Suffocate

THREE

LOVED

We were popular.

My friends would always tell me how jealous they were of our relationship. They said we were perfect for each other.

One time at a small get together, we both wanted to go home, but didn't know how to escape without coming off rude. We were sat with her on my lap, her legs hanging off the edge of the armrest, our arms draped over each other's shoulders, while some guy I can't remember the name of rambled on about some crazy first date with a girl he'd met through some sketchy dating app he'd gotten.

I pulled his head closer and moved my lips to his ear and whispered as discreetly as I could, "How do we know this guy again?"

I chuckled, keeping my eyes on the guy talking before whispering back, "We don't. And by the looks on everyone else's faces here, they're wondering the same thing."

I stifled a laugh, pressing my face against his and planting a kiss on his cheek. We smiled at each other before being drawn back into the conversation at the sound of our names being spoken. "You guys are seriously the cutest." Someone had said.

We thanked her. Flattered by the amount of agreements that came out from others in the room with us. We knew it. We liked the fact that we worked so well together and we liked how everyone else could see it, too. That just made it more real. We took pride in it, but we were just being ourselves. We weren't trying to put on a front for anyone. Their opinions on us didn't matter.

"I wish I could have a relationship like yours."

"What are you talking about? You and Greg are so good together." I said, playing along with the casual couple talk. It wasn't usually my thing to do so, but we were with friends, and what else could I do? Truth be told, all I wanted to do was go home. Maybe if we could end the conversation at us and hit a pause of silence we could use that as our door to leave.

"Yeah, but you guys are like, movie couple cute. Like, I could cry over a tub of ice cream watching you guys. Greg and I have reached the point where we're just middle-aged married couple cute, which isn't very cute at all."

She laughed at that, and I chuckled along with her, resting my hand on her thigh. I liked her laugh. I liked how she threw her head back a bit and squeezed her eyes shut with her mouth open in a wide grin if you could get her to laugh hard enough. You couldn't help but smile or laugh with her when she did. That was always nice to have around, someone that you can laugh with. It didn't hurt to have something like that in my life. I needed it. I needed her.

They said we were perfect. Goals. Irreplaceable.

When he first met my mom, she instantly fell in love with us, too. And she fell in love with him. She said it made her happy that he made me happy. That was all she could ask for. She said she could tell he loved me. It was in his eyes. "They're always on you." She'd told me. "People that are in love can never take their eyes off the person their in love with because they're the only person they want to see."

She never met my parents. My mom died when I was younger and my dad and I were never really close after he and my mom got divorced. She would've liked my mom, though. My mom probably would've liked her, too. She was hard not to like. Her face looked like one that could do no wrong, and who couldn't like someone with a face like that? No one could, and if they did, it wouldn't matter because that meant they didn't deserve her in their life anyways.

My dad said he looked like he was up to something. Something that wasn't good. He didn't trust him at first, but eventually got used to hearing the name and seeing the face. "There's nothing wrong with the way his face looks, you're just being overprotective." My mom had told him. She didn't want to hear any bad talk about the guy not only I liked, but she did as well. "He looks like a troublemaker. Just be careful, okay?" My dad had replied. I assured him that there was no need to be, but that I would anyways for the sake of his health.

Like I said before, everyone thought we were perfect for each other. I can't think of one person who didn't. One thing that I know for sure is that I'd never been in a relationship like the one I had with her. Even though we were different in various ways, we still somehow worked good together. In our case, opposites did attract.

His hair was blonde. Mine was black. His eyes were a light blue. Mine were dark brown. He liked his coffee dark, while I liked mine with cream and sugar. He preferred watching the movies over the book, while I always read the book before seeing the movie. He showed his affection in the form of wordless kisses and tight squeezes, while I showed mine with phrases that I'd whisper in his ear like music through a pair of headphones. No matter what the difference was, big or small, it only seemed to make us love the other more. It was like a refreshing new thing to have someone who thought or did things differently than you. It gave us both the opportunity to see things from a different perspective, and perhaps try things that we never thought we'd try before. There were things that I'd converted myself to do that he would, him vice versa because we simply liked how the other did them.

Those things surprisingly worked well for us. We would often be shocked by new things the other did. We were constantly bringing something new to the relationship. These differences in us could've drawn us apart, but instead it brought us closer. We worked well together like PB and J, even though we were completely different. The only thing we had in common was our love for each other.

I had a face that could do no wrong and he had a face that was up to no good. How strange that we knew that so clearly, yet we never saw any of it coming. I often wondered when things started going downhill for us. What did I miss? What could I have changed? Is there anything I would do differently? The answer to that last question, is yes. I would. We could've gone to the end of the line. We could've been happy together.

Where did things go so wrong?