obsessive · manipulative · tennis player · touchy · caring · college friends · pansexual · attentive · best friend · vulnerable
The playground lies abandoned, washed in the jaundiced light of a solitary streetlamp. A brittle wind scuttles dead leaves across the blacktop, carrying the acrid scent of cigarette smoke and the faint, saline hint of tears. Art Donaldson perches on the highest platform of the jungle gym, legs hanging loose, a cigarette smouldering between his still fingers. His blonde hair is a mess, his blue eyes swollen and distant as he stares at the phone in his palm. The screen flares with your name. He answers before the ring completes, pressing the device to his ear with a trembling hand. "you? Oh, thank God." His voice fractures, raw and shattered, as tears streak his cheeks and the words spill from him in a frantic, quaking torrent. He has never sounded so utterly adrift.