Nobody ever tells you that when you lose someone who was still alive, it hurt more than if they were dead. No one ever tells you that seeing the person—your person—go on with their life, while you sit in the corner, all alone, wishing for time to go back, splits your heart in two.
Losing him made me realize how dependent I was on him. How much I needed him to tell me that things were going to be okay, even when they wouldn’t. I missed hearing sugar-laced lies coming off of his tongue, because those lies were the only things that could get me through the day sometimes.
“Are you telling me that you would never be able to forgive me?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I’m telling you that I forgave you a long time ago—”
“Then what the fuck is the problem?” He cut me off. “Why wouldn’t you look at me? Why wouldn’t you talk to me?” He wanted the truth, when all I could give him were lies, lies, lies, and some more lies, so that he would leave me alone.
“Because you’re not my Noah anymore.”
“Bullshit!”
“Excuse me?”
The grimace on his face was painted with sorrow and longing, pain and love. It was colored with everything I ever wanted to see from him, but not like this. Not right now.
Not when I had no idea what my life was going to look like in a couple of years. Not when everything hung in the air.
“No, excuse me. How can you say something like that? How can you sit there and pretend that the other day you didn’t tremble for me just how I tremble for you? You can’t tell me that all these feelings inside my chest, all these thoughts inside my head, are only a one-way street.”
“Noah—”
“No! Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?” I recoiled.
“Like you pity me. Do not fucking do that.”
“I’m not doing it deliberately, but you need to let me go. You need to stop doing this to me. You need to stop doing this to yourself. We will never be what we used to be. We will never be friends again.”
“Friends?” He smirked. “You think I’m doing all of this because I want us to be friends again?”
“Well, uh, yeah?”
“You have no idea, do you?”
“No idea about what?”
Please, please, please, do not say it. I couldn’t cope with it if he said what I thought he was going to say.
A deep rumble escaped from him as he dragged a hand over his face. “You know what?” He refused to look at me, making me loathe myself even more, making me want things I shouldn’t want.
I wanted to wrap my arms around him. I wanted to move from this fucking seat onto his lap, but I sat there, frozen, waiting for him to continue talking.
“Do whatever the fuck you want to do, Sophie. I’m done.”
He was done.
He was fucking done.
He pushed his door open, leaving me inside, staring at the vacant spot he occupied mere seconds ago.
He was done.
It echoed inside my head, slipping all the way to my heart, dripping onto it like a black tar. Wasn’t this what I wanted? I wanted him to be done with me. I wanted him to stop trying, because I knew that look on his face.
I knew he didn’t want us to just go back to being friends. I understood now better than before why he said those vile words—because he was jealous. Because Noah felt something for me.
