Chasing After Infinity Read online

  chasing after infinity

  L. Jayne

  Copyright © 2012

  L. Jayne

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, without express permission of the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, or any events or occurrences, is purely coincidental. The characters and story lines are created from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Cover Image Copyright © Austin Combs, 2011

  epilogue

  ADRIAN

  Everyone wants to know the story behind my aloofness and indifferent outlook on life. They think they know me or can see right through my façade.

  What they don’t know is that it’s all part of the game.

  With me, everything’s just a delicately woven ploy and in that world, I’m the king of playing with emotions. My favourite ones are those with the miles-long legs in short skirts and glittery lip gloss that tastes like candy. And there’s just something about the chase that makes it all so exulting. I’d run into a girl in the halls and glance over briefly as we’d pass, holding our eye contact until she’d look away in embarrassment. Every so often, I’d hold her hand in mine lightly, liking how the simple movement could make her slowly forget how to breathe. Other times, I’d move closer to her until my face almost touches hers and a covert smile would quirk my lips as she’d blush furiously.

  The prospect of getting emotionally involved with any of them seemed futile. They knew what kind of person I was; it was either take it or leave it. I’ve never promised them it was going to turn into something more.

  As far as it goes, I’m the person that warns girls off and yet the person that lures them in. I’m two sides on a flip coin all at once.

  Falling into my tangled web is almost too easy.

  But my façade didn’t fool everyone. There will always be a foil somewhere in your plans. And my kryptonite hit me in the face.

  I remember the first time I saw her. I remember the way she dared you to meet her gaze. The way she flickered my attention.

  With her, it began the same way it did every other one that came before her. And right from the start, I knew that she would be difficult. She was everything complicated; all coy eyes, snarky attitude, and hard edges.

  It was only a ruse to see if I could lure her in.

  A game that turned into reality. Because I’d eventually lost myself somewhere in it.

  Through the endless lazy days, we’d lie on the beach, talking in hushed voices, watching the setting sun spread in front of us. We’d dreamed of heading somewhere else, to a place where we could be whatever we wanted. A glimmer of a connection settled between us and it was strangely undeniable.

  But it didn’t last.

  Because we both had our faults and the thing we shared glowed dimmer and dimmer until finally, one day, it turned into a spark and then nothing. And that was that.

  Everything was over.

  Maybe beneath the act, I’ve always known it would end this way but didn’t want to think about it.

  We could perhaps call whatever we had love. But as she said before, I wasn’t capable of loving someone. And she was possibly right.

  Because in a couple of months, I was back to my old game. So she was smart not to fall in love with me.

  My history with Avena was simple yet complex at the same time. That’s why when one of my friends asked me a while ago what had happened between me and her exactly, I said nothing. Because I never understood it. And I don’t think I ever could.

  Strangers to friends, friends to enemies, enemies to lovers, lovers to haters, haters to friends...the circle of confusing emotions and relationships make the world go round.

  I watch the waves surge against the jagged rocks, spraying seawater into the air and washing up foam ashore. The sun is reddish in the darkening sky and the fading embers of light strike against the ocean, bringing up shimmers that make me squint. I bring the hot end of my cigarette to my lips, sucking in smoke and blowing it out into the salty breeze. It calms me, numbs my nerves.

  I close my eyes. My life is easy, some people say. I’ve got the looks, the charms, and the potential. They tell me I’m destined for great things and I don’t believe them because in the future years, I can see nothing. I’d be just like my adoptive father, living a fucking dull life in his fucking dull cubicle with a fucking dull family.

  My hands clench over the railing as I fight the struggling feelings inside me.

  This beach is the place where it all started. It’s also the place it’s all going to end.

  “Adrian.”

  My head jerks up. The moment I see her, it’s like my past blazes up in fire before my eyes. Pale chestnut hair spilling out of a hat, face washed out under the dim sunlight. She’s standing there alone, eyes staring through me.

  After her spoken words, there’s nothing but a current of electricity passing between us. I don’t know how long we stand there on the sand but it feels like an eternity. I still remember, I want to tell her but my lips don’t move. I remember everything.

  Our eyes locked, I steel myself for whatever lies ahead. I realize that the world just works like this. If I wanted it to stop, I would have done so a long time ago. I would’ve held us in that perpetuity.

  But of course everything just moves forward. There’s nothing we can do to stop time. It presses forward, never bothering to give you a breath of air to slow down. That’s why I force myself to shove my hands into my pockets, to meet her searching gaze.

  “What do you want?” She says to me, still watching me. Sounding empty. She looks so drained in that moment, one hand wrapped around her own waist, the other gripping the railing in a viselike grip as if she can absorb strength from only that. It strikes me how different she is from that first day.

  “I just wanted to talk. Just give me two minutes and you won’t have to see me around town anymore.”

  Avena pushes comes up to me slowly. She opens her mouth to say something but closes it just as quickly, a look of anger washing over her features. “I have a life now, Adrian. You can’t just yank me around—”

  “I’ve—” I start, moving forward.

