secrets.

Saying Goodbye Is Hard When You're So In Love

I remember very clearly the first time I ever fought with her.

We'd known each other for years already. Of course we'd had some disagreements (about what to watch in bed together or what to eat for dinner that night), but never a real fight until I asked her to move in. She had blown up out of no where; like I had pushed her over the edge. I remember very clearly the way she looked at me with those eyes of hers, as if I was the bane of her existence. As if I was scum she'd stepped on in the middle of a parking lot. As if she was threatening me not to make a sound, to take a step.

But even then, her stare hadn't been so cold, so hard, as the one I'm seeing now is.

Now, her eyes could start the Ice Age over. Now, they could freeze a man so well he thaws 50 years later the same age. Now, they could make it snow in hell three times over. She lowered the temperature in the room with that stare and sent shivers down my back.

That stare wasn't a warning, it was a dare. I dare you to try to fix this, it says. I dare you to make a sound, to take a step, to ask to leave.

It carried blame. As if she believed I was the one who got us locked up in my childhood bedroom. The one we spent slumber party after sleepover after slumber party building blanket forts and watching movies in. The one that still had her drawing hung on the wall because I hadn't been back to it in months and I never did get a chance to tear it down.

She probably thought I left them up. Planned this whole fiasco and hung those pictures back up to guilt her into staying.

It was childish, what they did. And unforgivable. We had gone our separate ways months ago. Mutually decided we just weren't right anymore. Something went wrong, and it went unnoticed, and we dealt with the consequences by splitting.

Clean, painless.

Knowing that we had to lose contact. We deleted each other off social media (or at least, I deleted her and assumed she deleted me), and removed each others' phone numbers (I had her's memorized, but I can never remember if the last two digits are 3s or 7s or both.), and stopped drawing each other into our sketch pads.

It  was a clean break. We'd be fine, moving on. I had been left with pretty severe abandonment issues, but it was nothing my remaining friends couldn't nurture. I don't know anything about how she was after we split.

A voice floods the room. I recognize it. It belongs to her.

"...ever gonna get out of here? I told you already that I didn't want to see her!"

She was standing by the door, slamming her first on the thick wood. I was surprised she wasn't flinching.

"Mom please, this is so immat - did you tie the door? Are you kidding?"

My voice was rough and thick with nerves. "They're not there. I heard them walk away ages ago."

She ignored me, keeps slamming for a moment while I find a seat on the edge of my bed. I had cleared out everything of value when I bought my own apartment. Books, laptop, sketch pad. Mom had taken my phone.

They'd said they would leave us here until we sorted out our issues. I don't see that happening. So we're left with a water bottle each, no food and a toilet with a short sink.

The sound of scraping catches my attention. She's sliding down the door with her head in her hands.

Not even three months ago, I would have had the urge to comfort her. Wrap an arm around her shoulder and whisper about how we'll be out of here soon, how we could part after but that maybe it wasn't so bad to mend where we left it.