Stevie wondered how people saw them on the outside.
They could not have looked as beautifully broken as they truly were. The world doesn't see that kind of beauty. You wear it on the inside; keep it tucked away for only the other person to see.
She saw their relationship for what it was. They were not the love story they presented on the outside. On the outside it was too easy.
On the inside was where she liked it. It hurt and it healed and it cut like glass and it was theirs.
It was her hideaway. It was a safe place where they could both seek shelter. It was a place where they could keep the others out. Letting people in destroyed them before. They were older and wiser and didn't see things through rose colored glasses.
The outside was killing her and the inside was the only thing keeping her alive.
She wanted to live. She really, really wanted to live. She wanted to live on the inside. The outside was a lie.
Even he was a lie on the outside. He played house and pretended he was better than she was. He was no better than her on the inside. He was just as shattered on the inside.
On the inside she could watch quietly as he rested his head on her shoulder and drifted off before she had to send him back outside. She could whisper, "I'll be good, I'll be good, I swear I'll be good," on the inside but she didn't have to mean it on the outside (she wished she had to mean it on the outside too).
On the outside she had to pretend that she cared and respected him. On the inside she could show him her anger and her wounds and she didn't have to be nice and pretty and she could show him how damaged she is and he would like that so much more than he liked her on the outside.
He likes her damaged. God, if the outside only knew how much he likes her on the inside when she is damaged.
She likes him battered and broken. The words she could say to him on the inside were poetic and angry and so very true. The outside wasn't a place for speaking your mind.
On the outside, words like love and hate were thrown around too easily. She knew that on the inside there was so much more between the words than just a thin line. There were books with chapters and those words were used with dignity and grace.
He could come to her on the inside. On the outside, he always had to stay away. He would say they had "personas to uphold," and she would laugh in his face, but she knew, she knew that if she could give him what he wanted on the outside, he would give her what she wanted on the inside.
On the inside they only belonged to one another. There were no drugs and no girlfriends and no bands on the inside. It was just him and her and she preferred it that way.
"I swear I'll be good if I can have you," she will say on the inside.
"You had me. You let me go," he will tell her.
On the inside she pays for her mistakes. On the outside she blames him for all the mistakes that have been made. On the outside he takes the blame, on the inside he makes her hurt.
It is, on the outside, assumed they are still in love.
It is known on the inside.
