02 buzzcut

                                    

                                          
song: buzzcut season - lorde
                          
click the ⭐ to at the bottom to vote! 
                          
KADE HAD blocked me on every single social media app.
                          
I figured it out when I sat on the couch with the biggest bowl of mac n cheese known to humankind, and I couldn’t help but scroll through our texts.
                          
When his profile picture, one I’d taken of him at Central Park, was suddenly missing, I knew something was wrong. When I checked Twitter, I found my answer.
                          
You are blocked from following @KadeRutherford and viewing @KadeRutherford’s Tweets.
                          
Something jittery and annoying poked at my insides. It lodged itself somewhere between my lungs and my heart and refused to budge.
                          
It was like I didn’t even exist for him anymore.
                          
The worst part of it all? I couldn’t bring myself to hate him. He was just prioritising his work over me, and even though it stung, it didn’t make him a bad person.
                          
Did it?
                          
But he’d come back to me. This had happened before. Twice, to be precise. Two years ago, and two years before that. And both times, he’d come back. This time wouldn’t be the exception. I stuffed my face with macaroni. Maybe eating would soothe the lump at my throat.
                          
Unable to help myself, I scrolled through my gallery. There was one at the zoo from a year ago. I got an overly friendly German tourist lady to take the picture. Just thinking about it made me smile.
                          
I was looking at him and he was looking at the camera. My curly brown hair lifted with the breeze, and despite the distance, the camera picked up my freckles.
                          
The knot at my throat only grew tighter.
                          
I opened my laptop and started an episode of Prison Break. When the air in the apartment began to grow cold, I wrapped myself in a blanket and titled my laptop on its side. Four episodes in, my eyes were closing on their own.
                          
Just as I felt myself drifting to sleep, the door was swung open. It collided with the wall. I flinched awake, scrambling to the floor with my blanket tripping me in the process.
                          
Looking up, I found Scarlett casting me an unimpressed glare as a tall skinny guy tailed behind her. I just stood there for a disorientated second too long, staring at my roommate like a fish out of water.
                          
Scarlett sharpened her glare. When her guy friend finally appeared at the doorway and grabbed her ass with a grin, it finally hit me.
                          
I needed to make myself very, very invisible, and yet, here I was.
                          
Visible.
                          
Scrambling for my laptop and recovered the pool of blanket now at my feet, I practically flew to my room, stubbing my toe in the process.
                          
“Ow, ow, ow,” I hissed through my teeth, feeling around the pitch-black room for my bed. Finally, I found it, and sat down, burying my face in my hands.
                          
After a short while, the pain subsided, and I curled into a foetal position in my bed and smarmed myself with my duvet. Then, when I started heating up, I kicked it off.
                          
I groaned. I wanted to scream into my pillow. I could have fallen asleep smoothly if Scarlett hadn’t barged in unannounced. Then again, she did have a right to half this apartment. 
                          
I just wish she didn’t try to eat half my snacks, too. I had to start labelling everything like a neurotic maniac.
                          
And by everything, I mean everything. Crisps, candy, Nutella, cereal. The girl was a human vacuum. And you know, that would be fine, if I wasn’t a vacuum too.