brought on by the chilly November weather outside. I'd turned on my side with my back facing the wall next to my bed which held a window with the curtains drawn, curling up and falling back into a deeper sleep with a now cooler body temperature.
I groaned unhappily in my sleep when it became cold in my room some time later, almost instantaneously dropping a good five degrees, and I made a sleepy grab for the covers I'd pushed away only to feel warmth around me again making me comfortable enough to forget about the blanket and press into the source of heat against my back. I didn't feel the sink in the mattress that his body must have made when it landed next to mine in my bed, and didn't realize that it was him who caused the cold in my room or the warmth around me, at least not for a few hours.
His steady breathing tickled my ear and I'd been so accustomed to feeling it against my skin, in the crook of my neck and on my cheek that I didn't realize at first that I wasn't supposed to be used to it. I felt his chest rising and falling against my back, felt his arms around my waist, and it felt so much like it had in the old days that when I stirred slowly from the hours of sleep after waking up from the cold, I thought that I was back in my junior year of high school.
I blinked once and lifted my head slightly then blinked again, realization finally hitting me as consciousness flooded back into my mind and I screamed loudly, remembering that it wasn't normal to have someone next to me as I pushed away from the person sleeping and landed on my white carpeted floor, breathing hard from the adrenaline rushing through my body. I looked up at my bed a foot or so above my head with a terrified expression, watching as the person sleepily propped themselves on their elbow and glanced down at where I sat.
"Nora?" He mumbled still half conscious as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes, focusing his full attention on me after a second. I observed him, noticing that he was wearing a plain white shirt and blue jeans and looked exhausted. When he looked at me he must have seen my face covered with shock and fear, horrified at the situation I'd woken up to. "Liam?" I questioned with a breath of disbelief as I felt my heart rate slow and steady anger began to take over all emotions, the memories of him and everything that had happened racing through my mind at rapid speed.
"Why am I in your room?" He asked as he sat up fully and glanced around my dimly lit room, eyeing the purple walls with posters and pictures hung on them which must have been so familiar to him. My last wave of surprise swelled away from me and I glared at him with as much force as I could, standing quickly from the floor and straightening my clothes as I replied: "How should I know? I woke up and you were here, shouldn't you be the one explaining?"
I crossed my arms over the light blue tank top I slept in along with my striped pajama pants, waiting for a reply and watching as his eyes looked down to my bed, as if he was trying to figure out himself why he was here. "I was...somewhere," He answered finally and I raised my eyebrows at how vague it was. His brown eyes looked up at me and he must have thought that I was demanding more detail and said, "I don't know what it was; I was in my apartment and then I was in this cold, blue place trying to find my way out. I didn't know where I was or how to get out, but I must've ended up here in your bed..."
I gave him a strange look as he avoided my eyes again, knowing full well how insane his words sounded. We remained in silence for a matter of seconds before he finally allowed himself to look at me again watching as I nodded slowly giving a sarcastic, "Uh-huh." When he gave me an annoyed look for not humoring him I continued, "No no, I believe you Liam; you were trapped in some other dimension and you ended up in my bedroom somehow. You teleported into my bed."
"You think that's what it is? I teleported?" He asked me seriously, ignoring the sarcasm dripping from my words and taking them as if I were analyzing his fake story. I scoffed at my failed attempt to make him angry and retorted, "No I don't think you teleported! You climbed through my window or something, wanting to be cruel and play a trick on me!" I was frustrated at how he was not only treating this strange meeting so casually, as if we had no sort of past together, but how he was lying about everything. I huffed dramatically and looked away from him, glancing to the left of my room where my bedroom door was as I listened to him talk.
"You don't have to believe me..." He answered with an offended harshness in his voice as his eyes fell down to look at my bed which he still sat in, then after a few seconds he glanced back up at me and spoke, "Hey...It's still April, right?" At that I turned back to look at him with a confused expression, my arms still crossed as I stood parallel to my bed a few feet away. "April?" I finally repeated after watching him for a second, "No, Liam, its November."
