This is Our Story

If Only

I expect her to be awake already when I first open up my eyes, but the sound of her soft breathing is still filling the room and I lay my head back on her shoulder, tightening my hold around her small body.

It is so odd, because I expected her to be wide awake and staring at me the moment I woke up. Seeing her in such a vulnerable state right away seems surreal to me.

But the moment doesn't last and soon, her eyes open and she looks at me with wonder in her eyes.

"Hey Grace." I say, trying to adopt a light tone. The last thing I want is to scare her away.

She doesn't answer right away and I immediately know that, with the look in her eyes, this is no good.

"Logan-" she starts but stops in her track.

Patiently, I wait. Not because that's what I feel like doing, because the only thing I feel like doing right now is to urge her to just spill it. I wait because that has always been the only thing to do with Grace: wait.

"We need to talk." She says, sitting up.

The light going through her window makes her look like some sort of angel. Her chestnut hair, pulling toward the dark blonde, is messy and falls right over her breasts, which are covered by the little amount of fabric that constitutes her bra.

"Okay." I sit up too and pull her toward me, resting my chin against her shoulder.

It's a very strategic move, even though it also feels great. I am simply hoping that putting Grace in a comfortable and close position would make what she says come out in a softer way.

When she sighs and brushes her fingers through my hair, I know that it has the expected effect.

"You've been gone for a while" she murmurs and I laugh.

"You can say that yeah."

When she doesn't laugh back, a knot begins to form in my stomach.

"I'm not sure about my feelings anymore." She blurts out.

It takes me a while to register the information because the words seem foreign at first and do not add up in my mind.

"What do you mean?" I ask her, frowning.

This morning feels even more surreal now that those words are floating in the air, surrounding us, crowding our bubble.

She frowns back at me and I can see the exhaustion in her eyes. I recognize that look. It's the look she gives me when I'm supposed to understand something and am taking too long. It's the look she gives me when I'm clueless and she's tired of explaining but the issue here is that she hasn't even started explaining yet. 

"You don't love me anymore." I say.

I'm hoping that she's going to correct me. That a look of panic's going to appear on her face and that she's quickly gonna correct me about my huge mistake, but she doesn't and I feel like she's crushing my heart with the pressure of her words.

"I'm saying I don't know." She says quietly, looking up at the ceiling as if all the answers she needed resided right above our head. 

We stay there, not moving, with her hand barely against my shoulder and her eyes still glued to the ceiling as I feel like the walls around us are crumbling and crashing against me.