luck for the night - rl.

45. it's better this way.

Trigger warning: weight loss. Please skip the part between the stars *like this* if you find it difficult to read about this :)

***

When your heart is broken, the world seems to move differently. Every little thing reminds you of the person who is gone now, the person you should have treated better. Like the drying bouquet of roses, hidden behind the curtain of your bedroom. He will never know it's there, he will never see that you saved the first thing he ever gave you. The linger of their scent in your bedsheets and the crumpled-up shirt that they wore right before they left. The two mugs on the coffee table.

When your mind is broken, time seems to move differently. You are only vaguely aware of how nights turn into days turn into nights again. You eat, sleep, and shit at totally random times, not being ruled by clocks anymore. You might have breakfast at two a.m., or lunch at dinnertime, only vaguely aware of the world moving, life outside of your flat going on without you.

But when your life is broken, you stop caring. Just like that. You don't give a fuck anymore about the missed calls, your best friends, the job you used to enjoy. You become immune to the thought of the dirty dishes in the sink that really need to be cleaned, food going bad in the fridge, and your bedsheets smelling gross and sweaty because if you lay just right, pushing your face into the softness of the pillow, the final remnant of their smell seeps into your nostrils. Even that is fleeting, the comfortable scent slipping more out of the pillowcase as the days pass. But for a couple of seconds, you allow yourself to do it, and you can almost imagine him being back here, wrapped tightly in the sheets with you. Key word: almost.

I wasn't sure how much time had passed since he left, but I knew I had been suffering. I knew that Remington and I would have not worked out in the long term, and I knew that sooner than later, it would have ended anyway, but I hated myself for the way I went about it.

No explanation. No truth. Just a stone-cold, blatant lie, because it was easier for me than telling him my real problem. I hated myself because even if he was gone now, and I accepted my fate of being alone forever, the guilt of taking too much luck remained.

I was lying in bed when the bell rang, my eyes glued to invisible patterns on the ceiling. At first, my sad, tired heart started beating fast around the icicle of guilt, but I pushed away the splinter of hope as soon as it emerged.

It wasn't him, begging me to take him back. Couldn't be. He was somewhere else now, in a different city on the other side of Europe, probably balls deep in another girl, hating the one that broke his heart only so recently.

A minute later, the bell rang again, and again, and again. I put the spare pillow over my head, the one that still smelled like him. Whoever it was, I did not want to see them. I did not want them to see me, not in this state of suffering.

Another minute later, and the bell rang again, only now, it did not stop. Great, someone just kept pushing the button. The long, continuous sound fiercely attacked my eardrums, as well as my patience, and I finally threw the covers off myself, muttering "coming, coming," under my breath.

As I opened the door, I did not look into the dark eyes that I hoped to see. Rather, it was the dark eyes that I had hoped to never see again. "Phoebe," I said coldly, pretending that I was not filling up with embarrassment.

My friend's eyes widened at the sight of me, and well, I couldn't blame her. "Hi," she managed to say, after coughing and clearing her throat for a good five seconds. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I am." If you forget about how shit of a person I am, completely ruining her own life, hurting everyone close to her in the process.

"Did I," she started, but paused as if she had to think over what she was going to ask, "did I do this?" She gestured towards me, and I wondered what part of me she meant. Was it the greasy, matted hair? The bags under my eyes? the stinky, stained clothes I was wearing? Or the mess in my house, undoubtedly visible from where she was standing?