happy endings are for fairy tales // kiani au

SEVENTEEN: WILL

7 july 2017

by the time i'm awake, the sky has paled down to a sleepy grey. there's blood in my mouth, blood seeping through the cracks of the ground. i don't have to see it to know. the tangy metallic taste on my tongue already gives me answer.

what would happen if i had died right then?

ryan, brayden and julio would get in trouble– that's for sure. but jordan? what would happen to him? would he even mourn? even cry? seeing how wrenched his emotions were, yet how easily he let them overcome him, i didn't even find it easy to tell black apart from white. did he care? or had he not even spared a thought? i guess i never would really know.

my jeans are stained with red, i realise shortly after standing. my white shirt has a trail of sickening red going down my neck to my chest. i try to ignore the pain as i pick up my fallen books and dust off the dirty pages. there's sharp pain on the right side of my brain, a sticky and persistent pain on my leg. but i get up and carefully step over the broken shards of glass, making my way home.

i run into nobody, and it's like everything is normal. it's like my heart isn't breaking, and i'm not trying my absolute best to stop myself from buckling down to my knees, throwing my books onto the road, burying my shameful face into my dirty hands, screaming, crying.

—

bandage after bandage. cream after cream. but the pain remains. it must be the emotional pain, interlinking with the physical and stabbing my body with everlasting agony. it must be the tears, seeping into the wounds and worsening the brewing torment inside me.

whether or not jordan cared, whether or not jasmine wanted to help me. i flip through the events, analyse the small details i remember. one thing's for sure, and that's that i'm way past the line of return: wanting jordan only as a friend.

it has crept up on me, this attachment. i have always thought that when i fall in love, i would know the instant my heart starts banging hard on the prison of my ribcage, or my feet have an extra skip when they're nearby.

man, i sure wish it had been like this.

what had i gotten instead? i didn't even notice a single sign. i ignored the slight excitement when he called my name. i didn't see him glow when he walked in the room, nor did my eyes seem to stick to him.

yet i know now: the exact moment i have lost him.

because you see, love for me isn't happy. it isn't blooming flowers, chirping birds and sun dresses. it isn't rising suns, giggles, flower crowns and smiles. no, love for me was misery. a taboo word. it's fucking dangerous– i found this out when i was dating bianca. why? love is something that enters your life uninvited, stays under the radar until the day it makes a grand exit. and on that very day, you beg on your knees for it not to leave. and you cry when it never returns. you cry because before you could find out and appreciate its presence, you have already felt what its like to suffer in its absence. now, you're too late, and its taken your soul away with it, leaving you empty.

i mean, when the sun sets is when everything starts to fall into place. at the worst times, without the safety from the world, is when the reality dawns.

i've just finished my first box of tissues to stop the bleeding in my leg. the bleeding on my mouth is from my lips, i find out– a glass shard creating a cut.

he had hit me with a beer bottle. brayden smashed the right side of my head with all the strength his eyes contained, all that anger. it scares me, just the mere thought of his eyes. had almost frightened me to death when someone with that intensity of hatred had been standing right in front of me. it's a haunting memory, along with that daunting house that smells of death.

the ringing still remains. and i know i should stop thinking, stop straining my brain to work things out. most of all, i know i should expel jordan out of my thoughts.

i know all this because i'm not stupid. but i continue to do it because i'm in love.

i get up and run my bleeding lips underwater. it stings, but less now. it's for the best, i guess. moving on from this shit. trying my best at the very least. how can i move on something that never happened though? how can i explain to others that i'm struggling to move on from a relationship that didn't fucking start?

who was there to even tell?

without jordan, there was never really anyone i felt comfortable with telling. telling them i had fallen in love, or worse, that i was gay. that my sexuality was the reason why i couldn't truly love bianca, why i didn't have a new girlfriend.

i think about the last and only kiss me and jordan had shared. his bedroom. gunshots from csgo playing in the background. thinking about how we both had most definitely been shot. his hands around my neck. lips. smell of weed wafting around and between our open mouths.

did he mean it? the words: it feels so right to be kissing you. was he just hallucinating? mistaking me for one of his sidechicks who he met up with on occasion?

maybe i was just another blurry face he couldn't recognise among the sea of girls who wanted to hook up with him. except that i'm a boy. and i didn't want to hook up with him.

no, i wanted to love him. then, and now.

he didn't want that, huh? then, and now.

drugs messed up his head, i know this. he acted differently when he was stoned, spluttered more bullshit and muddled up thoughts than he ever would while sober. i just happened to be his next victim.

i collect my never ending thoughts and turn off all the lights in my apartment, room by room. under the cover of the dark sky, i climb to the rooftop and lay on the cold hard floor.

and while i'm laying there, everything is perfect. the wind blows against my hair such that it doesn't block my view of the stars, yet it isn't too hot. the crescent moon is visible from where i am, but not too centralized. the stars are shining brightly, but not too blindingly.

and i get the ever so slight urge to join them up there.

what would happen if i do?