Moonlight Kisses

revival

no perspective.

"I can't see him. I can't," she rants to her best friend. Flipping her clammy hands over one another repetitively, her leg bounces uncontrollably, as it always does when she's painfully nervous. Both girls sit on the green, killing a few minutes before Jo approaches the very thing that's making her legs shake and her palms sweaty. It may seem easier to push off the inevitable. Prolong the storm. But at times like this, the band-aid needs to be ripped off. Sophie knows it for a fact. Deep down, Jo knows it too.

You can't prevent gray clouds of storm from pouring rain, just how she can't prevent the familiar aching of her heart that'll pierce right through her chest the second she meets eyes with him. The jumble of nerves in her stomach have taken up residency there since the early hours of morning. When that band-aid comes off, it's not a guarantee that her churning gut feeling will reside so soon.

Sophie leans into her. She has more reason besides the two of them to be burdened with the pain that this break-up ensued. This is her best friend. Even if they haven't known each other their whole lives, she feels as though Jo were a sister to her. She can't recall the last time she saw Jo so upset. To her understanding, her best friend was always this bright beam of sunshine. Always laughing, hardly ever crying. When she did cry, Sophie only caught glimpses of her before the mass of tears streamed down her face. She'd walk away before that happened.

It astounded Sophie to her core. How Jo could go through so many shitty things and still be a light that magnetized everyone around her. After being betrayed, twice by two different people who thought cared about her enough not to break her, Sophie saw her smiling the next day, or at least forcing herself to. After the accident, she was lying in that hospital bed thanking everybody for the good things that came to visit her, and not once did she utter a word about how she was doing. For she was too concerned about what was going on in their lives to help distract from her own. But Sophie didn't know that. She wouldn't come to know that either. She mistook her friend's lack of communication as a reason to talk more, not listen out for the things Jo never gave voice to.

It wasn't until this week that she saw that bright sunshine sink into the horizon. Leaving everyone around her in complete darkness. Sophie never comprehended how much she needed Jo's radiance until it was ripped away from her. Trapping itself under lock and key until god knows when.

The single time Jo allowed her facade to fall down too far, someone saw right past it. It was silently killing them both, seeing your best friend so distraught and allowing her to see you that way.

It was one weird dynamic. One that wouldn't have come about if Jo hadn't done the damage she did. Not only to herself, but all the others around her.

Her bright smiles faded in their glorious hue. Her voice got quieter, meeker, from the restless nights that kept her mind racing and her body suffering. Visibly, she appeared thinner from her lack of eating. It was terrifying for Sophie to see her friend, her sister, so ruined by the pains of loving. But Jo wasn't the only one who'd practically changed overnight.

The unspoken consequences of your best friend dating your brother...having to regulate their PDA on the daily, hanging out with both of them because they're that attached at the hip, still the PDA thing god...but there was one big one no one could have told her about. One that's more impactful than finding out about them in the first place. The ruin of them. Sophie was forced to watch not only Jo fall to shreds, but Beau as well. Her older brother. The person she looked up to for his strength, his perseverance, many other things whether or not she cared to admit it.

To see all of that strength crumble in mere hours was the eye-opener experience of a lifetime. He'd live for his love. Breathe for his love. Change for his love.