One Cup of Sugar || Sasha x Niccolo

33 - ...If I Did?

AN: Time to hurt your feelings again, and then make you mad. Oopsies <3

I was fr told to behave while I was writing this chapter, thank you

I refuse to behave though, hehe

- J

____________________________________

Niccolos POV:

Seventeen days left. 

I have been in Stohess for eighteen days. 

I have gone almost a week without good communication with Sash. I could barely get anything out of her. All I wanted to do was talk to her. 

She didn't have to open up to me, of course. I'm not implying that I need her to tell me every detail about her life. Her mind is a complicated place and sometimes she can't even put her own thoughts and feelings into words. Sometimes she didn't even want to, and that was fine with me. I would always be there if she wanted a distraction or someone to talk to. But, I'm not here to pester her about every little thing. She doesn't need someone to save her or protect her from her own head. 

She did it on her own, even if it took a while. So, she certainly didn't need some kind of savior.

And even if she did need help, she'd probably be too anxious to ask for it.   

That's just the kind of person she was. 

But I always knew. I could tell when she needed it. That's why we worked. I could feel the small tensing her body did when she was anxious, or recognize the change of her voice when something was bothering her. Her anxiety never scared me. I don't understand it half of the time, but it never scared me in the slightest. It was just slightly intimidating, but not anything I didn't think I could handle. If she could handle it, so could I.   

But God damn, I'm scared. There are so many mixed signals coming from her right now. it felt like a green stop sign every time I talked to her. 

Her excuses started changing. She blew off every call with some random excuses I'd never heard from her before. 

In class.

At work. 

With my friends. 

I'm too tired to talk. 

Conversations were barely any better. Our conversations lasted two, maybe three minutes at most. The stars weren't aligning with our schedules anymore, or maybe she just wasn't wanting to talk to me. 

It hurt. I wasn't upset with her. She wasn't hurting me directly. I was hurting myself because I couldn't read the situation. She was obviously hurting, I think. Something happened, that's obvious. She told me that something had happened and that she needed me. Needed. Not wanted but needed. Her words were that she needed me. She needed me, no one else. She was there when I needed her, and I wasn't there the one time she needed me. I could understand her being upset. 

I'm hurting because I know that she's hurting and is probably trying to play it off as being fine. She's probably suffering in silence right now. But I knew her, I thought. 

I thought. 

I didn't like that I couldn't completely read the situation anymore. I wanted to think that I knew her and that I was as good at reading her as she was at reading me. She read me like an open book that one night, immediately understanding all my worries and stresses. She was there. She knew exactly what to say right when I needed it. But right now, I was at a loss for words.