All This Time

34 ⦿ in which i seek truth

When all the plates have been cleared away, goodbyes have been said, and wine has been finished, I slink away to my bedroom to lick my wounds in private.

The little click the lock makes as the door shuts feels like finality - a fitting end to the night. My tired eyes seek out my bed and without removing any of my makeup, I collapse onto the rumpled white sheets. With a groan, I roll over, dark hair fanning the pillow like a halo. When did life get so complicated?

I can hear the muffled sounds of movement outside and the muffled fuck that passes Wolf's lips after a suspicious thud. 

I giggle. Looks like I'm not the only drunk one.

Snatching my iPhone off the nightstand, I flick through my playlists until I find something soothing and acoustic. The kind of sleepy tunes I liked to listen to when it was drizzling rain outside and I was curled up in a warm bed.

Something clenches in my stomach. Hard.

My thoughts drift, lulled away by Kodaline lyrics, blunting me to the ache in my chest and the writhing in my stomach. 

I don't want to lose Levi. I don't want to lose anyone.

I think of Xander, about to get married, and of the new adventure I'm embarking on with Wolf. Everyone's moving on, I realize with another painful clench. Except me. I'm still the girl pretending to be some boy's girlfriend, falling in love with the fantasy when the reality is that the boy isn't looking for the same thing - not with me.

And except for Levi, I allow. Levi isn't moving on so much as he's moving - moving away.

I allow myself one last second to wallow in self-pity before turning ruthlessly to a truth I've been avoiding. Mostly because truth hurts, especially when it's a truth I've been running from for years. 

Like an old enemy, it chases me, never running out of breath, never growing tired, always on my heels, nipping at me when it gets too close.

Like an old friend, it tries to nudge me to the right answer as though it's right within my grasp, even though to me, it feels like light-years away.

The last five years, I've been moving, too. Not away, or not toward something, but in circles. Orbiting around my constants. My job, my friends, the things that I thought would fill the empty spaces in my heart, my lungs, even the dark little crannies of my ribcage. I thought I was moving towards something, but in reality maybe I was just moving farther away from something else.

I feel like I'm finally getting somewhere with the chaos of my thoughts when there's a light, hesitant rap on the door. Torn from my mind, my epiphany dissipates like smoke. I know, instinctively, that much like a dream you'll never be able to dream again, I won't be able to recreate the conditions that led up to this moment.

Irritated, and more than a little sorry, I call out, "Yes?"

"It's me."

The words are muffled through the door and a little slurred from alcohol, but there's no mistaking the voice.

"Come in, Wolf."

The door creaks open and he sticks his head through, his cheeks red and his eyes bright. "You decent?"

"Yes." I struggle to sit up, giving up when my back refuses to budge from my comfortable position. "What is it?"

He walks toward me in silence and when he sits down on the edge of my bed, I wait for him to speak, but his face is a mask of contemplation, betraying nothing.

I nudge his tailbone with my toes. "Wolf?" I prompt.

"You ever wish you had a second chance to make a first impression?"

Now what's brought this on? I scrunch my nose. "Who did you make a bad impression on?" Mentally, I tack on this time to the end of my sentence.

Wolf doesn't say anything, but his back tenses, drawing my attention to his face. His posture is rigid and I understand the words he doesn't say. I sit up, my toes seeking purchase in the comforter as my back strains to an upright position. 

Wolf maintains his silence and this is a truth that I do not have to look for. This is a truth that is as natural to me as breathing. I lean forward and rest my forehead against his back. "Yes," I whisper into his shirt, not for myself, but for him.

I feel, rather than see, his shudder. It reverberates through his entire body like an absolution. My arms encircle him and we stay locked in that position for several minutes before he speaks again.

"I don't really like myself." The words are soft, so soft that I have to strain to hear them, and my arms tighten around him.

There's nothing I can say to that except the painful words I don't always like you either. 

But I am not cruel.

A traitorous voice in the back of my mind pipes up and he is not kind.

So I suppose in a way, it's fitting that we're such a match.

When his body begins to sag against mine, the tension falling away—more to do with his drowsiness than my comfort, I suspect—I can't support him, so I slide out of the way and ease him as gently as I can onto my pillow.

His eyelids flutter and open, and for that span of a second, it's like we're seeing each other for the first time. Wolf's lips curve into a smile and part like he wants to say something, but then sleepiness overtakes him and his face goes slack.

"Sleep well, Wolfram van der Waals," I whisper, even though he can't hear me anymore, and like a ghost, I drift from my room. 

At the door I pause and glance back at him. My empty spaces attract his empty spaces; if his were full, maybe I wouldn't like him as much. And maybe vice versa, too. Maybe my hollows make his pulse with longing, too. But that's a lot of maybes and not a lot of surety.

It would be easy to just curl up on the other side of him, to stroke his back and memorize the curve of his spine and stroke the short, prickly hairs on the back of his neck. Easy to think of us in the future, drinking tea and talking until 2 a.m. until one or both of us falls asleep. 

I turn off the lights and close my bedroom door behind me, dousing the impulse to linger there with him. I don't want to move in circles anymore.

Author's Note: Hey, guys! Sorry for the wait on this chapter. Honestly, this was sort of hard to write because as much as I love Wolflotte, so much about them is painful as well. And the best (worst?) part of writing is that at any given point in time, events can splinter off and become something else entirely - and my brain is teeming with dozens of alternate endings (most happy, some not) that deviate from what I originally wanted for this story and it's just A LOT, OK. xD 

I promise, I'm not trying to be cryptic or anything, it's just that sometimes I almost feel like the characters are fighting against me, the author, and it's a struggle to figure out whether I should let them have their way or push them back onto my path? Does anyone else have this problem? Although, hey, it could also be perceived as an opportunity, if you're more of a glass half-full sort of person (I'm not xD).

So, a few questions for you guys -

1. Do you like Wolf more than Charlotte? As characters, which of the two do you find more compelling?

2. Throughout the course of the story, from inception to now, do you still feel like sailing the S.S. Wolflotte ship or does it seem like....it's doomed? That's definitely not the idea I want to portray, but it seems like people perceive it that way, and I guess I just want to know whether anyone is actually still rooting for these two crazy kids?