To Whom it May Concern (ON HOLD)

A lack of color

I find myself wondering if I am swimming to drown. Just to drown in him.
James will call me and I feel everything else move out of sight and hide behind my eyes, so that trying to find rationality is like looking at broken pieces. They are blurred and shattered so even while I know that I should be able to see them, they are always just a little farther from my reach than they seemed.
James has called a few times and I answer. I answer so that the gnawing worry does not eat me alive. His voice slips through my phone and I listen to slow, thought-out sentences as well as the rushed, breathless rants.
"Ella...?"
And then nothing else. Sometimes that's just all I can hear. Sometimes that's all I can listen to.
He comes over again, my apartment, on a Saturday. He had cleaned himself up and he has on this nice shirt. His hair is still messy but in a nice kind of way and he doesn't smell bad. He looks alert and awake and incredibly sorry, so when I find I'm still seeing him through a fog, I feel myself start to slip.
"James." I say, and such a beautiful, hopeful smile dances across his face that the whole damn room begins to spin.
"Yeah?" He answers me and I rock back onto my heels, something I haven't done in very long time. It makes me feel like a child.
"I think that you're upset." Is what I almost say.
"I think that you need help, I think you need to talk to me," I what I want to say to him. Make him listen.
"You look sad," Is what I manage. James raises an eyebrow and behind his eyes I see the walls begin to rise so I interject. He is going to shut down if I'm this direct with him. I can't let him know what I think.
"Blue," I say, trying again. "You look blue, is all,"
Relief slips into his face and he pulls me toward him, his eyes grateful and sweet.
"Blue," he whispers "Yeah, I am blue,"
I watch my conversation slip away, and all I can do is whisper what I meant to say into his shirt as he kisses me. I gave him an anchor.
"Blue is a content color," he tells me, "it's complete, content,"
I let his lips glaze over mine and I stare at his chest sadly. He's steering the conversation away from himself.
Just like he always does.
"Blue," he continues "Blue is just a feeling, it's just a part of the spectrum you pass as you become something else. It's not a big deal,"
I shoved my fingers into my pockets and felt myself giving up. It wasn't a slow process, in that moment, I just kind of felt my knees give out and as a I leaned against him I slid to the floor.
"Are you alright?" He asked me, alarmed, but my entire body was so weighed down that I just shook my head. I didn't hear the worried shake to his words, nor did I hear the reluctance. He was afraid to ask me if I was okay. He was scared of what I might say. How I might answer, but he would always ask.
But I lost my chance, I lost my chance again.
"Gray," I told him. Gray. I couldn't do it. I thought I could, but I can't.
He pulled me up into him, stroked my hair with his hand, his fingertips brushing against my neck.
"You think everything, all theses things that are happening, are important, Ella,"
I closed my eyes.
"They're not," he whispered. "They aren't important, you have to believe me,"
I didn't lift my head, that way he couldn't see how close I was to tears.
~***~
I began seeing more and more of him after that. Constantly calling and coming to see me in the bookstore. Worried, or excited, he came in, there was always a reason. Stupid, sweet reasons but I just couldn't get rid of the feeling that he was slipping away.
I didn't know how much he had seen his mother, but he was stressed, all the time.
He didn't show it to anyone else, there wasn't another person that could see it.
Bloodshot eyes and feverish kisses.
He seemed desperate sometimes but would not budge on the suggestion of talking to me.
It was always, No Ella, please. Or, No Ella, can't we do this later?
He's like some sort of suffocation. So much so, that I kept distracting myself as I lost my breath. Over and over again. Looking the other way so that way it doesn't hurt so much.
He pulled away from me suddenly and my head snapped up.
"What?" I asked him, my voice stiff.
"You're thinking about something," he said thoughtfully. I blinked, and stared back at him. "Am I?"
He chuckled softly and pushed my hair behind my ear, as something of an afterthought. His fingers were soft though, nice against my skin.
His face dropped more seriously then, "What are you thinking about?" I heard the wary note in his voice and fixed my eyes just behind him. "I'm thinking about you."
James smiled "I'm thinking about you too,"
I found myself making a face. "I should hope so, since, I mean we were kissing, just a second ago,"
A smile tugged slightly at the corner of his mouth. "That's a good point."
I shrugged lightly, "I don't mean to sound vain, but if you were thinking about other things while we were kissing I might be the tiniest bit insulted."
"So that's what you were thinking about then?" He pressed. "You had been thinking about me, and also you, and us, and what excellent teeth I have,"
"Why would I be thinking about your teeth? You don't use your teeth, James, people don't use their teeth to kiss,"
He smiled again. "That's what makes me so excellent, and I must say, thank you for noticing my teeth."
"What? No, I didn't even meat ion your teeth."
He raised an eyebrow slightly and flashed a cheesy, yet very enticing smile.
