WHEN BEAUTY NO LONGER EXISTS

8

a/n: sorry for the wait, y'all. but the author's note at the end is really important. this is also unedited sorry ha

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Before anyone even knew it, days transformed to weeks, and weeks morphed right into months, right before our unsuspecting eyes. I didn't even have energy to measure my days, anymore, seeing as every single one was just as torturous and long and hollowing as the night before. With hardly any sleep, I watched the sun rise every fucking morning. Felt the mocking light rays dance across the paleness of my skin, making a joke of it all. I couldn't breathe. It felt like there was weights around my ankles, felt like my lungs were shackled shut.

Theo called me three months after he did what he did, and it was strange to listen to his voicemail. He was calm and quiet, the Theo that I'd fallen somewhat in love with, though I let his words seep through me as if I was nothing but a crack running through his sidewalk. It was static-filled and fake, and I could smell his cologne mixing with my blood like a potion, could taste his hand pushed over my mouth. Could taste his refusal to let me go, to let me be. I could see him yanking my life away from me.

I didn't even use my phone much, anymore. At that moment, though, I definitely did. It had me frozen in my bed, blankets surrounding me in a hold so tight, I feared I would choke on the scent of my own desperation, and self-hatred, and fear.

Josh was in the bathroom, listening on as Theo asked me to give him a call. The sound of his voice made me want to throw up, and it make me wish I'd fucking bit him, or something.

But, that's what you're forced to deal with whenever something shitty happens to you. You spend the rest of forever thinking about what you could've done differently. As if thinking of the past, making up situations where things turned out better, is going to help you get rid of the weight of your present.

"Are you actually going to call him?"

To Josh, all Theo was, was just my ex-boyfriend. When in reality, Theo was an ex-boyfriend and a killer, someone who showed me both death and God in the span of thirty minutes.

"No." I croaked out, shaking my head.

We didn't speak the same, Josh and I. It was strained and nearly as shallow as my eyes were, because speaking to me was just like walking around on ice thin enough to cave in if a mere feather drifted down onto it. I couldn't imagine how terrifying it was to have a boyfriend when you leave to do laundry, only to return to nothing but a corpse. The only true difference between someone who was dead and I, was that I breathed. Sometimes I said things, but very rarely said anything.

"No." I croaked out, shaking my head, though there was no real point. He couldn't see it. Maybe I was shaking my head for me, though. "Why would I?"

"Maybe he wants to aplogize, or something."

As best as I could, I forced my tone to be made of absolute steel, not wanting any piece of evidence, of vulnerability, to leak through my voice. I knew Josh had seen enough of that to last absolute lifetimes.

"What would he apologize for? We broke up on decent terms," I shrugged. It wasn't a lie, either, seeing as I thought we were okay. Before he moved through my apartment, my safe space, like a ghost, and took my life with unforgiving hands. "And why the hell would I care? There's--there's nothing to talk about. There's never going to be anything to talk about."

"Alright, alright," he said gently, working to calm me from where he stood in the mirror, brushing out the mangled knots of both curls and waves that he decided to call his hair. "I didn't mean to work you up."