How to love

twenty-six: Friend

Frankie's point of view:

Why did we fall in love with fictional characters? Was it because they helped us escape our reality? Was it because they lived a life we craved? Was it because they had everything that we wanted?

Possibly.

Romantic novels were my guilty pleasure, I read them until my eyes stung and my chest hurt. I read them until the sun was coming up or I was falling asleep with the book in my lap. They helped me feel things that I hadn't felt in real life. They made me get that boil of excitement in my stomach. They made me get that sharp pain in my chest. They made me get those tingles from head to toe.

They made me fall in love.

But these feelings where something I had only experienced by reading, or watching films. Even with Matthew, those feelings - even though they still hurt like hell - weren't real. Not like the ones I had felt for Noah and Allie from The Notebook, or Landon and Jamie from A Walk To Remember. I craved it, God did I crave it. I wanted the love, the passion and the tenderness.

But now, here I was sitting in the battered old arm chair with a half-finished novel in hand, trying so desperately to reconnect with the characters and the feelings I had gathered for them. But I felt nothing. The fuzziness, gone; the excitement, faded; the love, disappeared. I had felt nothing towards these fictional characters now when only a few weeks ago I was staying up past midnight just to read another page.

The house was quiet as I slam the book shut with a frustrated sigh, the bizarre feelings churning at my insides. It was before seven, and my lack of sleep was causing my temples to throb and my back to ache. Tossing and turning majority of the night, I counted the early hours that seemed to crawl by until I could no longer take it.

Reaching for the cold coffee cup, I gather myself and trudge tiredly to the kitchen to dump the dark liquid down the sink, washing it away and hoping my troubled thoughts would go down the drain with it. They didn't. Sighing, I hug my knitted cardigan around my pyjama cladded body and lower myself to the breakfast stool with the same daunting thoughts repeating like a broken record.

The kiss.

Even the thought of it made my insides jiggle like jelly. My lungs restricted my breathing, but in a good way. The restriction that made me giddy, made my toes curl and head spin. I couldn't forget it; I didn't want to forget it. But now, I was more confused than ever.

Our kiss, it lasted no more than a few measly seconds and the emptiness I felt when the luscious pink pillows left mine was something I never expected to feel. I wanted to grab him by the collar, shoving my body into his and claiming another kiss - I didn't. He brushed my hair back, ran the tip of his index finger past the corner of my eye and across my lower lip, and smiled.

Then it was over.

We didn't speak another word, instead we returned to the festivities inside and it was like the intimate moment outside, didn't happen. We sat next to each other, knees and elbows touching, sharing awkward and timid glances to one another before stalking back to our rooms late that night without a bid of goodnight. Now I sat here wondering how today would be - we had two more days with my family before returning back to the city and back to normality.

Well, sharing a house with my boss who kissed me on the porch of my childhood home, normality.

"I thought I heard someone up." Paul's exhausted yawn greets me. He drags his sleepy self to the fridge, grabbing a bottle of chilled water and nudging the door shut with his hip. "You're early."

"Couldn't sleep." I reply.

"Nothing to do with the awkwardness between you and Jason last night, is it?" He says with a slight smirk hiding behind the rim of the bottle. "Don't ask how I know; everyone knows. The tension between you two could have been cut with a knife. So, what happened?"