Lavender | Wakatoshi Ushijima

28 | Too Late

Since the antagonist was defeated, it's the time for the hero and heroine to finally confess their feelings. 

I'm not a person to be jealous.

I wouldn't kill to be a blond girl like her. I don't know her, she doesn't have any significance to my life, my family. She's the girl that got the part of the heroine in this play. As for Wakatoshi, she doesn't know him all that well. He's the boy that's playing the hero, she doesn't know him. Not like I do, at least. She's merely a girl my age, acting. She hasn't seen his struggles and obstacles, I have.

What do I have to lose? I'm stuck in that perception, until I retreat to the root of it. Why was I thinking of all that? It begins surfacing. Kiyo is right all along.

Wakatoshi isn't just a friend to me. He's something more. Not a student I tutored, not a friend entwined with my past, not even the Ushijima family's son. He's a person I look at with a different lens.

He's the person I wanted to stay with, to spend my time with. If we get a bit old, I won't mind or really care, as long as he's there. By my side.

He's a person I admire. His strength, his kindness. He's different from his other teammates. His stoic expression is oddly attractive, even the little words he says give him an edge. I'm more comfortable around him than I am around anyone else. I wouldn't be engaging with deep conversation with any other boy from our grade like how I do with him. He means something else to me, something I'm now realizing.

The surfacing terminates as the words slowly gather in my thoughts. I like him, but in even bigger depths. I love him. I love Wakatoshi.

All of these thoughts extinguish the time. I look at him from afar, hoping to see his face in a certain way since I've figured it out. Hoping to see his face looking back at me so I can live the moment when I realize this love is true

I figure out why my speech is inconsistent when he's present, why I feel hot in the face, flustered and confused when we walk home. I was only in denial about it all because I never believed I could be loved.

I want to stay. I want him to stay with me.

I never knew how spectacular he was. I never realized how perfect his light temple freckles are, the bridge of his nose, his messy hair and that little cowlick at the front of his hairline, his dashing eyes, his crooked smile, his jawline, his perfectly shaped lips. They all align perfectly to calculate his face. And I want to admire it. 

I want to watch him play volleyball and cheer him on. I want to tutor him again, I want to watch him succeed in literature all over again. I want him to teach me too, so we can bond over the major activity in his life that'll soon be his career. As long as we're together.

As I look up, my stomach begins to sink into my other organs at an unhealthy high speed. They're self-destructing, falling, and horridly screaming. Never in all my thoughts and dreams do I expect this gut-wrenching sight.

She's in his strong, comforting embrace, her hands on his chest. Her lips on his cheek, right next to his mouth.

I feel my stomach sink, my eyes sting, my hands sweat, and my jaw clench with shock. I never thought I'd see it.

But it's an act. All of it, it's an act. The kiss isn't a proper one. None of it is real, but it hurts. I watch him look down at her and smile. It's a plain, partially uncomfortable smile. But it only helps me realize that it'll never be me.

My head spins again, it's slowly becoming harder to control and bear. I beg for this not to happen, not now. I hold onto the wall where I stand.

I take a deep breath. I can't lose my composure. As they bow to the crowd, they roar with joy and applause.

I stand there, processing what happened. The tears gather at the corners of my eyes.

Remembering the moment makes me sick. Cracks made their way into my skin and into my heart. 

I want to be the one he embraces that way. But it'll never happen, because I'm too destructed to be loved. It would never work. A sick, pressured girl who has mountains of responsibilities and twelve different faces to wear every day. It's not a secret I can hide, and I won't risk anyone finding out.

Yet there I am, blending in. Clapping. Making a fool of my failing heart and sweating palms.

I'm smiling and clapping as I stand in the back of the jolly audience, part of me wanting to fade away. Wanting to melt or disintegrate. The tears are threatening to fall.

I stay calm and composed, but really I want to fall apart.

With the awful dizziness and nausea from the spin in my head, all my legs can do is walk slowly out the back door. I can't do it. Forget everything that happened, I can't breathe.

I go out for fresh air, convincing myself I'll be back to congratulate him. 

I decide to walk away. My hearing multiplies and my vision divides. My head hurts, it's pounding and cracking. It's spinning horribly, on its own axis. I walk out of the school, barely able to carry my own weight.

My tears submerge into the strikingly cold air. I could care less about the play, it's the realization that burns.

Wakatoshi would never love me that way. He wouldn't, and I'd be stupid to believe otherwise. I can't ever imagine it happening either. I can't see him looking at my eyes the way he looked at hers.

I'll never be enough, not for anyone. Maybe I have to accept it, but I refuse. I've worked for eighteen years, I'm not stopping now.

The rips in the beating heart of mine begin ripping me apart. Slowly, I fall apart as I lay on my bed. Releasing all the cracks and sentiments in the form of hot, salty tears that drop one by one. 

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Author: have you ever seen that meme where a girl just goes: 'hi everybody-' (that's me right now)