I watched as his face grew shocked in the dim light of my room, looking down and away from me again as he thought over the information I'd just told him with a confused expression. "November... It's November... I've been in that thing for seven months...? Seven months of my life..." My face fell into a displeased frown as I watched his bewilderment, listening to his words and how real they sounded. "What are you...Stop playing around..." I could feel myself growing scared again, an irrational fear bubbling up in my chest as I listened to him mumble to himself in disbelief. "I missed the entire summer break... I missed my birthday... I'm twenty years old now..."
"Liam, stop. You're not fooling anyone," I spoke over him with a raised affirming voice, almost believing his story with how well his acting was. I knew that it was impossible that what he was talking about could really happen, that he had really been inside some other world for seven months and had just returned. It didn't happen in real life; all he was doing was trying to make fun of me or insult my intelligence. "I missed my finals..." He continued as he ignored me, "I missed registration for the fall semester... What about college? Do they think I dropped out? And my family, my friends too… What do they think happened to me…?"
"This isn't funny anymore!" I all but screamed causing him to snap out of his trance and look up at me with a surprised expression as if he'd just noticed I was standing there listening to his words. "I don't know how you got into my house but you need to leave, now! It's late and I'm tired of listening to your stupid made-up story!" My face was burning bright red with a mix of rage and embarrassment, both the result of waking up to him in my bedroom playing these tricks and telling these lies as if it was funny to mess with the girl whose life he'd destroyed.
"I fell into your bedroom from the place I was sucked into, from a portal I guess…" He began to explain again as if I'd somehow missed it the first time. "I was so tired from trying to get out, and you were so warm... it was sort of like old times back when-" "Oh, shut up!" I yelled again wishing he would just stop talking, "Get out of my house!"
"You're just going to ignore what happened? I teleported into your bed, Nora," He seemed frustrated that I didn't believe his story, and I could hardly believe that he was the one angry in the situation he'd pushed me into. I groaned and replied, "Yea I guess I am; will you please just go home and leave me alone?"
He shifted in my bed and turned to look at the clock resting on my nightstand, the bright red numbers reading 3:35. He stared at it for a second as if trying to understand what it meant before glancing at me, "It's almost four AM, how am I supposed to walk all the way to my apartment when it's pitch black outside?"
"Figure it out yourself; maybe you can teleport there," I growled sarcastically as I stepped forward and grabbed onto the sleeve of his shirt and pulled on it, yanking him forward from my bed. He managed to get his feet under him in time and followed me as I pulled him listening to him say, "Ha ha Nora, really funny." I ignored his lame comeback and opened my bedroom door quietly, walking down the stairs and to my living room in the direction of my front door.
I opened the door and shoved him through it into the cold November night, watching as he stumbled before steadying himself and turning back to glare at me slightly. "It's freezing cold out here; do you really expect me to walk all the way home?" I tilted my head a little as if contemplating his question, then answered "I guess you'll just have to suck it up."
He gave me another angered expression saying with his own bit of sarcasm, "It was nice seeing you again, Nora," before I slammed the door shut too quickly to give a reply, minding my sleeping parents and younger brother though still thoroughly making my point. With the door closed I stepped forward and pressed my forehead against the white wood of the door, my hand still on the doorknob after I'd locked it, listening as Liam stood there for a second then sighed lightly and walked away from the door, down the walkway and to the sidewalk to make his trek back to his house.
I let out an exhausted breath as I closed my eyes, trying to stop my lower lip from quivering before it resulted in hot angry tears over him, the likes of which I'd put away after shredding them for months almost two years ago. I lost in the end, and regrettably let a few tears fall from my tired eyes, allowing them to trail down my red cheeks and to my jaw line before wiping them away and returning to my room, eager for a few more hours of sleep to forget about the fact that I'd woken up to my ex boyfriend in my bed.