because i wanted you to know

07

I don't know how, but we managed to convince you to hangout with us a little while longer.

You came inside. It had to be 12:30 by then. No one was home.

I sat on my kitchen floor and talked to you and you laughed and teased me because I was so beyond drunk and everything was spinning.

We had some more drinks and I kept saying, over and over, "Oh please let's take pictures! Please, I don't want to forget!" And you told us everything on your mind.

I turned on music doing cartwheels to songs I didn't know the words to as you watched in awe. You showed us pictures and roamed around my house, telling me about your family.

Even drunk, I took so much interest in the way you said things, the way your face lit up when you got excited, or when you were trying to be funny and you were waiting for our laugh. I always laughed.

I was practically on top of you, singing one direction so loud I might as well have been screaming. You talked some more and I listened. I ran my hands through your hair, I lied my head on your shoulder. I told you that I used to be in love with you.

I guess, under the circumstances, this was okay. It was excusable. I know you joked about everyone feeling that way at some point.

I told you I might fall in love again if you kept looking at me that way.

I begged you to dance and over and over you said no, laughing so hard at my desperate attempts and pretending to be asleep just so I'd give it up. It was so funny to me, the way we were comfortable with each other as if we'd been together for a real long time. And I know it was late and I was very drunk and I felt that I had nothing to lose anymore, but still, the way my hands felt when intertwined in yours as I dragged you to the middle of the living room, was natural. Like maybe my fingers were always supposed to be wrapped around yours.

I twirled around you and into you multiple times as old music blared in the background. I wore your jacket and hugged you so tight I could barely breathe.

I knew then it would take me a lifetime to get over this feeling, to get over how hot and bothered and in love I felt when you called out my name when you needed me, from how easily I cuddled into you and how safe you made me feel when you were around, from this- from spinning in circles with you, metaphorically and literally, on the hardwood floor of my living room, and I savored every millisecond because I knew it would kill me when you had to go.

I started off the year falling in love with the same person I'd been trying so desperately to get over.

I'd give you everything.

When you left not long after 2am, you reminded me to lock the door behind you. You said it so seriously and so sternly I almost fell over I was so overwhelmed with love.

"Now you make sure you lock this door behind me, okay?". It was like saying "Please be safe. Please don't let anything happen when I'm not around to protect you." Lock this door behind me. I care about you, so please, be safe.

Going to sleep without you that night was one of the hardest things I had ever done. Waking up without you the next morning was the second hardest. I missed your presence as soon as I had shut that damn front door.

I've barely heard from you since that night we spent dancing and laughing and secret-telling. It's like we don't even know each other at all.

You had said to me all those weeks ago, "I wish I could stay."

Those words still play in my head like a broken record. I keep thinking, if you had truly wished you could stay, you would've at least come back.