Words Have Two Meanings

XVI

Time goes on and nothing gets easier. Lydia still hates every enjoyable moment of her life, colors seem duller, and music just stops. Mila isn't her soulmate, and the world still turns, but life doesn't go on.

Without Mila, Lydia ceases to be.

They still get together and spend all their waking moments together, but Lydia doesn't find the joy in it she should. She wants Mila so bad it hurts. Every day is a glimpse at a life in which they're together, and every day it gets harder to breathe.

They're all together watching movies in Lydia and Pash's tiny flat. Pash suggested going to a bigger place, but Mila wouldn't have it. She insisted that it was reminiscent of her younger days, and the small space just meant they got to be closer together.

Lydia was so goddamn endeared.

She's decided to keep her distance from everyone tonight. She mostly was trying to keep from Mila, but she didn't want it to be obvious, and decided to just isolate herself instead. She's sitting alone in a chair separate from the group. Mila's lying on the couch, her feet in Pash's lap, and Danny's in front of them, leaning against the couch.

It feels like a metaphor of where Lydia is in life. So close to Mila, but so... fucking... far.

Sometime after they've put the third movie of the night in, Mila's taken to asking Danny to hand her things from the coffee table: her phone, some popcorn, her cup.

It's when Danny hands her the last one, her open drink, filled to the brim, that Danny's hand slips and the beverage completely drenches Mila's henley.

"Woah - "

"Shit, Mila." Danny scurries up from his seat and grabs for a few tissues to hand to Mila. His hands are moving frantically, and Lydia would laugh if Danny didn't look so genuinely frustrated with himself. "I'm so sorry, Em."

"It's okay, I just - " Mila scoffs, lifting the tacky fabric off her stomach. She looks towards the chair in the corner, eyes pinched tight. "Lydia, love, do you have a shirt I can borrow?"

Lydia nods. "Of course."

She blindly gets up, not even checking to see if Mila follows her, and rushes into her room. The domestic part of her is stressing internally about cleaning that shirt. It's light grey, for goodness sake - it'll stain!

"Just, put the shirt in the laundry basket," Lydia orders, waving her hand in the direction of her half-filled basket, "and I'll put it in the wash so you can have it before you go back home."

"Sure."

Lydia goes to her closet and pulls out a shirt, carefully avoiding anything to do with music, and turns around to toss it at Mila.

Something stops her.

Mila's rid herself of the wet fabric, and she's using the the dry sections of her shirt to clean up the parts of her skin where the drink flooded through. Her upper body is covered in tattoos, something Lydia never knew. Mila's body is beautiful, sculpted by every Goddess in the universe, Lydia would assume, and though the sight is breathtaking, that's not what grabs her attention.

There's a small tattoo.

In a delicate, cursive scrawl on Mila's left rib, reads Stairway to Heaven, and Lydia's heart stops.

"Mila..."

"Yeah?"

Mila doesn't look at Lydia, though it's not like Lydia would notice if she did. All she can feel is the way her soul seems to float out of her body. The world stills around her, everything stops. There's no sign of life, not a single heartbeat other than her own.