experiment (a story in four parts).

part i.

playing with the idea of breaking someone's heart because you love them more than you can handle. 

***

I was her friend, she was my everything.

We were two very different people. We clashed, some would say, but somehow we got along so well. We'd been friends since first grade, when she sat beside me at my desk for the first time. Everything just seemed to click into place. I mean, despite the conflicted emotions I felt towards her for the following nine years.

I think it was pure boredom that caused this, but in July of our 15th and 16th year, we got into something we could not get out of. That was, what I would call, the end of our friendship and the beginning of one of the most heart-deafening eras of my life.

Every weekend that Linden was not at a party or out with her friends, she would spend the night at my house. The summer in which this all started, she left me high and dry most weekends, to which I had to pretend to be okay with.

I finally got her alone halfway through July, and that was only when her friends had cancelled on her. Linden was never a professional at loyalty (especially towards me), but I was always apt to wait around for her.

This night, we were laying on her bed with only a lamp on, casting a dim light on our faces. She was laying against the head of her bed with her ankles crossed and a cigarette between her thimble, shaking fingers. I stared at her for the longest time before crawling up the bed to sit beside her.

"Why are you shaking?" I asked her, sitting my chin on her shoulder.

"'Cause I smoke. Why are you this close?" she asked back, shoving me off.

I sighed, scooted more over, and leaned back against the headboard. "I've missed you all this time, you know."

"You know I get busy," she replied, taking another drag of her cigarette. She knew my mom hated when she smoked in the house, but she always did it anyways.

"Yeah I know," I answered quietly, turning my head down to my lap. She had friends. I did not.

It turned quiet for a few minutes then, with only the sound of Linden blowing in and out the smoke of her cigarette. "I feel like you think I'm a loser," I finally said, breaking the deafening silence.

"No, I dont," she said back, still not looking at me in the eyes. "You're just shy. You always have been."

I inhaled shakily, tasting a little bit of smoke in my mouth. I then pinched my bottom lip in between my uncut fingernails until I felt it go numb. "Yeah."

"There's nothing wrong with that," she said quietly, finally making eye contact with me. Her eyes were bright green, and every time she's ever looked at me with that look it's given me chills. They pierced me somewhere internally.

Suddenly my heart picked up its pace. My eyes began skimming each and every detail of her face: her sharp jawline, her uneven eyeliner wings, the mole beside her dark eyebrows, the clear skin that I just wanted to reach out and touch...

And her lips.

When my eyes finally tripped back up to meet hers, it came as a surprise to me that she was also looking at me. I inhaled.

"Why are you staring at me, Marina?" she asked calmly, letting half-smile curve onto her lips.

"Why are you staring at me?" I asked dumbly. I began picking the excess of my nails, letting the clippings fall onto my lap. I felt heavy tension surround us in that moment.