oh, anna [-hs]

hoax

a/n sorry that took so long haha

66.

"Wow," Bea sits back, unable to mask her surprise.

"Have you ever been homesick for a person?" I wince at how desperate I sound. She nods delicately.

"Of course."

"I just feel like I'm the punchline to some cruel joke the universe is playing on me."

"How so?"

"I knew this would happen. It's happened before, in a different context but with the same result." I shift in the leather chair, gesturing at the air. "And somehow I let it happen again, with the same result. I let myself get hurt again. And now I'm right where I was before."

"How so?"

"I allowed myself to rely on someone else, and they let me down, and now I feel empty."

Bea is quiet, and unable to bear it, I start rambling.

"I can't remember how to breathe without him," I whisper. "I don't remember who I was before, how I was before. He's so, I don't know, embedded in my fucking physche."

She hums. Anger surges in my chest. She's just sitting there.

"This is where you help me," I lean forward, my face folding together. Her eyebrows climb up her forehead.

"Is it?"

"Yes," I snap. "You told me I should make him promises, fall in love. You told me I push people away. You told me it was a bad thing so I tried to fix it, and now I'm hurt and I could have prevented this if I hadn't listened to you. I was doing just fine on my own before you started telling me how to love."

"Quinn," she rolls her tongue over her lips and crosses her legs. "It's a part of the human condition to be hurt. You can't avoid it."

I grip the arms of the chair, my blood boiling beneath the surface. She clears her throat.

"To intertwine your happiness with someone else's is so dangerously brave, so inherently idiotic, and so incomprehensibly, undeniably human," she pauses and smiles, "K. Towne Jr."

"Who?"

"I don't know," she shrugs and her face heats up. "He's a poet. I saw him speak a couple weeks ago and that was one of the pieces he shared."

"So he's just some random New Yorker."

"Yeah, pretty much." She looks at the floor. The silence has just settled in, when I inhale and bring her attention back to me.

"Should I break up with him, Bea," I whisper.

"It kinda sounds like you already have," she mumbles back.

"How do I feel happy again? How do I get over this?"

An amused expression blossoms on her face. Her eyes scan over my features.

"Time." She shrugs.

But how much time?

It's been weeks. Here I am still wallowing in this puddle. I'm sad and I have literally no idea how to make it better.

Well, actually I have a few ideas. But they're bad ideas. It is taking everything in my power to not go to Wes'.