If it wasn't for the extremely rare ring of the doorbell of my apartment, I would have woken up much, much later.

I raised my head, taken by surprise and extremely dissatisfied with the intense, striking sound. Feeling pain in my back and noticing only after a good while that I was not in my bedroom, I came to the conclusion that I fell asleep in a chair, with my hands on the table, and my head on them. At some point, I had to fold my blouse into a ball and make a pillow out of it, because it was lying in front of me, on my hands, covering the spread out, filled with my handwriting, scattered pages. My hands started throbbing again.

Realizing the aforementioned sound, I got up from my chair with a groan. I wiped my face, thankfully lacking any makeup, on my way to the door and hissed because I'd forgotten about my hands. I frowned, seeing gloves on them. I finally looked through the peephole, and my surprise increased when I saw who was standing on the other side.

I grabbed the old metal door handle, and after a few seconds, I was face to face with Yvette.

Yvette soaked to the bone.

"Hi," she said, smiling uncertainly and uncomfortably, trying to ignore her appearance. She raised the hand in which she was holding... "Your scarf. You must have lost it last night. Britt found it on the front lawn today. She knew it was yours. The outfit lacking any orange tone is easy to remember."

And when she handed me, a soaked, like her clothes, black material, her hand barely visibly was shaking from the cold, and I instantly cursed in my mind, knowing what I was going to do.

I opened the door wider, moving to the side.

"Come in. I'll give you something dry to wear." I spoke lazily.

The girl looked at me for a moment with her eyes wide open. However, I think she realized the situation she was in and carefully crossed the door sill of my apartment. She smiled gratefully. Although she certainly did not feel peace of mind while staying with me.

Not feeling very good about it myself, I passed her by going to my room and getting some light blue sweater I hadn't worn in ages, and the same kind of tracksuit I hadn't worn as well. Taking a deep breath, I walked out into the hallway, where Yvette had just placed her shoes perfectly perpendicular to the wall next to mine.

Definitely an element of perfectionism had to come out at some point.

I went up to her when she straightened up and gave her my clothes. She thanked me, and then I showed her the bathroom door, which she literally had to the right of her, not far from the entrance to the apartment. And when she disappeared behind them, I went to the bedroom myself.

I felt my eyelids stick together. I thought my bones were heavier than ever. My feet were struggling against gravity. I looked in the small, oblong mirror, involuntarily scowling. Not because of what I saw in it. Not because of a sweatshirt printed on my face or a messed-up haircut. But because of why I saw what I saw in the mirror. The darkness for a moment covered my eyes.

I fixed the ponytail to the best of my ability and desire, and then, without looking back again, I went into the kitchen. I put the water on the stove, wrestling with the kettle. And when I finally lit the fire under it, I leaned against the countertop next to it, closing my eyes.

I tried not to lose my cool. My head was full of everything and nothing. I had stains in my memory, mixed up sequences of events. I can't even remember when I pulled out my phone to text the vice-manager about my absence. I couldn't remember when I walked into the apartment or how long I stood in front of my bathroom mirror.

But better than anything in my life I remembered what led to it.

When I heard the light switch click and the kettle was beginning to whistle, I woke up, opening my eyelids again. I turned off the fire, taking out a cup for myself. I was about to close the cabinet door when I remembered Yvette. I took another one out.

"Thank you, again."

I turned my head toward the girl who, already dressed in fresh clothes, was standing precariously in the kitchen doorway. Her hands were entwined on her chest and she seemed to be freezing. Or awkward. Maybe she felt both.

I nodded in response, then took out the black coffee, focusing on making it.

"You want something to drink?" I asked without turning around. My voice was still sleepily hoarse.

"Green tea, if you have any."

I nodded, glad in my heart that I would finally get rid of the gift I had received after my mother's first visit. Or at least some part of it. I grabbed both cups by the ears and didn't even have time to pick them up, because Yvette was already standing next to me, saying:

"I'll take mine."

And without fighting, I let her.

I took my coffee, holding it steady with my other hand, making it easier for the other one holding the ear. I went into the living room, and the girl, keeping her distance, followed me. Putting the cup on the pale wooden table, I immediately collected the things left on it, including the paper sheets.

And even if Yvette had seen the notes on them, she didn't show it at all. Sitting on the chair next to me, she looked at the decor of my apartment. If you could call it that. She kept her hands millimeters away from the cup, letting them absorb its beaming heat. Looking at everything around her, she definitely relaxed.

"I live alone, too," she spoke up when her eyes fell on the steam escaping from the tea. She started turning the cup left and right. Cautiously, careful not to burn her skin. "I rent an apartment here when I'm not in college. Sounds like I'm after years of studying, and I'm only past my first year. My college is a few hours away, so the dorm was inevitable." She smiled the way she always did. Soothingly.

