Little Hell

Kale didn’t have to give her a look of disbelief or uncertainty because he could already tell by her chest heaving as she breathed heavily to avoid tears, that she wasn’t joking. The room was silent aside from the heater that was rumbling. Blaire was avoiding his stare by looking down at the tiled floor.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said with a voice he’d never heard; one with hurt and emotion flooding out of it.

Kale took her in his arms and simply held her there for what felt like a peaceful eternity for the broken girl. Her heart ached as he let her cry next to him while they both sat on top of her desk. The art room got smaller while they sat together and let time pass.

He didn’t know what was going to happen when she stopped crying or if she ever would; the only thing that mattered at that very second was that he had been holding her in his arms.

“He was terrible,” she said after a while, “I hated every ounce of him. He was being stupid… I just wanted him to stop driving… I didn’t know…”

“I won’t hurt you like he did,” Kale said softly.

She took a lengthy breath. “We were on our way back from visiting his mom in the hospital. We pulled over,” she paused for a minute before deciding to not go into too much detail, “and he got a call from the hospital saying that his mom had just died. He got angry and I tried to get him to drive back to the hospital but he wouldn’t so I grabbed the steering wheel...”

Her voice cut off after that and Kale sat there for a few minutes and waited for her to continue.

“The next thing I knew there were headlights and the car was smoking and there was glass everywhere. I knew he was dead… it was something I had wished for, for years and all I feel is like an absolute piece of trash,” her voice got quiet, “and not because I think I killed him but because I don’t feel bad for doing it.”

She got up from where she was sitting and looked at him with her eyes still full of tears. She didn’t look like the well-dressed woman that he first saw in the coffee shop and he was starting to realize the truth in Jacob’s words even though he wanted to deny every ounce of truth Jacob had warned him with.

“I have to go,” Her words faded into the air. Kale couldn’t move or think fast enough because she was out of the room and gone before he could say anything.

* * *

Weeks had passed by.

Kale went to the coffee shop every morning of every day waiting for a sign of her to come back but she never did. His hope was growing weaker and weaker for he didn’t have the slightest clue of where she could have gone and where she might be.

Jacob slid a coffee across the counter to him. He nodded a thankful gesture.

“You can’t wait for her forever man,” Jacob said while pouring another coffee.

“You’re still waiting… aren’t you?”

Jacob raised his eyebrows like what was being suggested was preposterous. “What do you mean am I still waiting for her?”

Kale rolled his eyes as if he didn’t already have him figured out. “My guess is that you originally started working here temporarily until she started coming and that you were one of those guys that got turned down; the guys you were telling me about.”

He looked at his feet, feeling pathetic, “just when you think you have her, you lose her.”