BEFORE I DIE, I PRAY TO BE BORN | ✓

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FRIDAY
15.11.1996
DORIAN

               Ima hasn't sent me a follow-up email. I'm not sure whether to be relieved or stressed and the indecisiveness doubles my anxiety. When I was at Coeus, Ima wouldn't wait more than twelve hours to phone me if I left any of her messages unanswered, and now she won't bother with a second email when I ignored the first?

Perhaps she doesn't expect me to come after all. There is a possibility it was only a casual invitation and the weapons I found when I tore it at the seams were coincidences (even I'm not that naïve).

I scuffle from the lobby to our room only for any thought of my parents to shatter.

Isaiah limps from the bathroom, clutching his toiletries bag. He drops it onto the bed where his emptied duffle rests, all his clothes tipped into a pile beside it.

'What are you doing?'

He shrugs without turning to me. 'We booked this room for ten days. It's been ten days. I'll need to get a different one.'

'You don't think we can get this for another ten?' This is Lower Halsett and it's November. Judging by the fact I've only bumped into one other guest during my daily trips to the reception computer, the rooms are far from being contested over.

Isaiah moves slower than usual as he re-folds his clothes back into his bag. Extra careful with his body, he still won't look at me. Or maybe he just won't look at me.

'Not "we", Dorian.' His voice is dull with fatigue.

I forced myself to stay awake until he finally drifted off but sleep seized me soon after him. When I woke up at eight, he'd already got through a quarter kettle's worth of coffee. He probably didn't sleep more than a few hours.

Not that I feel as though I did either.

'What do you mean?'

'I mean I'm getting a new room. And you should go back to Oxford.'

My chest is emptied hollow and the stones that drop into my stomach send harsh reverberations through it. Like hitting a metal pole with a hammer, they scuttle up my ribs, discordant at first until they morph into Rachmaninoff's Études-Tableaux opus 39.

'What?'

'You should go back to Oxford,' he repeats as he folds his second ribbed tank and used underwear (You fold your dirty laundry? Of course, you do. Why didn't I know that?). 'You've tutorials and deadlines ­— loads too, I assume, considering you're to graduate in six months. I really appreciate your help, but you need to get back and I've still got shit to figure out here. You ain't fucking up your degree for me — this is your dream.'

I shake my head at his back. I want to say it doesn't matter but whilst my tutor granted me absence, he gave me no extensions and I can't lie to Isaiah when it's trust I'm trying to nurture.

Still, despite everything, our time here revealed exactly what my life is supposed to be and I won't go back to uni, pretend none of it happened, and settle for whatever my existence is without him. I have written more music in the past week than the past year. Leaving is what will damage my dreams.

'I shouldn't've never let you come here.'

Isaiah folds his clothes with the kind of care Ima did her best to punish me into (the irony is not lost on me). He ensures each fold is symmetrical, irons them with his palm, and rolls them up to stack neatly into his duffle.

'I'm using you. We both know that. Emotionally, maybe, but it's still using. You deserve more and I can't give you more.'

'You're grieving. I don't expect—'