"What are you studying?" I asked, avoiding awkward silence.

She looked up at me, shrugging, as if she didn't think it was a particularly noteworthy detail.

"Psychology. Or at least I'm trying to."

And I nodded at that, being able to imagine the girl as the anchor, the point at which people would place their hopes. I took a sip of coffee, and the taste of it hit intensely right into the taste buds.

"I don't want to be nosy or pushy, but... How are your wounds?"

I put the cup down, looking at Yvette with a raised eyebrow, but slightly amused by her question.

"It's neither nosy nor pushy." I said, visibly calming the girl down, because she seemed a little relieved. "I took the stitches off the other day."

At this Yvette smiled awkwardly, though still in her positive, calm aura.

"So now I understand where the gloves came from." She nodded at them. When she finished her tea, she frowned a little, in an expression of modest hope, lighting up the royal blue color of her eyes. "So, everything's going in the right direction?"

And even though I nodded, even though I said goodbye to her minutes later and received a second, sincere 'thank you', as soon as I closed the door, everything seemed to go dark. As if the sky got covered by clouds in one second, cutting off the sun. As if all sound has been swallowed up by thick air.

As if my hands remembered the black color of those gloves all too well.

I fixed the black leather skirt and the powder pink sweater I put inside of it. I aligned the ends of the material on each of my fingers. I looked in the mirror, throwing one peaking strand of hair behind my shoulder. I wasn't able to completely cover the scars on my face. Sticking out from behind layers of makeup. Not to mention a slightly swollen eyelid.

Even so, my battered face wasn't at the top of my list of annoying things.

A firm, strong knock on the door filled the room. And after a short while, my mother walked in. She looked at me with distaste, but she refrained from commenting, seeing what I had on my hands.

"So, you took my words to heart. Nice change."

I turned when she looked at me. I faced my reflection again.

"You wanted me not to scare the neighborhood. And that's what I'm trying to do." I involuntarily looked at her in the mirror, my gaze was not one of those pleasant.

As she approached, she held her hands up, and a moment later she fixed my ponytail with a stiff motion. She wasn't looking at me. And why should I be surprised? She'd been like that since last afternoon.

"Alright. Our reputation won't be ruined because you wanted to fight."

"I did what you asked. Can you just leave me alone?" I turned to her confidently, when she, with her hands on her hips, looked at me with the same, innocently neutral expression on her face. "I have everything under control."

She raised her eyebrows at me without a word. She only did speak up when she was in the doorway.

"You only think so."

Another deleted item on the list.

The rain again rustled outside the window as darkness took over the streets. After Yvette left, it was just dark, but only recently the drops began to beat against the window to the right. One, weak lamp above me barely illuminated the pages, and the dangerously powerful ticking of the clock, for reasons unknown to fate, stressed me out.

I wrote something down, then I crossed it out with a thick black line. Writing quickly what I found after a dozen of minutes of effort, I got just as quickly annoyed, seeing that either I did not have qualifications, or the salary would not be enough for me to keep an apartment.

Not to mention getting back on the Italian course.

Sitting for another couple of hours in the same place, doing the same thing and just as long focusing on planning out all the options, caused a back pain and headache. On the one hand, I wanted to burn all the sheets in front of me, and on the other: they were the embodiment of my hope.

So, overwhelmed by the pressure in my head, motivated by the need for further research and the inability to fall asleep until two or even three in the morning, I finally went to the bathroom. I felt a strong dizziness in my head. I blinked my eyes as I reached the sink.

An hour or two ago, I would have started another shift.

But I was where I was. Still in my apartment.

I grabbed the mirror, which was also the door of the cabinet behind it, because I was going to reach for the painkillers that were always there, but I froze in place. On the other side of the mirror, with a corner put under the frame of the door, hung a pink paper sheet.

And the words on it were just another nail in the coffin of ice.

'Maybe your parents will leave you alone, but not me. I don't like what you're doing, Gigi. Besides, this club of yours is too popular for me not to judge the dance floor myself. Maybe I'll bring Rita along?'

And in a split second, I pulled out a paper, squashed it, and threw it blindly toward the trash bin. Closing my eyes in anger, I slammed my fist into the wall to my right. I didn't feel any pain. I felt just too much rage held for the worst cousin in the world.

After I don't know how long, I stopped, taking a deeper, unstable breath. I closed the cabinet, colliding with my red reflection. I took another breath as I left the bathroom.

