33: I want you too

The water was not hot enough. Leila dipped her finger into the tub filled with water, it wasn’t as hot as she wanted it to be. Her skin was red from too much scrubbing but she needed to bathe again. She wanted to wash away Charles’s touch from her body; his smell, his presence, his entire existence.

Leila got into the tub, and pushed her head under. Bubbles floated to the top of the water, her eyes blurred and her lungs burned from a lack of oxygen. She pinched her nose, counting the seconds. Twenty seconds was her highest under the water but she was counting thirty now. If she stayed here long enough, she might forget.

A knock on the bathroom door had her head shooting out, she gasped for air, mouth wide open as she tried to suck in as much air as she could. New record. Forty seconds.

“Leila?” It was Kelvin. “Are you there?”

“Yeah.” She coughed out more water. “Yeah.”

Leila wrapped a towel around her chest, waited for the sound of his fading footsteps before she ente