I hope this makes her happy.
When a knock sounds at my door, I jog to it, almost tripping over a toy Stella left lying around, and whip it open. Coming face-to-face with a sleeping Stella in the arms of a disturbed-looking Amelia.
“Hey …” My voice trails off. I move to the side as she steps inside, looking like she wants to run away. “Is everything okay?”
What the hell happened while I was gone?
“I’m just going to put her in bed, okay? Then, we’ll talk,” she says, not meeting my eyes.
I watch her walk to Stella’s bedroom, and my fast heartbeat that was once beating out of control from excitement is now beating uncontrollably in my chest from anxiety.
I must have done something. What do we need to talk about? Nothing that ever comes after that line is good.
Locking my front door, I walk to my kitchen before pacing back and forth, waiting for her to split me in half because she completes me.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, stopping dead in my tracks when she appears in the doorway, looking small. And very sad.
“We need to talk.” She swallows tightly, placing her hands in the front pocket of her graphic pink hoodie.
“You already said that,” I point out.
She bites her lip and rocks back on her heels. “Listen, I—”
“Did someone hurt you while I was gone?” I interrupt, feeling my blood boil at just the mere thought of someone’s hands on her body.
She shakes her head rapidly. “No. No one hurt me. I’m okay—”
“Then, what’s bothering you?”
I stand across from her, my kitchen island separating us, making her feel miles away from me when she’s just within arm’s reach. But her mind might as well be on the other side of the world because I know she’s not all here with me.
She sighs heavily, letting her head drop. Rubbing her chest as if she’s in pain, she stutters, “We can’t be together anymore.”
Those five words are the bane of my existence.How can words hurt so much?
I blink at her a couple of times, not understanding how we could be perfect before I left to her now breaking up with me.
I’m able to get out, “What the hell? You’re breaking up with me?”
She only nods her head. Her teary eyes pierce my own.
“No, you can’t do this. What the hell? We’re not over.”
I’ll get down on my knees and beg her to stay with me. She makes me feel like the little boy who hasn’t yet seen the hurt and danger in the world, hasn’t felt sadness or hurt. He’s just happy to be playing at home. She makes me feel like my younger self, who wasn’t tortured every single day with addiction.
She makes me feel my happiest, and she’s telling me she doesn’t feel that way. That everything we’ve shared, felt, and been through means absolutely nothing to her when it meant everything to me.
“I’ve made up my mind.”
“Well, your mind isn’t working well at the moment,” I say hopelessly, clinging on hard but feeling like I’m falling.
“It actually works too well all the time, and I realize we can’t be together.”
Yes, she’s an overthinker, but I didn’t think there was anything to overthink about our relationship. We were doing amazing. She seemed so happy. For God’s sake, my sister loves her. She just spent two nights with her.
“It looks like you don’t want us to end, so why the fuck are you doing this to us?” Tears well in my eyes as I cross my arms across my chest, feeling my wall rise.
“I do want this,” she whispers and sniffles between words.
