Please, Remember Me

Chapter Ten - Fireflies and Rapunzel

I swallowed against the sudden lump of fear that lodged in my throat.

I loved him.

I wasn't supposed to love him. I was supposed to have a fling with him, maybe a relationship for a few minutes of my life. Some fun and nothing more. I was never supposed to let him all the way in. Into a place inside me where only the two friends I cherished most were. He was supposed to get close, sure, but never like this. Not this overwhelming sense of absolute and unreasonable love.

I lost the people I loved. It's what happened to me, what my life was. Love them and lose them. That was why so very few of them ever got close, and absolutely none other than Adam and Lizzie were allowed. Especially not someone I was in a pseudo-relationship with.

Not a man like him.

How did I let myself fall to this point, where he suddenly took up more space in my very centre than any of the others?

I was freaking out internally at the realization.

Stupid, stupid fucking girl that I was.

I smiled and tried to keep the freak-out and terror at bay. If he noticed something in me, he didn't say. But how he couldn't have noticed was beyond me, my entire body locked for a moment with all these realizations. There were too many of them, too many emotions rushing through my veins for him not to notice.

We finished our conversation with a fake smile from me, combined with utter inability to meet his eyes and then I had to get unpacked and ready for our evening with his family.

I needed to focus and collect myself after that wave of things. I did what I needed to do, I stayed within the moment and unpacked my things without imagining the implications of my things merging with his. I took a shower and made a conscious effort to keep my mind in check and my breathing steady.

I had about two hours to get ready for the dinner with his family. During every minute of it my nerves grew and my thoughts jumbled. It was a big deal for anyone to 'meet the family'.

But seeing as I'd just, a few hours earlier, realized that I was stupidly, head over heels, soul-destroyingly in love with him, the game changed. Massively.

I had no clue how the fuck I didn't realize it before.

Maybe it was because we were apart for so long I'd convinced myself that the warmth he filled me with, and my crush, was nothing more than some sort of silly infatuation. And maybe I'd convinced myself so thoroughly about that, that I never saw it coming.

How could I have not let myself see that all these feelings, the impossible amounts of hours I'd spent dreaming, thinking and imagining him, was all because I fell in love?

Sure. I knew I'd been falling for him, but the extent of it was boggling. He wasn't supposed to be this big a part of me. He wasn't supposed to be even important...

But he was.

I felt it in every cell of my body.

I loved him.

I was in big trouble. Big, huge fucking trouble. There was a reason I hadn't wanted to let myself admit I loved him. He was here and I had to go back there and no matter how I felt or thought about it, I'd be in pain eventually. And I'd very probably lose him as soon as these three weeks were over.

I didn't handle losing people very well.

I didn't want to be in love with him, I didn't want to be this hugely gone for him, but it was impossible to deny any longer.