one

twenty

Maeve's point of view

"Shit". I frantically ran my hands through my hair in frustration still shaking slightly but feeling increasingly numb as the anger around me slowly faded away. Suddenly the quiz results seemed totally irrelevant compared to the overwhelming guilt that seemed to swallow me up. Sophie meant everything to me, a terrifying kind of everything, and so the fact that she felt shit, made me feel shit too, which quite honestly sucked all round. I just felt like I was never really going to be good enough for her - she's funny in a totally unexpected way, ridiculously kind when you deserve it least of all and most of all constantly there with you no matter what happens. In many ways, I felt like she had become some kind of safe haven for me in that unlike the rest of my chaotic life, our time spent together was wholesome and beautiful and made me more perfectly happy than I can put into words. I grabbed at my arm, sharp nails gripping tightly at warm flesh. I didn't know how yet, but I needed to fix this, whatever it ended up taking out of me. Soph and our relationship was worth a million times more than any useless identity crisis I was having. Anxiety hit me again, my chest tightening suddenly and fear reaching up silently to fill my throat. Relationship. What the fuck did I mean, relationship. The thing is relationship can mean friendship, and I know that's what I meant to an extent when I said it but equally somehow that defining of what we had as a relationship, rather than a friendship felt choking but in a significant way. This wasn't a new feeling. Ever since I had first met her, Sophie and I had seemed to fall into a sort of gray area: more than friends, but not quite girlfriends. I suppose the problem was that I hadn't been acknowledging that. I had all these feelings but I was still only thinking of them as if they were a temporary joke that would go away if I wanted them to. But feelings are feelings and whatever repression I tried would inevitably end up in more hurt at some point in the future. I groaned. It seemed so counterproductive that I could seemingly reason it all out from an objective point of view but then felt totally paralysed when applying it to my own life. What did I think made me different from everyone else, in that they were free to live and love but I had to be someone else for other people? I suddenly felt uncomfortable in my own skin, the weight of a newly realised identity making it impossible to properly concentrate on everything that was going on around me. I felt different, almost as though I hadn't really known myself before and was consequently a totally different person than I had always believed myself to be.

I grabbed my phone and hit play on Spotify, not going for a specific playlist but simply smashing a couple of letters into the search function and hitting play. I felt my body begin to relax to the music, its dulcet tones forcing my heartbeat to slow down whether I wanted it to or not.

Time seemed to stretch out, slowly enveloping me in a hug and I ran my hand through my hair again but this time loving the hair that grew, the head that helped me think and the body that supported me physically, whatever I was doing. I had handled so much in my life, I could deal with this too. Things felt manageable, not necessarily to sort out right now but maybe sometime when I was feeling calmer, I could trust myself to figure something out. And that was okay. Right now I had to be there with Sophie. 

I pulled on my shoes without a second thought and yanked open the door. She was still there, curled up, though now fast asleep, on the grass next to my caravan. Her face was mottled and red and tear tracks were still visible trailing down her cheeks and the top of her neck. She looked so vulnerable, totally tired of the world and I hated myself for somehow forcing that mentality on her. I was left mesmerised, staring at her peaceful form for far too long than felt acceptable, then, shaking myself out of it, I walked quietly inside and picked up a blanket that had been hanging off the back of the sofa. 

Back outside I covered Sophie with the majority of the blanket, leaving a little to tuck underneath her so that there was very little likelihood she would get cold. Then, with little thought to what I was doing, I lay down next to her, wrapping my body neatly round hers so that we were intertwined comfortably on the grass. Sleep took over quickly in a place where I finally felt safe.