THE INBETWEEN ~ STEVE ROGERS [5]

Fist fights and broken glass

It has been a year.

I am quiet. I know Steve finds my silence strange, disturbing. More often than not I go days without speaking. He wakes to find me in the dead of the night, face lit up by a computer screen, scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. My search history is quantum physics and multiverse theory. I take in the information, filling my brain with wasted hope and it hurts. So he takes the computer from my hands, guides me back to bed and brushes hair from my face and sleeps with his face against my back.

I don't sleep.

Everyday we drift apart, like ice in the ocean. His fingers linger less, his kisses are tense. My heart aches for him, for his touch, for us to be whole again. But for every thought I have of him, I have ten more about them.

The ones we lost.

My mind is consumed by them. Every waking moment is torture, knowing we are here and they are, nowhere. With not even a body to bury. I crave them.

I crave vengeance.

We sit on the couch, inches apart, not touching. The radio is buzzing quietly in the background, a small sound to fill the silence.

So we don't feel so broken.

This week has been a tough one. I fell asleep in an armchair, tablet in hand, and Steve slept alone. Again.

He clears his throat. I look up.

"I bought an apartment in Queens." He says it with conviction, with confidence. I can tell he is trying too hard to sound like he knows what he is doing, but the truth is none of us know what we are doing.

"What?" It takes me a second to register what he has said. Then I feel that bubble of anger in my chest, coiling around the hole in my heart. "Why?"

Steve swallows. He is nervous. He sees my fists curl around the corner of the pillow.

"I thought we could use our own space." He chooses his words carefully. His face holds no emotion but determination. I know what is coming.

"What's wrong with staying here, in the compound?" I ask, but I know the answer. I want him to say it.

Steve looks down. He can't seem to look me in the eyes and maybe it's guilt or maybe he doesn't love me anymore. That's what I've been thinking these past days. Weeks. Months.

His hand taps on the arm of the couch. He looks older. Lost. I think we all do.

I know what he is thinking, he doesn't have to say it.

He wants to leave because the memories this place holds are too much to remember.

"We can't keep staying here." He avoids my question. I bite the inside of my cheek.

"Well we can't leave, we have to-"

"We have to move on, Keight. We need to move on." He leans forward, places a hand on my thigh. It's warm. I want to like it. But I can't. I squirm away from him and shake my head.

"You know I can't do that."

Steve looks at the ground. He knows what he is asking of me. How impossible it is. And I know he feels defeated. He wants a life for me, for us. A life with a family and a home and happiness.

But that life was ripped from us that very day we imagined it.

"Keight, we can't just keep living like ghosts. Walking around this empty place all day. We need to move on." He shuffles forward again, our breath mingling. I want to do what he asks, deep down I do. But what is left of my heart is hanging onto the hope that I can find a way to bring them back.