Tonight, I wrote it.
I wrote the fanfic of my life, and the truth of it is that it ended exactly how it should have ended. Not with a happy ending, not with a kiss, not with some fantasy relationship. No. It ended with tears, and me driving home alone and broken. And now I can't go to sleep and think about how it'd be to have her lips on mine, or her body pressed against the front of me. No. All I can think about is the road away from her house, and how I always feel lost as I leave. And I realize it's because once I leave, I have no idea where I'm going from there, but I'm not leaving home. I'm just leaving my heart behind.
You wanna read it? You don't wanna read it. But I'm gonna leave it here anyways.
--
I sit solitary on the floor. I'm glaring angrily at the TV, ignoring the presence behind me on the bed. Getting attached was stupid. What had I been thinking when I let myself fall in love? Apparently, I've sighed one too many times.
"What's wrong? Just tell me already." The sullen question makes me want to talk less.
"Nothing. Nothing's wrong." I say, grinding my teeth together. I'm stubborn, and I won't let her get to me any more. I don't know why I came. This was a stupid idea. There isn't any way to patch up this friendship, not anymore. I'm being replaced, and I know I'm being less than graceful about the transition.
"Fine, if you want to be that way." I can here the bite in her voice. I watch her legs swing out next to me, and she gets up and leaves the room. I hear the bathroom door slam, and the stereo turn up. Peering around the corner, I make sure the door really is shut. Confident now that I'm left to myself, I crawl in bed. I wrap the patterned quilts around my body, and secretly let myself inhale her scent of of her pillow. I wrap myself around it, and close my eyes.
"Oh, if only how you knew how I wanted to be." I whisper into the fabric, and hear the music in the bathoom turn up even louder. That's how she wants it to be. She wants to tune out all the problems, and I can't blame her. I haven't exactly been easy to deal with. But how easy is it to deal with your slowly crumbling heart? The truth of the matter is that it isn't easy. It hurts. It hurts almost as much as thinking about how she's probably texting someone in that bathroom, complaining about her life, how she's not clinging to the scent of her on her pillow like I am. Because I've always been the attached one, and she's just been here for the free stuff.
It's been a half an hour now and she's still in that bathroom, even though the music is quieter now. I can't sit here any longer. I slide out of bed too, and walk out of the room. My sandals are on my feet and I'm out the door before her dog even has time to move to stare at me blankly. I'd stare at me too, if I were him. My eyes are probably red, and I'm wearing pjs, but I don't really care. Or so I tell myself as I make my way across the dewy grass to her swing. The moon's out tonight, and it's really pretty, even if the air's kind of cold for a summer night. This swing is actually really close to the ground, and I've never been able to figure out how she swings on it, when her legs are so much longer than mine. Wow, I've really zoned out, I've been sitting here on this cold plastic swing for so long, the stars and moon are moving across the sky. And that's when I realize. I'm all alone. It's not like some fantasy of mine, where she comes out into the moonlight and apologizes. Where she tells me she's secretly loved me the entire time, and our future starts under these stars. No.
"Well. Isn't this how it always is. Isn't it how it's always been." I laugh to myself bitterly, and suddenly, it's the funniest thing in the world. I'm laughing so hard I can't catch my breath, and at some point, there are tears running down my cheeks. I'm not really sure when the laughter turned to sobs, but it must have at some point, because my face is in my hands and the tears won't stop either. It's not fair I keep thinking to myself, and I'm right. It isn't fair. But when has life ever been fair? When has life ever treated me the way I've wanted it to? Never. And that's the straight truth. So with that resolve settling into my mind, I wipe the tears off my face and snuffle the snot back up into my nose, secretly hoping she can't see me. I know her window is open, and so are the windows in the living room. She can probably hear me, if she ever left her own little bathroom prison. It's been moments like these, where I've sat by myself, alone and sad, that the one song I spent so long driving one friend away with always comes to mind. I was never sure if it was a love song, but it was my love song.
"I love you-- my tears won't stop, and so I wish, that I had never met you."
Sure, the lyrics might not be in english, but you can tell they sure aren't happy. And it's times like these that I don't need a happy song. I keep singing the melody as I finally gather myself enough to head inside. She isn't sitting hidden behind my car. She isn't sitting on the porch. She isn't even on the sofa, or back in bed. She's still in that bathroom, and nagging at the back of my head is this intense worry she's sick, or hurting herself. But I know it's time for me to stop caring. And so I grab a pillow, and a blanket, and I take them back to the sofa to fall asleep for the night.
The light is coming in through the front window, and her dog is curled up at my feet. It's early in the morning, or at least for my clock it is. I rub the sleep from my eyes, and look to the bathroom. The door is open, so at some point, she must have left it. I get up, use the toilet, and creep into her room silently. She's fast asleep in bed, as if I had never been there. And as long as she continues to sleep, it might as well be as if I never had been. I gather up my clothes, and leave her sleep clothing on the floor. I look back at her sleeping figure, and I make one last bad decision--I walk across the room and plant a kiss on her head. I'm not gonna stay around to see if she'll wake up, though. I get out of there, shutting each and every door behind me. I get to my car door, and I can see her stirring through her curtain slightly. I can't look anymore. I get in my car, shut the door, and back out. I won't look back. I won't look back, please, give me the strength not to look back.
Shit. I'm not strong enough. I look back at the house, to see her silhouette in the living room window. And then I'm gone, pulling out onto the road and speeding away, tears silently streaming down my face.
It's not until I'm miles away, stopped at a stop light, that I delete her number from my phone. I'm closing all the doors behind me.
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