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𝐋ove.
It is solace and protection, it is nurture and acceptance. Peaceful and passionate. Generous and forgiving.
Love is pain and heartache. Love is worry and anxiety. For that's the price you pay for the gift of loving them. A child. A friend. A lover.
Love comes in every shape and form and pattern. It comes with faces of happiness and sadness and excitement. It offers smiles and tears and butterflies.
Marlowe Greene has loved and been loved. She loves her friends. And despite all their painful ups and downs, she loves her family. And they all love her.
Though, never has she loved anyone more passionately than one can love their friends and family. Never has she been with that one person who sticks out — who brings that unique, heartwarming passion of love that one can nearly only find between the pages of an old novel.
She's never been in love.
Surely, there's been interest from others. But, if her chosen brothers didn't turn them down before she could, her own mind would. As if scared to let her body embrace that dangerous feeling and allow herself to be vulnerable. To get attached when they have the power to turn their heads the next second.
Because love can also be heartbreak. And heartbreak is terrifying.
The loss of her best friend had left Marlowe heartbroken.
Heartbroken in the vicious body of grief. The one that comes in waves, grueling, stealing appetite and sleep alike. A shard in her guts that never leaves. And in the quiet moments, it chokes the breath from her body and forces a retch-stricken sob from what's left.
For nearly two entire weeks she doesn't speak to anyone. Only when her parents sit down at her bedside with gentle words and a tray of dinner does she tear herself from her vicious thoughts.
Though, no matter how little food she consumes, the sensation of it coming right back up never fades.
For thirteen days, she hasn't contacted her four best friends. Despite the towers being back up and running, she hasn't even sent a single proof of life their way. Not a single text message.
It was never her intention to cut them off.
She never wanted to. She loves them. But as the first hours passed, with the light of every sunset and every sunrise glimpsing through her curtains, her own had faded. It faded through the force of tears and sobs and screaming into her pillow how unfair the world is, before drifting off with an aching in her skull.
And that has been her days, for the past thirteen of them.
Her phone is switched off. Her room is as dark as the midnight sky outside her window. She's entangled within her white sheets, sailing through the fine line between being awake and asleep.
