Free Web NovelChapter 10: SO MUCH LIGHTER
Chapter 10
Lumi
The restaurant was small and warm, the kind of place that smells like garlic butter and something slow-cooked.
The lighting was low, chairs mismatched and a chalkboard menu was above the counter that someone had written in careful, looping handwriting. fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓
I hadn’t been inside a restaurant in weeks. We walked in and found a corner table near the window.
When the waiter came, I picked up the menu and stared at it without really reading it. My eyes moved over the words without landing anywhere.
Ren reached across and tapped the laminated card twice without looking up from his own.
"What do you actually want?" he said. "Not what’s easy. What do you want." I looked at him and he looked back, waiting with no expression on his face.
"The pasta," I said, after a moment. "The one with the truffle cream."
"And the bread?"
"I wasn’t going to order bread."
"But you want it." I closed the menu.
"Yes."
He raised two fingers at the waiter and ordered both, plus whatever he was having, then set his menu down.
I folded my hands on the table and looked out the window at the dark street and reminded myself what this was. It was just dinner and it was for Neve.
Immediately the bread arrived, he lifted his phone from the table.
"Eat something," he said, and then he pointed the camera at me.
I stopped with my hand halfway to the bread basket. "What are you doing?"
"Neve needs to see you eating."
"Why must she see me eating? You can just tell her we came out and I ate."
"She wouldn’t believe me. She needs to see you swallowing the food to believe me. That’s the only way she’ll be at ease." He was already recording, a slow pan from the table to my face, unhurried, like this was a nature documentary.
"Say something." He urged me.
"I’m not saying anything."
"She needs to hear your voice. To know you’re fine."
"Ren..." I warned with gritted teeth.
"Say hi to Neve. So she won’t drop in her resignation letter tomorrow." I gave a resigned look and pressed my lips together.
He stared back at me from behind the phone patiently.
I thought about Neve watching this from wherever she was, exhausted and worried after a long shift, and I exhaled.
"Hi Neve," I said, at the camera. "I’m fine. Please concentrate on your job." I stocked bread into my mouth, chew and then swallow multiple times to really prove I was eating.
It really tasted so nice. Bread was one of the best things I love to eat when I’m feeling sad.
He stopped recording and looked at the screen to check it, nodded once, and put the phone face down on the table like it was done.
"She’ll replay it forty times," he said.
"Probably." I replied as I pulled a piece of bread from the basket.
When the pasta arrived, it was exactly what I wanted. It was rich and warm with that particular kind of flavour that asks nothing of you except to keep eating.
But I didn’t know if I actually had the appetite to eat, even though my mouth was watering.
I was staring at the food when I saw him lift his phone again.
"I need a picture." I looked up.
"We just did a video." I countered.
"Video is proof you’re alive. Picture is proof you’re okay." He said it with complete seriousness.
"Smile." He commanded.
"I’m eating." I said putting a potion in my mouth. It actually does taste good.
"Still doesn’t stop you from eating." I looked up at him with an annoyed look.
"You’re reaching, Ren." He raised his both hands.
"This is for Neve. You know she likes pictures of you smiling." I took a deep breath and reminded myself it’s for Neve.
"Ren, I have food in my mouth."
"Then finish chewing and smile."
I put my fork down, looked directly at him with an expression I hoped communicated exactly what I thought of this, and he looked back at me from behind the phone with the patience of someone who had absolutely nowhere else to be and nothing else to do.
I felt the irritation rise and then I remembered his words from earlier, of how she wants to resign.
I smoothed my face out and smiled.
The flash went off.
He checked it, tilted the phone toward me so I could see. I looked startled in it, like someone had just done something unexpected.
"Again," he said.
"That was a perfectly fine photo."
"You look surprised."
"I was surprised."
"Again."
I picked my fork back up and turned back to my pasta but I didn’t smile, after about four seconds he said,
"Neve’s going to think I forced you," I turned back to the camera and smiled again, wider this time.
