The paint in my office room is starting to chip. Maybe it’s because I stare at it so hard, deep into the dark hours of my restless nights. I only unlock my eyes from the wall after Austin is tucked into bed and Melissa turns off her light because she is too tired to keep reading Project: Happily Ever After. This is my nightly routine. Maybe I’ll watch long enough that I’ll lose myself somewhere in the crevasses dripping down from the ceiling. Maybe it will bring me back, before the cracks were pulling me apart.

My eyes budge from the mesmerization, and I step out of the room to walk down the hall. These walls watch.. They indent where we used to press up against them, filled with distant memories. As I walk through, the walls seem to press towards each other, trying to hold onto me. They want to feel my pressure on them again. They want to feel the passion that filled this hall. They want us back. But the past is the past. I don’t stop walking and only give them a glance.

The door to Austin’s room creaks open and a warm force pulls me in. My steps fill the room in a symmetrical rhythm, but his sleep doesn’t seem to be disturbed.  My frozen heart thaws with just the thought of resting my tired eyes on him. His face forms a beautiful mix between my nose and his mother’s cheek bones. He still has some of his baby fat, which gives him the cutest dimples when he smiles. It is still fascinating that he could come out of Melissa and me and become a such a wonder that’s changing our lives, even if we hadn’t known he was coming. I put my scrambled thoughts aside, and I kiss him goodnight. I step back out into the hallway.

I follow the rest of the hallway to our room. Damn, I hate our door. The white paint  now has the undertone of a nasty, almost yellow, hue. The edges are starting to wear off because the frame doesn’t fit the door. I can’t stop looking for something bad to see but, whatever. I step through the doorway anyways.

I take my time to get into bed. Usually, I’ll take a shower and stare at the walls in there. Then when I’m done standing under the running water, I’ll use the old towels we have and scrape off the water still clinging to my skin. But tonight I’m too exhausted for any of that. Getting into bed is bittersweet. The sheets on my cleansed skin feel like honey dripping down from the heavens, giving me a taste from up above, but I have to get in too carefully so I won’t wake up Melissa. She usually sleeps with her back towards the wall, but she feels my movements with absurd accuracy. I stare up at the ceiling for just a bit before I close my eyes, but I’m scared that if I stare too long, the paint will start cracking there too and fall on me when I’m sleeping. Sometimes I’ll stare at Melissa’s back, but just for a quick second. I would never want to see her beautiful skin begin to crack. There’s already too much of that in this house.

There’s some chipping on the wall that Melissa is facing. Does she also stare through these walls like I do?

I try to forget my thoughts as I’m finally able to shut down for the day. I’m starting to lose feeling in my toes, my legs, my arms, my torso and then finally my head. My final worries of the day slip away as my consciousness goes with them too.

In the morning, when I’m ready to go off to my 9 to 5, I always look back into the kitchen. Melissa is finishing up, getting Austin ready. God, they look so gorgeous together.

“Melissa,” I call to her.

She looks up from what she’s doing and looks at me with wide eyes.

“You look beautiful today,” I say to my own surprise.

“Ha, thank-you,” she murmurs as she smiles with what seems to be a bit of remorse. She puts Austin down and is moving closer to me. She reads my thoughts, just like the book on her nightstand.

“I love you Jesse,” she manages to say before she leans in to kiss me.

There's something different in the way our lips touched that I hadn’t felt in weeks. Maybe she does actually still love me, like I love her. I look in her eyes. I remember all the times I looked in and saw the stars swirling. Back when we would meet up by Venus as two cosmic energies and fly with the stars and…

I have to catch myself from floating away like I always do.

“I have to get going,” I say as a give her a last squeeze to make sure she is still there. “I'm gonna be late.”

“Have a good day!” She looks into the horizon clinging onto Austin as I pulled out of the driveway.

I seem to shut down from all my messy thinking at work because all I hear are orders and distractions to get stuff done. This has been my routine for the past few years, but I can sense some cracking starting to build up inside me. While I start to lose interest with my task at hand, I trip into a trance at my desk and begin looking into my deepest thoughts. As I keep free falling through this rabbit hole of mine, a flood of old memories start to pour right back into my mind. I’ve forgotten so much. There’s so much missing in my life. And just as I start diving deeper, I hit a white wall infested with the same creeping cracks that were everywhere.

“Jesse!”

“Uh, yeah,” I subconsciously mumble as I pull myself from my trance. “Sorry.”

“Did you get those reports done yet?” My boss Janet, a skinny woman with a deathly stare, fumed.

“Uhm…” I stared at her like an idiot.

“The ones I asked you to have done yesterday? How could you forget that?”

“Oh, I just finished them. I’ll have them on your desk in five minutes.”

“You better,” she said as she stormed off to lurk around other parts of the office.

I finished those reports a while ago, but I’m not sure why I haven’t given them to her yet. I must've forgotten. That’s been happening a lot lately.