  She stops me with a simple shake of her head, about to turn and go.

  I reach out to touch her shoulder as soon as my hand barely grazes her, Avena turns fast, and her eyes are angry pools of roiling torrents. “Don’t!”

  As quick as a flash, she pulls back her hand, and then slaps me across the face, so hard that I feel my head crack to the side slightly from the unexpected strike. I rise in front of her, looking at her red hand.

  She swallows. “Just don’t. I—I’m actually at my limits right now.”

  I say nothing, my cheek pulsing. We watch each other, both unblinking and immobile.

  It’s the first time I’ve seen her like this, so out of control. She stands so close that I can feel every shuddering breath. I hold my ground, my arms motionless at my sides. We are trapped in a silent challenge, both of us refusing to be the first to look away.

  I exhale sharply, deciding to lose. “I’ve…missed you,” I finally finish what I was about to say before.

  Then I take her shaking shoulders and pull her firmly into a hug. At first she tries to push me roughly away but I won’t let her go. Finally, she relaxes and all the anxiety leaves her body. She sighs desolately against my ear and this immediately takes me back to the moments where we stayed locked like this, like we had to hold on to each othe
r or else we’d get lost and be blown away forever.

  She rests her forehead on my shoulder while I stare blindly over her.

  Thoughts storm in my mind but they all seem distant now as I press my lips against her clammy forehead.

  “Adrian,” she says quietly, almost a soft whisper.

  Suddenly, there is a little voice in the back of my head. Pretending is getting us nowhere.

  It’s like they’ve always said.

  The only way to let go is to confront the past.

  Ψ Ψ Ψ

  eighteen months earlier

  AVENA

  I never liked good byes. They were sultry and bitter, always at the end of imperfect. They held remorse and endless sorrow, acting as silent tears into the ocean. I still remember that day. The day when my life fell apart.

  I thought that I was used to pain. That I was already numb from it. But the sight of her lying unevenly on the hospital bed, hooked to numerous tubes filled with fluid, just tore me down. If I squinted my eyes hard enough, my mom might’ve even looked as if she was sleeping all this time. Her eyes were closed and her lips were in a neutral expression. I had the indiscreet urge to yell in her ear to wake up, to do anything for those eyes to open. Her face was ashen and lifeless and I held on to those cold fingers like she was my life raft. Don’t let go. I silently pleaded, feeling like my heart was about to explode. Please. But it was no use. Her skin grew numbingly cold and in that moment, I just knew. As if all energy had left my body, I bent over; falling forward in blindness and Hayden, who was next to me, caught me. He held me close to him; I felt my ribs deteriorating around my heart. Dad didn’t even cry; he just stood there, his face shadowed and drawn, retreating into himself.

  “She’s gone,” Hayden said quietly, his words slipping through his lips. His eyes were frozen blue; the hands restraining me shaking.

  My hand unsteadily balled up and I pushed him away roughly, dodging out of Dad’s arms as I ran to the door, gasping for fresh air. I didn’t want to look. Didn’t want to hear. Old pain came rushing back at full-force as I flew down the set of stairs, through a bustling hallway and the emergency exit door. I unsteadily breathed in the salty May breeze, struggling to keep my emotions on check. With my shoulders trembling, I slumped against the brick wall. There was this continuous blankness in my mind. I couldn’t think. So I just put my head between my legs and tried to take in air. With each measured breath, I was just losing more control.

  I sensed Hayden sit next to me and the earthy pine smell of him was so comforting that I immediately buried my face into his cotton shirt. He let me breathe and try to get a hold of myself, wrapping his arms around me firmly. I glanced up at his tired face, his eyes reflecting light and long lashes resting on his cheek when he closes them. Hayden, my best friend who I’ve met and known since kindergarten is the only one in this world who I’ll let him see me like this.

  “I don’t know how to handle this,” I whispered to his shirt, “I just don’t.”

  “You’ll find a way,” he promised.

  “I didn’t even get to say good bye.” Biting my lip so hard that the metallic taste of blood flows into my mouth, I closed my eyes against his skin.

  It was not happening. She wasn’t dead, she couldn’t be. Just a year ago, she was still alive, sick but still alive. We were still holding one of our Buffy rerun marathons, us eating a bowl of corn chips, laughing. She was still listening to my problems and was the shoulder to lean on when I cried. Still the one who I relied on, the person who would put aside her time to help me with my homework, help me through my rough spots and the one who loved me unconditionally—whether I deserved it or not. And there were the bad times too.

  I still remembered the night I came home all drunk and dizzy from a late party and she was red with fury when I stepped through the front door. We’d screamed at each other, spat venom in the air until both of us ran out of words. I screamed ugly words at her, words that bit into her and left me regretful for far too long. Then two weeks later, she was diagnosed with Sarcoidosis, an inflammation in the lymph nodes and other tissues.

  It was hard watching my mom gradually change into something pale and feeble throughout the growing months. During hospital visits, she’d keep on saying over and over again to me that she’d beat the infection and win the fight. We were all determined. But as time went on, it was clear that the disease was evolving and killing her from the inside when her lung tissues started bleeding. And at last, it won.

