Look Like That

Prologue

I don't care for reality all that much. I've spent most of my life hiding in between fiction and the present; between dreams and darkness. In my mind I run my fingertips down the spines of colorful books that line the shelves I run past in hopes of seeking shelter.Reality reminds me of the numbness that encapsulates me in loneliness' ear-piercing silence, the calm before the storm of shattered glass and disassociation. When my fingers would press into the tender flesh around my ears to mute the yelling, the cursing, and the insults, I would think about Jane Austen and her ideal world where men heard of their character flaws and worked on themselves. I think about Sylvia Plath and how she made beauty out of depression and how F. Scott Fitzgerald twisted hopefulness around heartbreak. There was a beauty to be had in reality if only the blind could see and the deaf could hear, but what about the morally burdened, the mentally broken, and the physically abused? What about those little moments for them? For me? Do you ever have those moments when you think about how your life should've been versus how it came about? What if you did one thing differently? Would it have changed your life just enough or even drastically? Would it change how things started off? Ended? If I had yelled, would she have still left? If I had spoken up sooner, would I have had more time? Would I still have my best friend had a single event changed, or would I be desperately alone like I was before everything happened? Before the secrets, the lies, and the sneaking around? Would a blink of an eye have changed my trajectory, or would I still be here, looking across the room at the most incredible human being I have ever met? Or would I sit with my best friend in a cabin like we did every Christmas with her kids, having snowball fights like a real family? But as Hudson Monroe's smile widens, as my footsteps draw near, I know deep down in my soul that he filled whatever it was in my life I was missing. Somehow, he grew to need what I had to offer, too, just as he calmed my soul with his very existence. He was ten years younger than me, but he had a soul that met mine in the middle where an age gap should be, but it had never been. With the battles we fought and the wars we raged inside, we had more than just attraction on our side. While I had read, his smile across the room made the butterflies start and never stop. Sharing a pot of coffee was something I looked forward to because we would fight over the creamer like siblings over a toy. He was there through it all, just like I was there for him. We had never been strangers, but it was never something we ventured further into when things started changing. We would freeze and stare, wondering why it came to this, this addictive attraction, this undeniable merging of souls. In my chaos, he was my calm, and in his worry, I assured him he wasn't losing his mind. The world shrinks away when his hand touches mine in the crowd, tugging me into his perfect arms. This man had been my friend, my only home, and everything for years. Yet something deep and dark inside me always clawed its way up and whispered through my unrepaired cracks that I was sick, twisted, and cruel. I wasn't destined for happiness, only pain. Right? Isn't that what she had told me that night? That I was too much to handle, too much like her. I would never amount to anything and everything. I would try and I would fail because that's what I was; a failure, a problem. A mistake. But even in the darkest of nights, he held a flame of hope inside of him that never dimmed even in the light of my self-loathing. He became my beacon out of the darkness. The only promise I held, even on that fateful night, was that someone like him would one day exist. One day...
But one day was the lie I kept telling myself.