Colorless Love

Chapter 16

"It's hard to keep pretending that you love someone when you don't, but it's even harder to keep pretending that someone else loves you when they don't" -anonymous

I ran up to Leo, ready to bear tackle him into a hug, but he instinctively raised his arm up, preventing me from touching him. My lips nervously fumbled around. "Leo what are you doing?" My question was almost rhetorical. Leo looked at me with a stern face, flaked with traces of annoyance. I could feel my blood pressure drop. "I'm sorry, but I don't think this is working out" As soon as those words left his mouth, time seemed to stop. It wasn't even real. It became a ludicrous man-made concept, full of dull emptiness. His words stabbed my brain, they caused my skull to overflow with thick blood. It drained out of my mouth, eyes, and ears. "Y-You don't actually mean that?" My voice cracked and my pupils dilated. I felt the blood rising in my face. I tried grabbing his hand, but he pulled it away. I suddenly felt abandoned. His eyes fell to the floor, and so did my self-esteem. "I wanted to tell you sooner, but I never had the chance" My body shut down, trying to hide itself in blissful self-denial. "I had some time to think about our relationship, and I really don't see this going anywhere" The bones in my legs melted into stringy cheese, and my hands felt unbearably cold. He ran a hand though his hair, slightly uncomfortable from the tension  building between us. I felt my heart beating in my throat, making it difficult to breath. "I just don't feel that way about you" The faucet in my eyes slowly began leaking with diamond tears. I mindlessly nodded and pretended to feel unbothered, but my brain was screaming and my heart was crying. Their echoes ricocheted throughout my frail frame, violently shaking me apart. I bit down my sobbing tongue.and ignored the oozing blood. He kicked his leg out, scuffing the floor. He looked up at me and pulled me towards him. He knew how to make me cry with his abusive green eyes.

"I was actually seeing someone else before I left"

My body went complete numb. My eyes grew dull, and lost all the color from them. Everything around me blurred together, it all looked like one abstract nightmare. He was seeing someone else while we were dating. My glass heart shattered into hundreds of crystal shards. I inhaled them, and felt them scratch my lungs. I choked on my own blood, unable to say anything. "I didn't want to tell you because I knew how weak you are" My mind was experiencing a total meltdown. All this time, I was rejecting my reality and instead, drowned myself in an elaborately sculpting fantasy. His words crawled into my ears and laid eggs inside my empty head. They manifested themselves as hundreds of non-existent insecurities. I began to feel uncomfortable in my own skin, just like when we first met. He put his hands on my small shoulders, and sighed softly.

"Rex, I never really loved you. I noticed the way you looked at me, but I didn't know how to handle it. I only went out with you because I thought that you would eventually get tired of how I treated you, and dump me"

The sky cracked open, sending fragments of broken glass hurdling towards the ground. My mind couldn't take it anymore. The memories it had desperately created were disintegrating before it. I wanted to melt into the floor. "What about all the letters I sent you?" I saw his eyes become dull. "I never actually read any of those letters" My wet lips struggled to produce an answer.  I couldn't do anything else but instinctively nodded and ignore the tears that silently ran down the sides of my face. I learned to nod whenever my emotions ran wild. It was my method of shutting the world out. He shrugged his shoulders, and grabbed his luggage. "This is goodbye then" I dropped head in order to cover my face with my stained hair. "Sure" He gave me a pathetic smile and walked away, leaving me alone in the middle of the airport. My eyes fallowed him, trying to capture his image one last time. Then out of nowhere I spotted a girl walking towards him. She had long chocolate brown hair and a perfect body. She wrapped her thin arms around his neck, and kissed him. I knew then the truth. I never lost him because I never had him to begin with. I was his, but he was never mine. Hot tears continued to stain my flushed cheeks as Leo hugged her and wrapped his arms around her thin waist. My body felt cold all of a sudden. I pulled myself inwards, pointlessly trying to warm myself. Their skin brushed up against one another's in fleeting moments of lust. It stained their skin red, and sent bitter remorse through me. I slowly stepped backwards, trying to detach my eyes. He had been cheating on me this whole time with a girl who was far prettier than me. I couldn't really blame him. I could never be the ideal boyfriend. I could never make him happy, I always did something wrong. On countless nights I would find myself alone, right after he'd storm out, slamming the door behind him. I walked away quietly, and met up with Sai at the foodcourt. He was buying a cup of coffee. "Hey, how'd it go?" His eyes were painfully empty, yet he kept attempting to pass them off.  "Fine" He tilted his head sideways. "Can you take me home now?" I felt gluttonous from asking so many things from him. "Umm, are you ok Rex?" His question was oblivious to the emotional trauma that ran ravenously inside of my mind. My eyes burned red as dry tears fell to the floor. He noticed and immediately apologized. "Lets get you home" I nodded and followed him outside, ignoring all of the speculative glances.

