I loved you; you broke me

Why now?

She was shaking, breaths stuttering as she sobbed. She'd been trying to speak for around ten minutes now, watery gaze fixed on the boy in front of her. He was taller than her, only by a couple inches, but enough for him to tease her about it at every turn. Her gaze flickered from his darkened eyes to the wall behind him and back. Dylan, her best friend since diapers, stood in front of her with meticulously trained features, expression betraying nothing of his emotions. In fact, nothing about him said anything of how he felt, nothing but the nervous twitching of his fingers. Nothing anyone would notice, not unless they knew him well.

"Letting you go was the hardest thing I've ever had to do"

"Then why did you?" His voice cracked, fading out as he seemed to almost fold in on himself. She reached out a jittery hand, fingers curling back on themselves as she brought the hand to her chest

"I didn't have a choice" she breathed out, a choked sob following her broken words

"But you did, didn't you? You had a choice and you still chose to leave," his voice rose, not too much, but she flinched back nonetheless. She said nothing for a while, calculative eyes analyzing him. His facial features, the ones she had spent hours tracing and mapping out with her thumbs, were no longer in that exhilarating smile of his. They were dreadfully sorrowful, his carefully built walls crumbling with his composure.

"I didn't. I didn't, because if I did I would have clung to you with every bit of myself and you know that Dylan. You know I would have," words tumbled from her bite-swollen lips like dandelion in the wind, quiet, almost inaudible. But he heard every word as if they were screamed through a megaphone, loud and clear. He took a step forward, she took one back. Another forward, another back. It was a never-ending dance, or so it seemed. Her back hit the wall and Dylan's hands came up to cup her cheeks softly, gently, as of any more pressure would break her like a porcelain doll.

"Marie,"

"Don't," tears burned her eyes

"I love you, please, stay with me," he plead

"You know I can't," she spoke, eyes opening to a blurry view of her ceiling. Another dream it seemed, with the guy that broke her heart years ago.her chest burned, eyes streaked with dry, salty tears. It had been years, why was this still happening?