To love you | Malum

Ch. 24 - Hotels + I Need You More Than Ever

Michael + Ch. 24 - Hotels + I Need You More Than Ever

It's easier to live inside of a fantasy where nobody exists except for the people that you want to exist than it is to admit that you're afraid of reality, and how it leaves marks upon our skin to show that there's good and bad, and sometimes, there's something in between that's almost, if not, completely, indescribable. It's impossible to live inside of your emotions and choose what to feel, because you don't choose what to feel; your brain does – and that's why the world loses sense and touch sometimes, that's why it can't remember the difference between life and death. Part of me thinks that there isn't a difference, that life is just walking through the dark but being able to see, and death is walking through the dark trying to find a way to see. And the way that I see it is that the boy I'm in love with is both of those things, life and death, and there's no escape.

I went to the place where the stars met in the middle of the sky, where the trees branched slightly above the ocean, where the moon fell in love with the wind rather than the sun, and I found him there. He was sitting on the top of the bleachers smoking a cigarette, and I should have stayed away from those kinds of things, or perhaps even him, but I couldn't, mainly because I didn't want to. He was life and death, and I was choosing to be between the spaces of both, counting the constellations inside of his eyes until they disappear for an eternity. And it was times like these where I wanted to run up to him and kiss him, even if he broke my heart yesterday – and what drained me the most was that I could do whatever I wanted, but I chose not to do anything. I didn't want to get hurt again, but I was already hurting. I'm always hurting, and he's always swallowing himself whole, trying to figure out how to get it to stop.

He had this hood over his head but it had holes in it, and the sleeves attached to the jacket were stained, and he looked sad, but it wasn't much of a surprise to me. He was always sad, and he was the smoke that fell from his lips, and he was the tears that fell from his eyes, but at the same time, he wasn't much of anything except for the boy who stole my heart, and I wanted it back. I wanted him to stop breaking it in two, and three, and five. I couldn't handle picking up the pieces any longer.

I knew that the right thing to do would be to wheel myself away from him as far away as possible, but our eyes met, and he put his cigarette out as soon as it happened, and he was walking towards me as if yesterday was just a dream, and I liked feeling my body turn into putty, but it was aching as it melted, and I wanted him to tell me that he loved me. I knew that it wouldn't happen. Calum Hood didn't think he was capable of loving anybody, yet he said he did every single time. I wonder more now if it was just to get me to feel sorry for him.

"I'm sorry about yesterday."

"Stop saying that," I sighed, lacing my fingers together like thread. He was looking at me, and I was trying not to look at him, but it was hard when his eyes were glistening brighter than the moon, and when his shadow looked so nice in front of the bleachers, blending with mine in such an oddly satisfying way. "You're always this, always that, always sorry. You never really mean it."

"I would say that's true, but it isn't," Calum mumbled, collecting himself slowly before kneeling down and moving my hair out of my face with his fingers. I tried to focus on my breathing when he did that, but I didn't want to breathe. I didn't want to do anything unless it had to do with staring at him and forgetting about the rest of the world. He was extraordinary in a non-ordinary universe. I loved him for that, but he didn't, couldn't, love me for that. "I'm always making mistakes which lead to fights, and I'm so tired of fighting with you, Michael. It's toxic."

"You're toxic, Calum."

He looked down, his knees still on the ground, his hands inches away from my face, and his breathing unsteady, and he was speechless – even when he was the one who could never stop talking unless you broke him apart, and I wanted to hold him. But he wasn't warm, only cold, and it started to make sense. When you fall out of love, things aren't warm anymore. "I - I - I know I'm constantly bringing you down and breaking your heart, but I have reasons for doing it. Reasons that I cannot explain to anybody but myself, and I'm sorry. I'm sorry for hurting you and making you feel like I'm not in love with you. You know that I am."