  I gritted my teeth together and anger rose up in me like torrents of hot, bubbling frustration. Without thinking, I punched the wall behind me so hard that pain instantly flared from my torn knuckles.

  Hayden reached for my hand, taken aback. “What did you do to yourself?”

  I looked down to see blood sliding down the broken skin of my knuckles. The red blurring my vision. Sobs escaped from me and I hunched over, the last fraying threads of my self-control demolished.

  Tears came like a waterfall as I started to silently cry. Tears that were locked in me for a very long time flooded out, dampening Hayden’s gray shirt.

  The sharp pain in my heart grew to a deafening crescendo.

  And in that moment, I realized that love’s too brittle because it was about trusting someone and giving them the power to hurt you. To crush you. It was just a delusion. The only way of winning was to not let emotions get in the way.

  My heart, once whole, was now enclosed with thick pricking ice. My glass heart.

  Dizziness threatened to pull me under. Then I surrendered, falling into my grief.

  chapter one

  AVENA

  It’s already been a year. A numb year, filled with gray skies and colourless words lingering in the air. It’s only a matter of time before I crack.

  Forgetting everything is my way out. It’s the only way out.

  The rhythmic pounding of the bass echoes in my ears, leaving behind a faint ringing sound. Bright disco lights glitter across the walls, lighting up the otherwise dark room. The air is moist, stale and humid, filled with writhing, sweating bodies grinding out on the floor, screaming, and dancing wildly. Fruit punch glasses overflowing with beer are spilled around and the noises of laughter can barely be heard over the blasting rock music. I haven’t realized how hot it had gotten suddenly until I find the sweat clinging to my neck. The end-of-the-summer party is getting more raucous by the minute with the furniture being overthrown and the walls being spray-painted in neon green.

  Feeling light-headed with the bass, I let myself be pulled along in the churning vortex of bodies. I don’t want to think. Only feel the music forceful in my bones. The lights explode under my lids, tingling in the stale air.

  I’m being pushed toward a skater guy with bleached hair and he presses against my body, letting his hands rove over me. It’s something to block out the cold lack of feeling. I smile, the lights nearly blinding me, feeling drunk even though I haven’t even touched the beer yet. And the world goes round and round…

  My mind is mush as we dance against each other and the other bodies around us, only half-aware of the music booming in the dim background. I’m beginning to feel feverish as I shut out all thought and lift my face to the dark ceiling. Erasing out the world, I let my body feel and move by its own accord. And then I feel the guy’s hands at the bottom of my shirt and moving up and it’s like a trigger has gone off as floods of vivid memories pour through me. I try to block them out, closing my eyes against them but they crawl up to the surface. The hotel room. Me, dazed and drunken, sprawled on the bed. His fingers unbuttoning my blouse, his mouth slanted over mine, tasting of the faint headiness of alcohol.

  The flashback evaporates into wisps of smoke before my eyes. But the nauseous feeling remains in my stomach. Sloppily, I push away the guy who’d been dancing with me and he jeers. My earlier euphoria dissolves into a bitter taste in my mouth and the need to dance, to erase out the world, has vanished. Feeling spent, I weave through the collection of peop
le, toward the keg in the centre. I fight the conflicting emotions inside me as I stumble through the threshold. Just as I’m about to turn around, a guy lurches against me, almost knocking me over. Nearly falling forward, I bump against a body who reaches out a hand to steady me.

  “Whoa there.” My vision fuzzy, I look up to see Adrian Huntington’s concentrated jade green eyes in front of me. He practically oozes sensuality with his loping, masculine movements, and half-lidded eyes. “I know I’m irresistible but keep the hands off.” He notices me. I can see the hint of an oncoming smirk.

  I jerk my body away from him, giving him a glare to show that no; I’m not falling for his lines. I’ve heard too many sob stories from other girls to trust him the slightest bit. The best way to deal with a player was to not deal with him, not get involved. I knew what getting caught up with one was like first-hand. Everything always ended ugly.

  “Hey, have I seen you around before?” He narrows his eyes at me, trying to figure out why I look familiar to him.

  I clench my teeth as I reply, “I was in your Civics class last year.”

  “Oh, I see,” he says. “You were that Avery or Abby-something?”

  Annoyance rushes through me. “It’s Avena,” I reply frostily.

  He flashes me a sinful smile as if he senses my unease of him. “Well, Avena, how do you like playing with fire?” His face is bent down in level to mine, noses centimetres apart, so close that I can see every one of his preposterously long dark lashes, and I have to tear my eyes away from his compelling smile. Something in me, my intuition, tells me that I should just go.

  I move to push past him but he grabs my elbow. Acid churns in my stomach when I turn and recognize his half-amused expression.

  Adrian looks down at me with a tilt of the head, still not moving a slight bit. He looks like he enjoys this.

  I’m not in the mood to see who wins this challenge. “What do you want?”