Just Simply, Them

VIII.

- in which he sees the ocean -

| 3:13 a.m.; Saturday |

HE COULD NOT find a way to fall asleep, not after the conversation which had taken place only a few hours prior. He was—his soul was—tired, confused, sad, alone. He kept replaying everything that had been said that morning, of what she confessed, what she offered. She offered to try to love him for his sake, because she didn't want him to go through the pain he would endure if he moved on from her. Surely, she had to have some sort of romantic feeling for him, to suggest that she could fall in love with him if only she tried. He knew that wouldn't work; she couldn't learn to love someone by pretending to. This was not a story being controlled by fingertips on a keyboard, but by whatever supernatural force in which they chose to believe. In stories, people find their soulmate by pretending to love them, by being with them for their sake, and find themself falling in love as well, and then they are given a life lived happily until the end of time together. This wasn't that story, and she wouldn't love him by forcing herself to. Matthew knew she needed a much stronger connection than that—she needed to want to love him. And she didn't. She only wanted to protect him, and that wasn't enough.

And he was okay with that. He had already accepted that he would have to move on; he didn't want to, but he felt as though he needed to. He also knew, that with how simply he had fallen for her in the first place, he would have no trouble doing it again if it was supposed to be them until the end. But, for right now, he had to get over her. Because, for right now, they weren't meant to be.

| 8:07 a.m.; Saturday |

She woke up again next to Tyler, though she couldn't remember going back to sleep. She wasn't sure how she was able to sleep after what had transpired earlier that morning with Matthew. So much had happened in the short half hour they'd been on the phone--much more than a few nights back when they'd spoken for hours. She had offered something she hadn't expected; she hadn't planned for it to come out of her mouth, but she didn't regret it when it did. She would try to do anything for him—Matt was her best friend. She didn't want to see him in pain, and she would try to fall in love with him if it meant avoiding smashing his heart. It's not as if she was against the idea—she would consider herself lucky to love someone like Matthew—she just didn't love him, and neither of them could figure out why. Matthew seemed to be relying heavily on the idea of fate, whereas she didn't know what to think. She didn't know why she didn't love him, why she didn't find herself falling for him slowly following the moment he told her he's in love with her. Even at this very moment, she couldn't bring to light a single romantic feeling toward Matthew, yet her offer from the early, darkened hours of the morning seemed as though she could.

It seemed the more tired she was, the more exhausted her soul, the more she acted as though she were in love with this worrisome, broken boy that often poured his soul to her and wanted nothing more but for that feigned affection that clouded her to be real. He wanted so badly for a reason to not get rid of this love so strong, the deepness of it was ineffable. But he did not have that, and she knew that. She knew that the only thing to avoid this is to love each other, and she didn't, and she didn't know why. If this is all part of fate, that cruel, beautiful force, then she hoped what fate had in store was beneficial to Matthew; she hoped it made him happy; she almost hoped it voided him of moving on.

| 8:32 a.m.; Saturday |

The last half hour had been spent alone in her thoughts, and now Tyler awoke next to her, his bare chest meeting the back of her T-shirt where she sat on the bed. He wrapped his arms around her waist, planting a light kiss on the crook of her neck, and whispered a "good morning" into her skin. "'Morning, Ty," she said, turning her body to face him, and they sat looking at each other, smiling. "Did you sleep okay?"

He hung his head for a moment, smiling, and mussed up his hair a bit before looking back at her. "Aside from finding you crying in the hallway at three in the morning, I slept rather well. How about you, Pickle?"

Dillon smiled at the nickname. It gave her a warm, fuzzy feeling in her chest, and she looked into the jade green of his eyes. "I slept well, too, surprisingly. I didn't think I would get to sleep after the hallway thing."

He took her hands in his, running his thumbs over the backs of them. "What happened? What was that all about?" His voice was quiet and gentle.

She took a moment before answering. "There's something I haven't told you." This sparked his interest, but his demeanor remained gentle. "I have anxiety, but, like, to the extreme. I'm always super anxious and worrisome, and I have attacks at the smallest things sometimes. It's something I've struggled with for a while—since I was in middle school. You'd think I would have learned to deal with it by now, but I haven't. Sometimes I can almost keep it under control, but not usually." Her vision was becoming clouded from tears that threatened to fall from her tired eyes.

"What would have caused you to have an attack last night?" His voice was full of genuine worry for his girlfriend, a new problem brought to light, a new reason to protect her as well as he could. He didn't want her to be hurt.

She stayed silent for a long moment, unsure if she should share this deeply intimate thing with him, share this heart wrenching thing that had plagued her best friend, and now her own mind as well. She contemplated this for longer that would be considered necessary, but he sat and let her think, let her mind work in a way he found fascinating, a way he found gorgeous, a way that was so deeply her own that he was mesmerized just at the sight of her. He saw her as this beautiful creature, this intellectually ravishing individual who was too strong for her own good, too gorgeous to fit into a stereotype of intelligence, and he loved that about her. He loved that she wasn't "normal" in the stereotypical sense of the way her looks matched with her mind. To some she would be considered average, but to him she was stunning. All would see her as smart, as sharp, but he also saw curiosity and an almost child-like wonder float behind her hazel eyes as he lost himself for hours in the swirls of the colors. She was the most exquisite and bewitching soul he had ever come across, and he considered himself very lucky to have taken the elevator to the wrong floor that day. Because if he had not done so, he would not have met the most calming, the gentlest, the funniest—the undoubtedly best thing about him. Her.

She continued to think, continued to wonder how Matthew would feel if she told Tyler what had transpired between them. She couldn't decide, she could only imagine worst case scenarios of anger and betrayal from the friend who loved her more than Tyler did. He imagined how mad he might be with her, though she knew she was being irrational. She knew she was not thinking clearly but even so she still felt her breathing grow slightly shallower and quicker. Her hands began shaking ever so lightly, and her head began throbbing.

"Dillon?" His worry grew bigger, as he was about to see a blackened portion of his girlfriend's soul, and he feared for how he would be able to handle the situation.

"I'm, uh, I'm okay. Just give me a second to calm down." She struggled with the words, and they came out broken and strained. He wrapped her up in his arms, holding her close to him, and she clutched tightly to his shoulders, reddening his skin in her grasp. He rubbed her back gently, as she tried to slow her breathing. He felt hot tears on his chest where they seeped from her eyes. He said nothing, because if this was what it took for her to calm down, he wasn't going to tell her not to cry. If she needed to, then she needed to. Everyone needs to cry sometimes. Instead, he kissed the top of her head and gently rocked her while she was desperately trying to swim to the surface of the inky depths of her mind's cold ocean.