So forty-five minutes later we find ourselves in an empty spot in the airport, and Captain America the plush toy is sitting next to a bag of oversized shirts, sweaters, and sweatpants (which I loved and then he forced me to have). The plush is wrapped in a red white and blue scarf (which I bought for him to make up for all the money he's spent on me) and meanwhile Wren is telling me about the time that his friend nearly fell out of a window and how the firefighters had to come and safely pull him back into the house. I'm holding my stomach and laughing like there's no tomorrow because the story's hilarious and Wren just looks so goddamn happy that my heart wants to explode.
"I don't think I've laughed this hard since my mum was around," I admit, "and honestly, I'm glad I am now."
Wren looks at me with a sad smile, and I realize he's been rubbing my wrists the entire time.
"Annabel." Soft, pleading, a prayer.
"Yeah?"
"Tell me why you do this to yourself."
He keeps his eyes on mine as he grips my wrists protectively.
"Um, I — "
"Tell me everything. I'm an open book. Just say whatever you think. I want to listen."
I don't know. I want to be with my mum? I hate myself? Life can spend its time on someone better than me? I blink back tears and rake my top lip across my bottom, and Wren reaches up and cups my jawbone with his warm and calloused fingertips, hardened from years of piano."Well, um, as you know, um, already, my mother committed s-suicide a while ba-back," I stutter as I feel more tears well up in my eyes. I shake my head and Wren takes his thumb and wipes away the tears underneath my glasses, but I can't fight it anymore. They start rolling freely. I remove my glasses and everything is blurry except for Wren. Just Wren. How the world should be.
"She hung herself on the night of her birthday, with a note telling me she loved me but couldn't live with herself and my father any longer — cliche, teen fiction novel shit, I know — "
Wren presses a finger against my lips and shakes his head. "No, it's not. You don't have to continue. I'm sorry."
I shake my head. I have gotten this far into the story and I'm not stopping now.
Deep breath. "....so she took her life...and she once told me that the people who have scars and slits on their body are just angels that want to go back to heaven, and I believed her..."
I trail off, trying desperately to hold back my tears now, because I can't be weak. I have to be strong. I have to be my mother's angel.
"I hate myself. I will probably always hate myself. But I need to figure out how to live with me, because I've got to, for my mum. I'm young and small and bullied and I'm not pretty, and I've never turned heads before, and I don't have many friends but the ones I do have are...the most beautiful people I have ever known, apart from my mum. And I obsess over fictional characters and delve into books and am shy because I isolate myself and I will never be the stereotypical beautiful girl..." I angrily slice at my skin with my nail, opening a small line of red, and Wren looks on, heartbroken. "Of course, I don't care about beauty. But I do care what people think of me. And that's not good when people think you're a piece of nerdy shit."
I pull my gaze away from Wren, trying to hide my tears. No. No tears. You were not made for tears. You are an angel, fighting her way back to heaven.
No words are spoken for another five minutes.
"Annabel," Wren whispers in a hushed, heartbroken tone. He traces his finger down the inside of my forearm, where an angry red slash screams from my skin. A shiver runs up and down along my spine as he fingers the quickly disappearing scratch, calloused fingers running along the white scar tissue. I shift closer to him, snatching my arm away protectively, and his warm breath tickles the top of my head.
"I'm sorry you ended up loving someone like me," I murmur bitterly, but immediately want to take it back. Who's to say Wren loves me? Does he love me? Do I love Wren? I don't know. I don't care anymore.
"I could never regret loving you," he replies quietly, eyeing me, forlorn.
I do care.
Then Wren starts to speak.
"I love you. I will probably always love you, although I'll admit it came on fast. I don't want to have to figure out how I can live without you, because I don't think I can. You're short and you're funny I would die just to hear your laugh one more time. And every time I hear your voice, my day is graced. And you are beautiful. You are the most beautiful girl I know. You may think you are flawed and I have to tell you that you are flawed so damn perfectly that you're perfect to me. You might not have many friends but you don't because they're afraid they'll never be good enough for you. You are so inhumanly perfect that even I was scared when I first talked to you. I'm happy that I love you. God damn it, I would kill just to be in love with you. You're my favorite piece of nerdy fangirl shit in the whole world."
I look away from his sorrowful stare, numb with emotion, until he grabs me by the shoulders and turns my body to face him. Brutal eye contact. An electric moment. A screaming silence.
And he rubs my wrists as he kisses me, and I close my eyes and I kiss him back, because hell, I do love him, and I do care, and I'm so fucking happy that he loves me too, and in an instant his hands are around my waist, pulling me closer to him, and my arms are around his neck, fingers laced into his hair and feeling at his cat beanie. His lips are warm and soft and everything right, and I can taste the salt from our tears combined, a mixture of sadness exploding into something irreversible now. I pull away, gasping for breath, swiping tears away from my cheekbones.
"How many times have you practiced?"
He chuckles quietly and grabs me by the waist, and his hands find my hair; my up-do comes undone, brown hair spilling over my shoulders, and a curtain of my hair hides our faces from the rest of the world. Wren and me, me and Wren. Our noses bump and I smile against his lips as he wanders to the side of my face and his bottom lip brushes my chin, sending a rack of shivers up my spine as he moves down to my neck, and then I just firmly place him in a hug and kiss his ear and the side of his neck and he lets me cry on his shoulder as he presses his lips to my collarbone. Closing my eyes so I can just feel this blissful moment, and how much I want Wren, and how much I love him, and how I love him more than I love me. Thinking about his hands on my back, pressing my body closer to his, like he needs me too. And all the while he's whispering against my skin, barely audible.
"Please don't die."
YOU ARE READING
S A U D A D E
Historia Cortameet annabel, your average textbook nerd. in an airport at 2 am with the clone of chris evans.