#oxfordreject

She's sitting outside her apartment, which is outside, stating the obviously. with her arms wrapped around herself, She stargazes, staring off into the distance of the never ending sky, completely oblivious to the world around her. She was caught up in her thoughts. She didn’t notice you sitting a few feet next to her, what will catch her attention is  when you lean forward from the corner of her eye. 

Quiet, in a place like Bristol, was Rae’s least favorite adjective. The palpitating heartbeat of activity should have been thrumming deep; high energy was what she’d expected upon returning, even prepared herself for. Convinced herself that long nights would be more fun than she remembered, the clock glaring five in the morning by the time she stumbled into her flat. But she’d received nothing of the sort, or anything even close in all reality, just mundane, day-in and out routine; get up, go to work, come home, watch the telly, go to sleep. Of course, it didn’t help that she’d been avoiding certain familiar places (and avoiding admitting she was avoiding them, even) that she used to haunt, because of the simple reason that she used to haunt them with certain company, an apparition she made every move to dodge.

It didn’t take long, however, for him to come crashing into her view regardless, in a style so much like him, where she had no choice but to look, react, retaliate. He was a headline on page five in the local rag, not his name, but his situation, and the description of it was enough to hint at his involvement, to lure her into the act of scouring the paragraphs for his name. Lo and behold, she pinpointed it, mentally circled it, didn’t even bother setting it back on the table, only let it scatter across the floor as she stood, gathering her jacket, scarf, hat. All of the efforts she’d been making to avoid him since she’d returned suddenly seemed insignificant, because regardless of whatever had happened, regardless of who he was now compared to who he had been to her, Rae never wanted to see him hurt.

Against her own set of rules she’d laid down, the ones specifically regarding Dean, she hurried, as quickly as possible, down the stairwell of her flat, out the door and towards a bus, one that she’d had to flag down and spent the entire time riding wondering what he would look like. How bad it would be. If he was even recognizable, and as she stood at the counter, trying to remember his last name, she started to question how much of him would be recognizable without the added physical damage, thought on how he might have changed as she heard her shoes, the only noise (there was that quiet again, the one she despised so vehemently) in the hospital hallway before she found his room number, his last name, his first name.