I laughed a little and consented, "So yes, I was thinking about you,"
His gaze locked into mine all of a sudden and immediately the playfulness was gone, replaced by a weight, a lull, that settled over us.
"I mean, you and me, among other things," This time, there was no laughter. Because I had been thinking about him, but not about how excellent his teeth or his kiss was. I had been thinking about how empty he felt to me, and how much I missed him.
"What other things?" And the question came as a soft demand. An already insulted question.
"I don't know, James," was what I said.
"Just, some other things, I guess.
His nod was rigid and rather sharp.
"Oh."
I echoed him, aimlessly.
"Oh."
"Look, I..." I began again.
"Stop," he interrupted.
"Ella, all of these things that you think are important now, they're not,"
I stared at him. "Excuse me?"
"You're a making a big deal out of a bunch of pointless shit, don't you get that?"
His face had taken on a sunken, hollow blankness. His cheek bones looked sunken and his posture screamed out a poised alertness. One I had never seen before, one that made me want to push myself away from him. There was an emptiness, a defensiveness, and he looked like he was angry, at me. It was beginning to piss me off.
What had I done?
"James," I began through gritted teeth, but again he cut off. "I don't want to talk about this with you right now," he stated.
"Let me finish," I whispered and James scowled.
I don't know if he could hear it in my tone, or if he saw he was going too far, but something made him flinch.
"Don't say another word," I muttered.
And he didn't. Yet as we say there in silence, I could not dispel the heat that was coursing through my bloodstream. Hot and heavy and insane.
He kept looking at me and I felt as if I was being tampered with, played with, manipulated, in some long, cruel, drawn out way.
"What do you want me to do?" He asked finally. "What do you want me to say?"
"I-" the sound fell away from my mouth and I couldn't think of anything. James started to stand up but I reached out and grabbed his sleeve.
"I, I want you to tell me when you think that you first began losing yourself."
He froze, he froze and I saw his shoulders cave in a predatory way. He turned to look at me with the cold silence of someone who had been called out.
"Don't be afraid of it," I whispered. You can talk to me,"
"I'm not scared Ella," he growled.
"Then you should be,"
There it was, a spew of broken, hurried syllables and now James was almost gone. His footsteps hard on the floor, beating, beating, pounding.
"James," I yelled, "James, please come back,"
But he was none of this, none of what he had been lately. He was falling away and I could not watch him do that to himself again. Not anymore, not one more minute of it.
His hand was wrapped hard around the door, his knuckles so white the skin seemed to split itself apart.
"What!" He snapped at me, "What do you think you're doing?"
"Why are you so sure there's something wrong with me?"
I began to say something but he slammed my apartment door and walked back toward me.
"Maybe you can't fix it Ella," he said.
"Maybe this isn't a matter of me losing myself, maybe it's you losing something that you didn't realize was already gone,"
I stared at him, all of my memories, all of the wild, vivid, living colors of my childhood leaping up in a wild surge of love and fear.
"But don't you remember-?"
I stuttered.
"Forget it Ella," he promised, "I can't forget myself until you let go, the only reason I keep remembering my mother, and the boy that was broken by her is because you do,"
"Just. Let it. Go."
And with that I let my head slip into my hands, and he caught me immediately.
He had come to visit me, and by now it was dark and the world outside my window had fallen prey to the crisp, cool stars of night.
"I'm sorry Ella," James said quietly and he slumped back against my couch.
But it wasn't with defeat that we fell against each other now though, it was for help, it was for the support we had always needed from each other. My head was against his chest, and the soft fabric of his shirt folded against my cheek.
My head fell up and down softly and I pulled his sweatshirt beneath my head. One of his arms crossed lightly over my shoulders and I turned into him. I closed my eyes and the light of the lamp beside us turned into nothing but a golden haze peering through the corners of my eyes.
"Don't be sorry James," I told him, and his fingers began to play with the ends of my hair.
"I've always been sorry,"
I shifted to look up at him and he leaned down just enough to kiss me.
"Why?" I asked him, the heat of the room seeming to wrap around us.
"Because you've had to remember me almost as long as I've known you."
I smiled at him.
"That's not true," but he shook his head, his fingers tightening in my curls.
"And you are the one that deserves to be remembered,
You are the one I don't ever want to forget," I laid my head back down against his chest and he pulled his jacket off and laid it over my shoulders.
His smell washed over me, the smell of him mixed with the beginnings of something undefinable, something that came with night.
"I'm really tired James," I whispered.
"That's okay," he said back to me.

I'm sorry this is such a short chapter, it needed to be written but it was very hard to write. Thank you so much for reading. Have a wonderful night, or day, or year. Thank you. Bye, for now.