Inspired By Taylor Swift Series

Happiness (We Were Happy) (Original Fiction)

Paring: OCxOC

"Is everything alright?" My mother asked as she dried the last glass from our weekly family dinner.

"Yeah," I replied automatically.

"Are you sure? You can tell me if you guys got into a fight or something, that's perfectly normal."

"No," I laughed, my head slightly turning as I tried to think about the last time Jake and I'd gotten into a fight. I couldn't remember a single one. "We don't really fight."

"Ever?"

"No," I shrugged, wondering if it really was all that strange? "Not really. Is that weird?"

"I don't think so. Jake just looks unhappy tonight. You both do, if I'm being honest."

I try to hide the doubt on my face. It's not a new doubt- not in the slightest. I've thought about it extensively in the last year, but Jake and I weren't unhappy. Not at all.

After all, we'd been together seven years. 3 of those in high school. Married the second we graduated high school and spent all 4 years of college together. Surely after all this time of it just being the two of us, I'd know if something was wrong.

It was unsettling to think that our 8 year anniversary was only a few months away. It seemed more like a fever dream than my actual reality. So I often found myself refusing to think about us in introspection- and when I did, I found that the conclusions I came to were not at all comforting.

I was only 23 and I'd been with the same person for 8 years. Completely and utterly devoted to this man before I was even legally an adult. 8 years, the number rang in my head. Shouldn't I be sure of my relationship- of my marriage after 8 years? Even before we got together, we were childhood best friends. Everything had been a natural, if not expected, transition. It all happened so quickly, yet felt so far removed from our current standing.

But along with the amount of time we'd been together, the way everyone said that we were just meant to be also rang in my mind. I prided myself on being the cute, wholesome story of high school sweethearts. We were the lucky ones finding our other half so young.

Written in the stars.

Destined to be.

Twin flames.

Soulmates.

All things I used to wholeheartedly believe.

I clung to that more than ever in the last year. Because as much as I wished it untrue, I had so many doubts.

It wasn't anything that he said or did. It wasn't even anything I said or did. There was no argument or betrayal that made me question Jake.

Nothing that made me look at him differently, and yet I did.

He looked so different from the person I agreed to spend the rest of her life with. But that's how it was supposed to be. As humans, we were constantly changing. Evolving. It was perfectly normal that he wasn't the person he was sophomore year of high school. There'd be a big problem if he was- I knew that.

Yet I couldn't overcome it.

I'd always believed that we'd grow together, as a unit, but with our own respective growth I found the chasm widening between the two of us. It didn't stop us from trying, our arms were constantly extended out- desperately trying to reach the other despite our own physical limitations. And with the gut wrenching knowledge of those limitations, I found the cracks in our foundation cementing.

Simply growing apart and in completely different directions.

Maybe it was something in the silence, everything that remained unsaid, unspoken. I'd spent more time than I'd ever admit trying to convince myself that this was us settling into being out of school and becoming full-fledged productive members of society.