I didn't believe in her. I didn't believe in the stupidity that didn't disappear with age. I did not believe in such a hopeless confluence of events that must have struck at a time when life seemed to be just stabilizing. Normalizing.

I barely coded an incoming text from Britt asking for the reason of my absence. I gave her a short reply saying: "emergency," then turned off the device. And then I felt the scars on my right hand.

The gloves covered the hideous view, fortunately isolating me from the only thing I could be completely isolated from. I pulled the elastic band from my hair, sparing myself any effort to make my hair look at least decent. I had no reason.

After less than 30 minutes of sitting over the pages, there was a knock at the door of my apartment. Firm and short.

I think someone else wanted to have a "Day with Glass" when Glass didn't really want it.

Not caring that I was wearing the same clothes as last afternoon, I opened the door without checking who was behind it. Because I didn't care anymore. It might as well have been a thief, and I would have let him rob my apartment without a second thought. Because I totally didn't have a lot of worthless stuff in my apartment or there wasn't practically anything in this apartment in the first place.

When I saw Kendrick with the phone put to his ear, he cut his own sentence, looking at me carefully while also frowning. Someone was talking to him on the other side, but he didn't say anything.

I, on the other hand, snorted ironically, turning away and walking calmly to the kitchen.

"Great. Make yourself comfortable. Can I get you some new clothes, too?"

And that's when I heard him talking again on the phone:

"It's all good, Britt. She's alive. I told you."

I rolled my eyes as I was taking my cup, which had been used many times that day, from the living room. I was trying to ignore another pinch in the chest. Then I came back to the kitchen, setting the water on the stove. There was nothing like another cup of coffee. And I only was using one clumsy hand, because the other was only worse than the first.

I zoned out with my arms crossed on the chest, looking at the fire lit under the kettle. My eyes seemed so stuck they couldn't move. Same as me. Which is why when I heard footsteps to my left, I didn't even flinch.

"You weren't at work," he spoke up, standing two feet away from the refrigerator. I saw him from the corner of my eye because he wasn't so far to my left again. More like on ten o'clock.

"I'm on my day off." I said, even though I had no obligation to explain my behavior. To anyone.

Kendrick nodded, as unconvinced as he had once been at the club. He stood in silence for a moment. Then he crossed his arms on the chest himself, tilting his head as per usual.

"Ben asked about you," he changed the subject, which effectively distracted my attention from the kettle. He still had that careful, watchful, crystal-clear look.

I felt the same stupid ache in my chest and used the boiling water to cover up my feelings. I started making coffee, practically from muscle memory. I didn't think much of my moves. Even though I felt this annoying pain.

"I don't take the course anymore."

In addition, my state of dullness was turning into nervousness. My hands were shaking again, at the least opportune moment. And it wasn't caused by the guy's presence, but by something lying much deeper in my subconscious.

And this thing scarily wanted to take over me with full force.

All it took was one second.

One move.

One word.

"Georgia."

"What?!" I put the kettle down with a bang, looking at him with fire in my eyes.

And when I saw on his face the previous misunderstanding and focus at the same time, the calm voice falling into silence was not what I expected after a long moment.

"Stop."

I frowned, not understanding anything myself. And then Kendrick carefully took my hand and showed me my own hand forming a tight fist. And maybe it was his confident grip, or maybe it was the emotion that was receding, because I listened to him and relaxed my fingers. Fortunately, there was no sign of blood seeping anywhere.

"Believe it or not, it was your hands that made me distrust you."

Then I took my hand, and he lowered his. I couldn't help but get lost in what he just said. He had this impenetrable and unreadable look. His words didn't make sense.

"You don't trust me way longer than I have these wounds." I finally grabbed the cup, trying to push away any heavier thoughts. Take care of another day-to-day task.

But no. Kendrick, standing in the same spot, said something that was the complete opposite of that.

"I meant your old wounds."

And then my grip on the cup involuntarily loosened, so I spilled a large part of the contents of the dish on the floor of both the kitchen and the living room. I stood still for a moment, not quite understanding what had happened.

Until the emotions that came over me explained it for me. I closed my eyes, taking a deep, hardly subtle breath, speaking in a low, quiet, ice-cold voice.

"Get some cloth from the bathroom. Please."

And I put the cup on the counter myself, taking one cloth from the kitchen sink. Washing it out, I paid attention to the gloves, although they were not typically cotton, but partly leather and so they did not absorb water as much. However, everything together created an emotional explosive mixture.

Although the worst was yet to come.

Because Kendrick, instead of a cloth, brought a straightened, pink piece of paper.

He was looking at me with a whole new, confusing look. Full of tension.

"Is someone threatening you?"