Paper Hearts

01 | spark

[ dedicated to collaterals because a story of mine would not be a story without giving a shout out to my home girl. she's always supporting me and inspiring me and i wouldn't write the way i do without her constant influence and support. her story, hellish, always has me shook - every single chapter gives me the SoC vibes and i legitimately cannot with that damn story. that's how freaking amazing it is. thank you for everything babe <3 ]

PAPER HEARTS | 01

Renting an apartment together was quite possibly their best, and worst, idea to date. Ellie and Micah wondered what was going through their heads when they purchased the two-bedroom apartment, separate office and all. He had his man den, and she had her home theater, and, most importantly, they had each other. The lingering scent of year round peppermint was a grounding force for Micah - a reminder of how lucky he was to have his best friend as a roommate. The sweaty shorts left lying on the floor were a friendly reminder to Ellie that no matter how disgusting Micah was, she would trade anything in the world to keep him by her side.

They were what others called accidental friends. Their friendship was the by-product of two disastrous relationships coincidentally coinciding. Ellie's boyfriend, Gavin, had been best friends with Micah's girlfriend, Hannah, unbeknownst to either of the current friends. Both relationships had been sailing calm seas, listing to the lull of the waves against the helm of the boat, but neither noticed the tempest in the distance. Small suspicions got caught in the water, getting tossed and turned in the whirlpool of raging emotions, resurfacing as bitter arguments. Sutures from their brash encounters hung limp on their skins, wounds not closing completely, never scarring correctly.

An accumulation of arguments resulted in fragile relationships, weathered to nothing more than an inkling of infatuation - whatever the relationship started as. It was in the grand scheme of things that both the relationships come to an end, but not in the way that they did. Not with Gavin and Hannah trying to surreptitiously dive under the covers to hide their stark naked bodies, or with Micah nearly grabbing Gavin by his balls to throw him out the window. Definitely not with Micah calling Ellie up in the middle of the night to ask her to share his six-pack of beer with him. But perhaps that was also in the best interest of the grand scheme of things - rearranging two mismatched pairings to create a new set of optimal relationships essential to producing the most beautiful babies.

Micah was always on Ellie's case for dating men only because of their looks and their chances of giving her Channing Tatum look alike's - in Ellie's defense (something she really didn't have), she claimed that she was always willing to learn to love someone.

Unfortunately for Gavin and Hannah, their relationship didn't last. In theory, once a cheater, always a cheater - Micah had given the duo three weeks while Ellie had been more lenient, giving them two months. Both hypothesized that it wouldn't be the cheating to create the rift in the relationship, but the paranoia of future possibilities. Ellie had run into Gavin at the local coffee shop a month after he made his relationship with Hannah official - his Facebook status finally read In a Relationship. Eyes bloodshot and head throbbing, he warily explained the demise of his relationship - said something about sharing a coffee one last time before moving out.

Ellie didn't care. Micah wasn't humored. And neither shied away from publicizing their own relationship status - it wasn't big enough for Facebook, but it was worth mentioning to some unworthy exes. Moving in together was a surefire way to garner jealousy in the eyes of even those with the best masks.

So while one of life's seemingly destined matches faced the final chapter of its love story, there was one match that hadn't even started its story. Micah and Ellie were blissfully aware of the tension between the two - dehydrating sexual tension - but were unnaturally reluctant to act upon it. They were in no rush to jeopardize the greatest of friendships for some casual sex that could easily turn messy - literally and figuratively. For the both of them, the tension was leashed by stolen glances, lingering smiles, and fleeting touches. It was kindled by the knowledge that a flame couldn't go out without being started in the first place.