53 times.
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Ayla had pressed her fingers against the thick sheet, feeling over the small bumps of braille. She had painstakingly read the entire bundle of papers, 53 times.
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This would be her 54th.
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She felt for the confession again. Pressing into the word love with the tips of her fingers. Then she moved to the last line of the page.
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Good bye, my angel.
She hated the arrangement of dots. She hated those words. She wished she hated Naia for doing this to her. She wished she hadn't cried for months after Liam and Casey had turned up at her door in search of Naia. telling her she hadn't come home in three days. Asking her whether Naia was here.
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Naia had disappeared.
She had left all her belongings, her phone, clothes, everything she owned. Except her guitar, and a note asking them not to look for her. That whatever she was doing was for the best. Both of them had gone around looking for her in the usual places they would find her and turned up empty, they began to panic.
Ayla felt as though someone had very slowly and deliberately pushed a long thin blade through the center of her chest. She had felt herself bleed bone dry simply listening to the news. She had called her Mia immediately, and her cousin had pulled a few strings to try and look into where Naia was.
Nothing.
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A month later Liam had come over to her place again. When Mia had opened the door and told Ayla it was Liam, Ayla had idiotically jumped up and run forward, banging her shin to the low lying bedside table on her way to enquire about Naia.
He didn't have any news on Naia, she could hear the sheer exhaustion his voice carried, but he had a bundle of sheets with brellie on them.
“I think she left this for you.” he had told her.
She had read through the entire bundle in one sitting. By the end of it she was shaking. Trying her best not to crumple the last thing she could possibly have of Naia’s, she had cried. Aster had come up to sit beside her on her bed and nudged her arm with his snout.
She had cried till Mia dropped by the next day and began fussing over her wrecked state.
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How could she?
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That had been the only thought running through her head as she read the papers over and over again.
It wasn't her fault! It wasn't her fault and I wouldn't have hated her, if she just told me something, anything I-
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She would what?
Console her?
Why would she?
She never involved herself with such troubling matters before. And Naia had been with Arlo this entire time. She ought to hate her for simply leaving her with the burden of these confessions. She understood it hadn't been Naia’s fault, whatever happened to Arlo. She understood bits and pieces of what happened through the story Naia had left her, but she was as certain about this as she was of the taste of the sea.
It was not Naia’s fault.
Instead, a foreign feeling weighed down into her chest. It was a warm delicate thing. Something akin to what she saw and heard during the fireworks in festivals.
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She loved her. Of course she did.
How could she not.
Arlo had been incredibly precious to her. He had been her only source of joy in that wretched mansion. And she hadn't known he had taken his own life. She hadn't known Naia had been suffering silently the entire time she was next to her. She hadn't known she was drowning painfully slowly, while trying to make her laugh just to hear the sound of it.
She cried when she had read that part of the story. She had screamed and thrown things around her room. She had cried while hugging herself, trying her best to imagine Naia’s arms wrapped around her. In that gentle, careful way they used to. She would tug on her hair unconsciously after a few weeks, trying to breathe life into the memories of Naia tying her hair.
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Ayla couldn't bear thinking about it. But she did anyway. She thought about all the moments.
Everyday she would try to stop from reaching towards the pile of memories Naia left her.
Most days she would fail.
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On the days she didn't read her words, she would crawl into her bed and hug the pillow Naia had laid her head against the last night she was with her.
She had been worried I would hate her?
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How on earth could I ever manage such a thing, she had thought. 11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmBS95ppxbo
She had thought and remembered and cried and prayed.
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And like that, a year had passed.
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A year where numbness bloomed in Ayla and spread at a pace slower than a snail's crawl. It seeped into her veins and dyed her skin. She couldn't bring herself to care about anything by the end of the year. It seemed like the warm moments she had enjoyed beside Naia happened eons ago. Yet she could remember her voice the way breathing came to her. She could remember her gentle soft touches. She could remember the cheesy jokes she always made. The fact that she could only remember her killed her every passing moment.
At a point she began regretting not confessing first. She hated that she had been so slow.
If only she had stayed awake on their last night together. If only she had wrapped her hands around Naia’s and confessed to her.
If only.
“Ayla,” Ayla hummed in a daze, reading the last page of the book once again.
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55th time.
“The bags are packed. Casey and Liam said they’ll take their own car.” She heard Mia walk into the room, her voice getting louder with the space she closed. She came forward and placed a hand on Ayla’s head. “Your bags are ready as well, shall we get going?”
“You are certain, aren't you Mia?” Ayla had spoken with a meek voice, but for the first time in months since Naia had left, Mia could see the dull sparkle in her eyes. “You are certain it was her.”
“The report I got seemed pretty convincing.”
“If it isn't her,” Ayla closed her eyes and leaned into Mia, “if it isnt her, i dont think my heart could handle it. I don't know what will become of me.”
Mia suppressed a shudder at those words. She wouldn't let it happen, this nightmare her sister had suggested would come to life. Mia brushed her hand through the white standards of Ayla’s hair.
“It's her.” she said, “we found Naia.”
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and then Add to home screen.