He took three in quick succession like he didn’t trust me not to change my mind.
"Done?" I asked.
He was already sending them. "Done."
I ate in silence for a while after that, the restaurant moved quietly around us, low voices from other tables. Warm and ordinary.
The pasta was so good I ate more than I planned and the bread was gone before I noticed and at some point I had stopped cataloguing the room.
I set my fork down and realised my shoulders had dropped somewhere between the bread and the second helping.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had sat somewhere and felt this peaceful since that night.
For a little while, the flat in London had not existed. Callum had not existed. Sienna’s voice had not been sitting in the back of my throat.
Just for a little while.
I looked across the table. Ren was looking out the window, jaw loose, one hand resting flat on the table. Just still, like the world’s noise didn’t find him the same way it found everyone else.
I didn’t say anything. Neither did he. And that was fine.
....
Outside the restaurant he handed me the spare helmet without a word and got on the bike. I put it on, adjusted it, and swung up behind him.
The engine turned over, low and rolling, and I put my hands at his sides carefully, barely touching, the same way I did when coming.
Then we moved and the air hit us, instinct took over and my arms around his waist tightened before I could think about it.
The town passed on either side of us, lit windows and dark shop fronts.
The sight tonight, was breathtaking and magical, even though sometimes I ducked my face slightly against the wind.
Then the bike slowed.
We were on the stretch of road that cuts through the open land east of town, no streetlights here. Just the headlamp, the sky and the flat dark fields on either side.
Ren pulled over, stopped and cut the engine. The silence was sudden and total.
He took his helmet off.
I straightened up behind him, confused, and looked around at the empty road in both directions.
There was nothing here. No building, no landmark, just open land and stars pressing down through the dark.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
He turned his head slightly, not enough to look at me fully, and said,
"Middle of nowhere. Middle of the night." He paused like he was measuring his words. "Best place I know to put down whatever you’ve been carrying."
I stared at the back of his head more confused. I was about to ask what he meant but he was already putting his helmet back on.
And then the engine roared back to life and we were moving again, faster this time.
The speed climbing as the road opened up ahead of us, and the wind came at me like a wall and I held on.
I closed my eyes when the cold filled them. freewёbnoνel.com
The air moved through me like it was looking for something to take.
Then I heard his muffled voice from inside his helmet.
"Let it all out, Lumi. Every single thing." It took me a while to understand what he was saying.
He wanted me to let it all out, to drop every single thing that’s been holding me back in the wind.
I loosened my jaw, dropped my shoulders and tipped my chin up slightly into the rushing dark and I let the wind find every tight, held, carefully managed thing inside me.
I closed my eyes and let myself remember it all from the very beginning because that was the only way I could forgive myself.
I remembered the first day I met Callum, the way I’d smiled at him because he’d been so nice to me.
I could feel the tears going with the wind and my body shaking from the pain.
But I knew now that the best way to heal from a pain is to really feel that pain.
"I hate you Callum." I let out the one word that I’ve wanted to say all this while and it felt nice.
"I hate you and I wish I’d never met you." I screamed more and I saw Ren nod his head in satisfaction. A gesture that spoke more than any word can.
"And Sienna. You think I’m bitter? Then you’ll call me a witch after I’m through with both of you." I screamed more.
"I’m not bitter. I’m just a woman who loved and trusted the wrong people. But I promise you both that, I’ll be the one that’ll smile last. And I’ll teach you both that they’re consequences to your filthy actions."
For the length of that road I didn’t hold any of it together, I just went with it, through it, and the speed swallowed everything.
When we reached the edge of town, the streetlights came back and the bike slowed to something ordinary again, I was completely satisfied.
I held on unto him until we stopped outside Neve’s house and the engine went quiet.
I sat there for a moment in the sudden stillness, breathing.
My chest felt different.
I felt so much lighter, like an heavyweight has been lifted from my shoulder, like a window had just been opened in the dark room deep inside my heart.