The drive home was painfully silent, it torn at my insides. Nothing hurt more than the space between us. My mind was bleeding out. The radio was playing Kate Nash's "The Nicest Thing" I stared down at my hands, trying to figure out where it all went wrong. Maybe if I was a little more thinner, smarter, or quieter, then he'd still love me. Maybe then he wouldn't have gotten bored of me. Sai occasionally glanced over. I could tell he was worried, he must have seen what happened from the coffee shop. I simply dozed off to sleep, succumbing to the rhythmic pattern of the engine and the cold air.

It was 9:00 PM when we arrived at my apartment, some of the lights were out. Sai must have thought that I was asleep, because he carried me out bridal-style. He effortlessly lifted me up, bringing me closer to his chest. He struggled to grab the keys from my pocket. He was nervously trying to reach inside my pants pocket. When he finally managed to open the door, he walked inside and laid me on the couch. He didn't turn on any of the lights, instead he walked towards the sliding glass window that led to the balcony. He was making a phone call. I could faintly hear him. "I don't think I'll be able to come to work tomorrow" A small wicked smile escaped my lips. He finished the phone call and walked back towards me. He picked me up again, and carried me to my room. It was depressingly dim, the curtains blocked out most of the cold moonlight and nighttime city glow. He laid me out on the bed and started to walk away. I began panicking, I didn't want to be left alone tonight. My body acted out on it's own, and instinctively shot up to grab his arm. He froze, trying to make sense of what was happening. "Rex?" His voice flooded the entire room. I trembled as my lips quietly opened.

"Please stay"

"Alright"

He climbed onto the bed, the creaking echoed off the walls. He laid down right beside me. I could feel his heat seep through the wrinkled sheets. I wanted to feel that heat, till my heart was set ablaze. He must have felt it, because he nudged closer, cupping my body with his. I felt his heartbeat, it was slow and steady. I wanted to loose myself in its sound. I was unbearably cold, and he was overwhelmingly hot. My mind was a jumbled mess. I don't know what I did wrong. I didn't know how this all happened. All I wanted was to feel like I was that everything for someone. To know that indescribable feeling when someone found you irresistible. I wanted to believe that someone valued me, and wanted to spend every waking moment with me. Someone that would kiss me good morning and kiss me goodnight. Someone who would hold me at night, curling up around me to warm up my cold insides. We'd hold hands, and feel each others finger prints. Tracing lazily across the grooves and curves of each individual finger. I longed to feel the unfamiliar sensation of skin on skin. The warm touch and salty taste. I longed for his teeth to graze my skin, biting deep into me. The feel of his body on mine. To spend nights wide awake, with him making love to me. Making me feel like I'm the only one who existed, like we were made for each other.

I wanted all of these things. I thought they would make my days less blue. But the more I waited, the less I actually received them. My internal cravings were left unfed, and it completely tore me apart. I quietly drifted to sleep, with Sai sleeping right beside me. Even though my mind was a mess, my heart somehow found comfort in the situation. It found Sai's body familiar. It welcomed him in blindly, against my best intentions.