the moment her feet had landed on the pavement, bri craned her neck up toward olivia’s window, realising she’d left her jacket behind. her lip quirked as she turned and sauntered away to catch the morning tube home, imagining that maybe olivia might shrug it onto her own shoulders and let the smoke and leather wafts lull her back to this night, dizzy with a hundred unfamiliar feelings,
in fact, bri was dizzy with her all night. every night. for a week and a half straight. but the thing about dizziness is that it only gets worse, more disorienting, more nauseating, the longer it goes on. every day that passes bri doubts herself more and more, relying less on the dwindling memories that seem locked inside a dream - tinged with feverishness, fraying at the edges - and more on the voice in her head that told her this entire ordeal was ridiculous. she spoke a word of it to no one. partly because something felt so intrinsically private about the whole exchange, that even if someday the world should learn of their knowing one another, that first night would be eternally secret. theirs only. and partly because - what the fuck do you mean, you broke into olivia ramone’s hotel room in the middle of the night running from your mental dealer, she let you in, you got drunk together and formed a connection with shaking fingertips unlike any you’ve ever felt before? of course she didn’t.
of course she said nothing. there was nothing to say. there was no sound she could produce upon her tongue to hold a candle to what it had been, what it’d felt like. and it felt impossible to live up to that again. that was it - she was scared. and brianna doesn’t get scared.
not only that, but she’s been dodging declan almost as expertly as she’s been dodging olivia, too. a jack of all trades - as deft at avoidance as she is at creating the problems she needs to avoid. any street in london was a risk. every hour that slipped by she didn’t see olivia again made her seem further away than ever.
but the memories turned to dreams turned to restlessness. she couldn’t run from it forever - she had to at least check it had been real. so, one night, she haunted that old peak among shrubbery guising the opulent estate under the blanket of evening and waited until a glow spilled from the windows of the house. bri was convinced it would never come, that the brick would remain cold and dark. but it didn’t. at 10 pm, warmth spilled from the porch, from the windows. one light sparking to life after another as olivia moved through the house; a real, breathing thing. bri’s stomach had churned. and then, there she was. through the window. some divinity only crafted in her mind except; no, she could see her floating between heavy curtains. bri scrambled down from the hill, shins lacerated with bramble thorn kisses, and went home.
two nights later she watches and waits until olivia leaves, then shoves a scrawled note through the letterbox. i never said thanks. so, thank you. the very same sentiment had been on her tongue since she’d left. in and beyond it all, olivia had saved her skin that night by keeping it to herself. by not screaming bri out the building, or calling the police. bri owed her a thanks.
another three nights scrape by. bri spots the back of a honey-blonde head at the bar, and her hand circling the same dirty rag over the worktop froze in its spot. then the woman turned around, and her heart sank. it wasn’t her, and fate wasn’t going to force them together like it had. she had to manipulate fate with her own hand. it was only then she made the decision.
she leaves her shift early, feigning she was going out the back for a cigarette and making a run for it. if she didn’t do it now, she feared she never would. she is very skilled at convincing herself of falsities when she wants to - and this might just be a fantasy too surreal to sit true again.
the lights are off when she arrives, so with a knife-nick of a heartbeat, she breaks in through the back patio like she was so accustomed to doing with her brothers all throughout this estate almost ten years ago. it moves under her fingers as though they were born to one another, and she soundlessly lets herself in.
bri moves through the kitchen, operating beneath shadows, rifling through fresh vegetables and wine bottles and smirking to herself as she imagined olivia shrouded beneath that hat and those sunglasses plucking the very items from organic produce stalls. “ so LA, ” she mutters to herself in a forced-valley accent, pouring out two glasses and swilling her own with a loose wrist. a stray iphone rattles on the island, and bri’s gaze rolls shamelessly over the illuminated screen. julia sits atop the list - an impressive eighteen unopened messages. chet just below, with four. her head tilts, but she is distracted before she can dwell:
keys rustle in the lock, shoes drop in the corridor, lights flicker to life one by one. olivia sidles in the room and collapses on the couch, a groan eliciting from her throat as her phone buzzes again. bri’s lip tilts heavenward. she leans forward, resting her arms criss-cross on the back of the loveseat, a wine glass in each hand, and mutters; “ boo. ”
an amorphous voice appears above her and her first instinct is to escape. her eyes, which had been well on their way to fluttering shut for the night, fly open as her head cants upwards to meet the figure who’s materialized all too close. bleary vision not registering the curls that have haunted her for weeks. ❝ fucking shit, ❜ she startles, pushing off of the couch with her arm and striking out with her opposite leg. she lands like a feral cat, twisting to just barely brace her fall, body reacting long before her mind does. it’s as her self-defense instructor taught her: create distance. perhaps a clumsy attempt at it, but it’s the best she can do after a grueling twelve hours on set.
when she once dreamed of having someone to come home to, this was not what she had in mind.
it takes a moment for things to shift into focus, for her mind to catch up with her body’s quick reaction. to reconcile the ghost in her closet with the living specter on the other side of the loveseat. a barrage of emotions washes over her: confusion, irritation, disbelief, and, strangely, relief. ❝ what are you doing here? ❜ she hisses instead, shoving the last one down into the depths of her psyche as she rises from the floor. ❝ what if i hit you? ❜ were she were less frazzled, she might have noticed that her thoughts too quickly shifted to the serial intruder’s safety. the thought of injuring her somehow more important than acknowledging that, once again, her security has been compromised.
❝ how did you get in here? ❜ the house is meant to be secure, with double locking doors, locks on every window, and supposedly floodlights to illuminate the back garden. though what had she expected giving the address to a stranger whose penchant for rule-breaking would be visible to a blind man?
green eyes take in the scene before her, noting that she just reaches eye level with brianna in her draped state. so effortlessly casual in spite of her surroundings — as if she belongs there. olivia might be jealous if she weren’t still collecting her thoughts.
she’s reminded of her decision, impulsive, stupid even, to share the location of her lodgings. she hadn’t been sure then of what outcome she hoped for, to be resigned to memories of a night since passed or forced to reconcile the remembrances with reality. she’s still not, as she stands confronting the latter option.
how many times has she run her fingers over supple leather sleeves, considered slipping it on to see if she might capture the other’s spirit, the ache that followed when she discovered she couldn’t? brianna has disturbed her from the moment they met, yet she can’t grasp why she isn’t angered by it. annoyed, perhaps, by the nagging in her brain that agrees while she should forget she can’t, but never angered.
her gaze falls to the wine glasses, manicured brow crinkling in perplexity — one too many for a casual raid of the fridge. the tension drips from her shoulders ever so slightly. ❝ how long have you been here? ❜
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