#fllxwless

Everything is still. The kiss of salt water is tinged on her lips, the morning’s moisture clinging to her face and hair the way the boats cling to the harbor below. Sunrise has colored the water a brilliant shade of turquoise as the warmth of the sun spread across the Italian Riviera. Even as she stood at the top of the cliffs, arms spread out to welcome the dawn, she knew that it was a dream. Knows that it’s just her mind playing with the landscapes of Cinque Terre while her body slept soundly in New York City. But she hasn’t dreamed of Italy since her mother died and the scenery is a welcome sight. She took a step forward, to descend the rocks, to walk the path to her favorite reading spot, when fingers lace with hers.

“Cuore mio.” It’s her – her mother. Her dark brown eyes are even softer than she remembered, reflected in the hazy morning light. Isla felt herself take another step forward but, with just one blink, her mother was gone. Replaced with another familiar face – Finn’s. “Cugino.” His voice seemed disconnected, as if he wasn’t entirely there. Red colored his skin for only a moment, a flash of crimson, before it’s gone. There’s something terrified and urgent in his eyes. “Isla, wake up.”

A swift, ragged inhale and her consciousness is slammed full force back into her body, a speeding car slamming into a cement wall. The sound of angry, incessant buzzing greeted her ears immediately and, somehow, in her half-asleep, half-drunk state, she managed to realize that it was her phone. Clumsy fingers wrestled it from the nightstand to find “Aunt Juliette” flashing across the screen. She’s about to put it down, chalking it up to a mother worried about the likely missing birthday boy, but the look in Finn’s eyes is still gnawing at her. With a glance over her shoulder to ensure that Russell was still sleeping, Isla slipped from the bed, tugging one of his sweaters over her as she went. The buzzing has picked back up again, expressing its urgency, but Isla has to stop. A deep breath, in and out, to make sure her body won’t reject the contents of the night.

“Zietta?” Her thoughts are still coming to her in Italian, a part of her still standing on the cliffs by Portofino. But the sobbing on the other end of the phone drains what’s left of her dream from her body. And with each word that her Aunt speaks, another boat sinks to the bottom of the harbor. Finn, hospital, gunshot – thump, thump, thump. Her heart is beating so loudly that she can’t hear the words on the other end of the line anymore, can’t hear her aunt calling her name. ( “Isla, are you there? Isla?” ) She can feel it – her blood boiling to coat her skin in a thick sheen of sweat, the panic rising in her chest. No, not panic. Bare feet are rushing across the floor of Russell’s apartment, carrying her to the bathroom just in time for her to collapse against porcelain and expel heaven and hell from her body. Her whole frame is shaking with the violence of each purge, as if the devil himself was dragging his pitchfork from her lungs right up to the back of her throat.

The heaving is so vehement and forceful that it takes her a moment to realize that it’s become sobbing instead. But as soon as she does, she’s standing up again, needing to keep moving. Like a shark, she has to keep moving or she’ll die. The light is on in Russell’s room when she returns – no doubt awoken by the sounds of her exorcism – but she doesn’t have time to explain. “I have to go.” She’s talking as she moves, sliding on a pair of skinny jeans that she’d left at his place, pulling on socks and boots. “I don’t have time to explain, I can’t – I have to go.” She knows that he’s talking to her, knows he’s reaching out to her, but she can’t hear him. The world sounds like it’s underwater, lost in the Portofino harbor with the rest of the shipwrecks.

She’s sure that Russell put up a fight but she doesn’t remember it. She’s been drowning with the rest of the world and now she’s resurfaced and gasping for air, standing on the street, waving down taxis in the middle of the road. She didn’t grab enough warm clothes but the cold rolls off her skin, as lost to her as everything else. What will she do? If something happens to Finn, would the vibrancy ever come back to the world? Even the brilliant yellow of a taxi cab seemed duller, more gray. So dull that she didn’t realize it had stopped beside her until the cabbie’s head was hanging outside of the window, shouting curses she would have otherwise found amusing.

She doesn’t even know where she’s going until she’s speaking the words. But just the sound of them makes the world a little lighter, if only for a moment. ( How many moments did Finn have left? ) She knows she needs to get to the hospital but she’s already standing in front of the door, drowning and resurfacing once again. Isla’s fists pounded against the wall, shaking with the strength of the tsunami she carried with her. She’s screaming – she can’t hear it, but she can feel the rawness of her throat, the strain of her vocal chords. She’s railing against the door so hard that, when it opened, she toppled forward. Two arms reached out instinctively, grapping her forearms to balance her.

“Bash.” The moment her eyes land on his blue ones ( blue like the Ligurian Sea, she realized ), the world comes flooding back. She can hear the sound of her cries, the heaviness of her breathing, the ringing of her cellphone. ( Russell? Aunt Juliette? How long had that thing been going off? ) Suddenly, the world is bright and loud and she threw herself at him, purposefully this time, hiding her eyes and her ears against him. “Bash, I…” The sobs are ripping through her chest again, his skin muffling and distorting their sound. She tries to speak, but she only continues to repeat his name. “Bash…” His arms tighten around her, lending her some of his strength, and she exhales. A long, ragged inhale. “Fuck, it’s – It’s Finn, Bash. Finn. He’s...”

But she can’t finish. She can’t say it. And the undertow drags her back down again.