"You have a stone in your heart."
That rouses him somewhat. He looks up from his book and out the window at the gray fog that's settled over everything like wet cotton. He imagines breathing it, letting it fill his lungs with gray. All at once, the room is suffocating and he pushes the window open and the cool air tumbles in and ruffles the pages of his book so that he loses his place.
The spell of the story unravels and some part of him aches to know that the sort of love that exists in the storybooks is never true.
She loves the lines of him.
Her.
"Are you listening?"
"...Yes," he says without much conviction.
Rainwater pools on the windowsill.
"You- you have some stone in your heart."
I've waited a long time to show these flowers how pretty you are.
"Yes," he traces circles on the white laminate with a fingertip.
"Most days you can ignore it. And there are even more people who can make it lighter. But it always comes back. In the end it... It always comes back."
I should have been bolder and kissed her at the end.
"And some days it's so heavy there is nothing to be done."
"Yes," it comes out as a whisper.
"That's why you still cry."
Yes.
"Why won't you say it then? Admit that sometimes you hurt so much you can't breathe? So much that you wish-"
His elbow slips off the rain-slickness sill and he nearly brain himself on the sharp ledge. The book in his lap is soggy and the wrinkled pages seem to be a silent reproach.
He opens his mouth, draws a quick breath. There is some part of him that hangs on every word he doesn't speak. But he thinks twice. Three times. He thinks too much, and he doesn't say it. Won't. Or can't. He swallows the words back and expects to hear some sort of rebuke, but there's nothing.
There's only him.
