When It Mattered ✔️

E I G H T

E I G H T
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"Her heart had grown so familiar to the pain of life without him, that to respond now seemed too large a pleasure she could not endure. If pain was love, then she loved fiercely. Yet knew she could not be near that boy again."
― Coco J. Ginger
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I could feel him hesitate. I knew he was... because so was I. This wasn't right. So even though it took every bit of strength I had, I let him go.

"Gracie?" his confused ocean blue eyes held mine as he snatched my wrist.

Now it was me who had the troubled look on her face. I was stuck. I wanted to run away. I knew he would only hurt me again. I could already see it. I could already feel it in my rapid heart rate. Just after each beat, there it was. That coldness seeping into my bones trying to freeze my insides to stop me from making anymore bad decisions with my heart.

"You said you wouldn't," he whispered dejectedly. His grip tightening before letting me go completely. "But I should be used to your empty words."

"Just, stop it!" I shouted suddenly before shrinking back. "You are such an idiot and a hypocrite, Ethan." I whispered into my hands, feeling my heart tug so tightly in my chest I thought the stitches would come loose. "Why didn't you...you do anything? If you loved me so goddamn much, why didn't you stay?" The broken words came leaking out from the loose seam in my heart. Words I've held in for so long that they now were filthy in cobwebs of betrayal and self-loathe.

"I wasn't the one who ended it between us," he muttered, making me take a step back --closer to the metaphorical edge that dropped off into an abyss of numbness.

Yes he was. He couldn't even look at me anymore by the time I decided I couldn't take it and finally gave up on us. All I could do was watch as piece after piece of him faded from my life completely. It hurt too much.

I dropped my hands, finding myself once again surrounded in so much blue it was tinting my very soul with the colour. "You crushed my heart."

"And you shattered mine." His eyebrows furrowed. Every emotion I've ever known flickered in those brilliant, stupid blue eyes.

The silence filled out between us as we stared at each other. I wanted to reach out and pretend I never had let go... But there was still too much hurt between us. It separated us into two different worlds. Each with their own side of the story. Each with their own pain. I didn't think there would ever be a bridge big enough to reach him.

"I should go." I finally whispered the words we were probably both thinking and wishing for and afraid of all at the same time.

My eyes stung as I took another heavy step back from him. It hurt so goddamn much. His pained blue eyes never left mine even when my tears finally filled to the brim and spilled over. They looked like they hurt him as much as they hurt me.

I hadn't cried over that boy since high school. It felt like an old dam had finally crumbled to ashes... but the only tears leftover were these poisonous few as they slid down my cheeks, leaving an invisible burning trail of told-you-so's in its wake.

As if telepathically linked, Raven's beautiful purple Jeep Wrangler rolled back into the scene and I fled to it -trying desperately not to look back as I got in and we started driving away. But I failed and turned, and seeing him so hurt, hurt me so much that I stole the tears from my future heartbreaks dam's and cried those out too.

There was no way there would be any way to go back from that. Ethan and I... We had to have been finally and completely done. It was the only logical thing I knew at that point.