I print out the reports right away and put them neatly on her desk just like she asked. As I walk out of her office and down the hallway I start to get a regurgitative feeling that I haven’t felt in years. Is everyone staring at me? Am I doing something wrong? Are the walls closing in on me? I can’t breathe and I start to stumble towards the bathroom. I swing the door open and the smell of acidic soap hits my nostrils, but it’s better than those eyes staring at me. I look into the mirror as I try to splash water onto my face. It looks like I’m just dripping in sweat, but I can’t feel a drop on my body. I just feel my body temperature rising.

“Am I having a heart attack?” I question aloud as I make attempts of an inner cleansing, hoping I can wash away this awful feeling that appeared from out of thin air.

Then I feel vomit rising through my stomach into my throat like molten lava ready to burst from an active volcano that was once believed to be extinct. I move to the toilet just in time. I let go of everything. Mixes of greens, dirty yellows and old browns come together as they spew and break the surface of the water. The grotesque smell masks the nice smell of cleanliness and then water begins to obscure my vision.

After seconds become minutes, minutes become hours, and hours become days, I can finally breathe again and this episode starts to slip away. I clean up the area with the thin, cheap paper towels that we keep in the bathrooms, wash my mouth and face as well as I can, and pull out my comb to push down on my thinning hair. Nothing seems the same, but I open the door from the bathroom and step out of this unworldly portal back to the office space. Everything is untouched and in order, just like I left it.

I walk back to my desk with my head hung low, while maintaining my gaze a few steps ahead of where my foot is being planted. I ignore the walls around me and I get to my desk quickly.

I can’t remember the last time I felt like this. It had to be when I was very young. Memories of cold fevers and haunting nights go hand in hand with even my fondest memories from my callow years.  I thought I was over that. I thought I had buried those old sweat filled bed sheets and rusty thermometers. I thought I had grown into myself and my wings had learned how to fly out of the hospital beds and white dull hallways.

My thoughts fly straight to Austin. The hands on my watch shift to 5, I dash out as fast as I can without talking to anyone and trying to leave behind what had just happened. I turn on my car and head out to pick up Austin from his daycare.

I pull into the daycare and I find myself more relaxed then I have been in a while. Walking in and seeing those white daisies growing by the front door always puts a smile on my face, and when I walk into Austin’s classroom and see him playing with the other kids, I feel like everything is how it should be.

“How was Austin today?” I ask his teacher.

“He’s doing better even though he still hasn’t spoken a word,” Mrs. Evelyn responds with a cute and wrinkled smile. “He is new here, but he seems to be getting along with everyone.”

“I’m glad.” My eyes return to Austin.

“Austin!” Mrs. Evelyn calls out. “Look who’s here for you.”

He looks up and a wide grin takes over his face. He puts down his red fire truck a bit reluctantly and crawls as fast as his little limbs can go towards us. I bend down and swing him up. Kissing his cute chubby cheeks I grab his stuff that Mrs.Evelyn hands me and we head out the door.

I always have trouble buckling him into his car seat and the more I struggle with his belt the more he laughs at me, but today something seemed different. To be fair it had been a rough and odd day so far and he must be feeling it. He still smiles a bit when I tried buckling him in, but as I look back into his face, all he can do is stare back at me with those big eyes full of wonder. We lock our gazes for a bit and I try to memorize every angle and shape built into his complexion, and he seems to do the same. I give him a little peck on his forehead and get into the driver's seat. I pull out of the parking lot and head home.

 As I pull into our driveway I check my phone to see a text from Melissa.

I'm going to be home late today. Don't forget to put Austin in the pajamas that he really likes. Sorry, I'll see you tonight.

Not this again. I think it's been the third time this month, right? A small feeling in my insides comes back from earlier in the day, but I beat it down hard as I unbuckle Austin from his car seat.

I bring Austin into the house and the rest of the night is a blur. Nothing makes sense or maybe is it that everything is making sense. I'm not really sure. All I can make out was that I put Austin to bed. As he starts to doze off, old memories from my childhood fevers and AiWS come back and I remember someone saying it was genetic. I can’t really recall exactly if it was true, but I would rather have it again, instead of having Austin experience even a tiny sliver of what I went through. I pick him up and hold him tightly. Whenever I do this, the cracks seem to disappear, but I can’t hold onto him forever. He is finally fast asleep and I put him under his cozy cover.  

I walk out of the room into the hallway, while staring at the walls that always seem to stare back. I move quickly and I go into my office pretending to do some work that probably didn't have to be finished. I take up time until Melissa comes back home.

A car pulls up to the garage. The same car that had dropped off Melissa the last few times she had had to stay late for work. I try to see into the car. Melissa and the figure behind the wheel are talking. Something about the situation felt surreal. I had to keep my eyes on the car.

 

They had not stopped talking. It reminded me of the younger Melissa I had met so many years ago. Then she leaned in towards the figure. My stomach churned again and this time more rigorously than before, but I swallowed all my feelings back down. I was a white wall of emotionlessness. Did they kiss? Obviously I wouldn’t know because I never looked out my office window. I just kept on staring at my wall as the pain slowly chipped away.