Fix You ~Completed~

Act Fifty-Six

That smile makes me stupid. STOP.

What smile? :)

You know freaking well what smile!!!

I tried hard not to crinkle any of the post-it notes. Kyla had kept them all in such perfect condition; they deserved the utmost respect from me, their beloved reader.

CLEM- wanna go see the new Star Wars with meeeee?

Who else would I see it with? :)

UMM your mom?

Okay is that a joke or are you literally suggesting I could spend time with my mom? Cause if it's the latter, we both know that's a LIE.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

We were so normal. Everything about us was just normal. Even when Kyla started getting bad, if you looked at these notes, we seemed like two textbook teenagers. We talked about seeing movies, made jokes, flirted a little.

Where exactly did we lose that?

Quiet Guy, my favorite food is angel food cake. Yours is?

Moody Guy, French Fries make me happy.

Quiet Guy, You French?

Moody Guy, As Irish as they come.

I giggled a little at that one. Kyla used to tease me about being French all the time, even though I assured him there was not a drop of French in me. Anyways, that joke kind of fell flat because French Fries actually came from Belgium. Go figure.

I flipped though a few more notes, my head becoming blurry.

With a grunt, I crumpled the notes up. They were lies. They were all just vicious lies that Kyla used to hurt me. All he ever wanted to do was hurt me, but he loved me and he hated doing it and he-

No, no, no. He didn't love me. He loved my ache. He loved the pain he caused me, but Kyla did not love me.

Wait, no, he did tell me. He told me over and over again and I blocked it all out like the idiot I was. No matter how many times he made me cry and made my body black and blue, I just couldn't face facts.

Jesus, what was wrong with me?

I had a death wish, I supposed. I wanted Kyla to carve me out and leave me vulnerable and numb. As long as he pretended he cared, I'd take anything happily. I was happy in such a fucking twisted way and it was all because of a mountain of lies Kyla just kept adding to.

I leafed through the notes, finding the one that I needed. The biggest lie of them all.

I know how you feel. How I feel about you is destructive and I swear it will ruin me. Fuck consequences. I want you.

How could it all be a lie? There had to be some honesty there. Kyla wasn't completely transparent. Somewhere, he slipped. Maybe that note was his slip; it was the truth he was too scared to admit. Deep down inside him, he wanted me and he knew it would destroy him.

Why else would Kyla risk so much by pretending to be in love with me? There had to be something inside of him. Some part of him wanted me.

It didn't make sense for him to really be completely straight and have something with me. I knew I wasn't gorgeous, I wasn't anything special. There was nothing about me that drew people in. If Kyla didn't feel something for me, why would he accept my affections?

I held up the sweet notes again, rereading them as many times as I needed to.

Kyla kept them. He wanted them. Maybe he did what I was doing. Maybe he sat down and read through them, chuckling over past jokes and turning red at our cute innuendos. It was fathomable, right? Kyla could have wanted to relieve our happy days, same as me.

While I was carefully fitting the notes back inside the lunch box, Eddie walked in, already in the process of yanking off his work shirt. The fabric was already pulled over his head before he seemed to realize there was another person in the room with him. "Oh, jeez! Clem, hey," he gasped, holding the shirt up to hide his chest with a blush. The two of us were very modest when it came to semi-sharing a room. Never were we undressed in front of each other. That was crossing a line neither of us were ready for.

I blinked, equally surprised, and looked away. "Sorry! I-I'm not staring. Go ahead and get your comfy clothes on," I insisted, wishing I wasn't such a nuisance.

Pretending to be incredibly interested in my lunch box, I listened to the rustle of Eddie yanking open a drawer in his dresser and quickly picking out a random pair of jeans to go along with the t-shirt he was for sure pulling on. At that point, I'd been living with the guys for nearly two weeks and I knew Eddie's after-work schedule pretty well. As soon as he was off work, he bolted home to get out of his awkward fitting blue polo shirt and slacks and would proceed to jump into one of his tens of Woodstock tees and jeans before hovering over me and making sure Gale didn't slack off on his homework.

In other words, Eddie was a complete Mom Friend and I adored him for it.

"You can look now, Clem," Eddie chuckled, appearing next to me on my cot. I'd moved it into his room three days ago and hadn't bothered moving since. "Whatcha looking at?"

"Just some stupid stuff," I lied, keeping my fingers poised over the lunch box in case he got the idea to get handy with it. "How was work?"

"Work," he responded robotically, sighing dramatically. I giggled, playfully poking him with my foot. "Karaoke Night is tomorrow. Do you wanna go? You haven't been getting out much lately and Gale and I think it'd be good to bring you back into the world."

In all honesty, I didn't feel ready to rejoin the world yet, but spending the night with my friends enjoying a mundane Karaoke Night sounded great.

"Alright," I agreed, giving him the tiniest smile. Gale, sadly, already plans with Dame right after school, Ed said, but could meet us at the café. They'd been getting pretty serious as of late and he'd been dedicating a good portion of his time to her. It was sweet.

"Okay, I think I'm literally about to pass out I'm so exhausted. Can I just nap next to you while you continue doing whatever it was you won't tell me about?" Eddie mumbled, sprawling out beside me. The lunch box was right at eye-level for him and I felt my face getting hot. I could tell him about it, but I didn't want him to realize I kept something like that. The notes meant too much to me and I was scared how he'd react. Keeping the hoodie and pocketing the ring was one thing, but these notes belonged on a whole other level. "Clem? You okay?"

"What? Oh, yeah! I-I don't care if you nap here. I mean, it's your room, so technically it's your domain, so..." I would have face palmed if Eddie didn't take my bad hand in his. My arm still had another week until it could be out of the cast, but it wasn't hurting too horribly. It didn't bug me for him to hold that hand. "Sorry. I'm tired too."

"Lay with me. It's still early enough to take a nap."

"It's six in the evening," I pointed out, still clutching the metal box with my free hand.

Eddie's eyes landed on it. "Did you get that from your apartment?"

I sucked on my lip, nodding. "Um, remember those post-it notes I told you about? Like, the ones Kyla and I used to talk with?" He nodded, making me smile a little. No matter what, Eddie always listened to me when I talked. "For whatever reason, Kyla kept them all."

"He kept all of them?"

"Yep." I giggled, popping the lid open. "There's gotta be at least a hundred in here. Crazy, huh?"

"Crazy how he was such a frigging weird person," Eddie muttered, leaning in to catch a glimpse inside.

"A few of them were gross," I sighed, slamming the box shut. I stared down at my lap. There had been times in which Kyla slid me notes with sexual comments scribbled on them. More often than not, he did it just to fluster me. They weren't meant to be enticing. "Those are now in the garbage can, where they belong."

"That's where Kyla belongs as well," Eddie commented, leaning up to kiss my cheek. I rolled my eyes, but didn't disagree with him. Unlike all the crap Kyla said, that was a complete truth.