i don't belong, and my beloved, neither do you (Ted Lasso)

Can this be a real thing? Can it?

A month passes without seeing or hearing from Jamie.

And, in Thea's defence, it's only partly her fault. Because, yes , she stops going to the matches and, yes , she stops answering his texts with more than one word answers. But he stops too. Stops sending her texts that require more than that in the first place. Stops talking to her like she's his friend. Stops trying just as much as she does.

Which is fair for him to do.

After all, she had been the one insisting that they had no reason to be friends now that he and Casey were done.

It's just that she didn't expect it to be such a difficult change.

Because's, suddenly, it's more than getting used to not seeing him around the flat. It's the rest of it too. The parts of her life that had become tangled up with him. It's taking the bus every day and listening to the same songs they used to sing together in the car. It's seeing Higgins on a Thursday night and avoiding mentioning Jamie when they talk about the team. It's her sessions with Colin, who she had begged for forgiveness but still can't admit why it was she disappeared to begin with. It's sitting awake in the early hours of the morning and wondering if , somewhere else, he is doing the exact same thing.

And what's worse is that she wants to see him again.

Even if that defies everything she has been trying to do.

So, when she gets an advert that he's in between videos, she doesn't skip it. It's embarrassing and he's full of himself. A snapshot of the person she just missed out on meeting. But, behind the bravado, is the same man she thinks about in those empty moments. Who's rough edges she got to see before they were softened out to make the world more comfortable. The man was far too similar to her for it to be healthy for either of them but also one of the few people who actually understood.

She doesn't know what else to do with this subtle grief, so she does the next best thing and she ignores it.

A tried and true method.

Aria, the guitarist from her old band, is having a gif in town and she invites Thea along for, what is probably, the hundreth time. Neither of the girls have actually seen each other in years, but they keep in touch in fits and starts.

The idea of seeing Aria in person feels awfully close to the edge of falling into the past, but Thea is grateful for the distraction.

After all, is there a better way to replace one crisis than with another?

Plus, Aria had always been on the fringe of things. Close to Thea in their private lives and good on stage but never someone who had stuck around to see the worst parts. It helped that she had been old enough to separate herself from the other girls and too busy with her other projects to catch what Thea was already missing. She had been suprised when the news came out. One of Thea's only supporters, even when the retirement news came out and the promise of future gigs fell apart.

After all that, the least Thea could dip her toes into discomfort and support her back.

So, Thea says she'll go and starts to counts down the days.

While she waits for the gig, Thea attempts to live normally.

She gets up in a morning and eats with Casey, listening intently to whatever story she's telling even if she's heard it a hundred times before, and she makes sure to stay out of her room until Casey goes to work. Then and only then does she shut herself away in her room. But, to make up for it, she starts leaving early for her lessons and taking the time to walk instead of the bus when the weather is decent enough. She sees Colin twice a week when he's free and always makes sure to smile even when she's feeling like the world is falling apart around her. The perfect image of someone keeping their head above water.