Credence

Tiernan
I yawn, the warm smell of fresh coffee drifting through my nostrils as I arch
my back on the bed and stretch my body awake.
Damn. I slept like shit.
I reach over on the nightstand for my phone to see what time it is, but
my hand doesn’t land on anything, just falls through the empty space.
What?
And that’s when I notice it. The roughness of the new sheets. The whine
of the bed under my body. The pillow that’s not the feather one my neck is
used to.
I blink my eyes awake, seeing the faint, morning light stream across the
ceiling from where it spills in through the glass double doors in my room.
Not my room, actually.
I push up on my elbows, my head swimming and my eyelids barely able
to stay open as I yawn again.
And it all hits me at once. What had happened. Where I am. How I ran
away, because I was rash and I wasn’t thinking. The uncertainty that twisted
my stomach a little, because nothing is familiar.
The way I don’t like this and how I’d forgotten I don’t like change.
The way he looked at me last night.
I train my ears, hearing the creak of tree branches bending with the
breeze outside and how that breeze is getting caught in the chimney as it
blows.