Love Song (LGBTQ+) (COMPLETED)

39. Neither

Joanna remained silent after I told her Nathan's feelings, and I suppose I hadn't really been surprised by it either. The moment Grace told me that she was and had been in love with me was almost like trying to teach an elementary school kid how to do calculus. It felt like I had taken forever to process my own thoughts, and even then, I don't think I actually sorted every last one of them out. What made it worse was that I was the one who had to tell her, but what other choice did I have? Let their lifelong friendship fall apart over a comment he hadn't really meant?

Things always had the possibility of breaking, but not like this. I wasn't going to be the cause of breaking what they had into pieces. Maybe my reasoning was selfish, but I wasn't going to allow myself to be the cause.

My existence in the both of their lives might have only served to further separate them. In some sense, I took both of their lives and flipped them upside down. If Nathan hadn't ever met me in the hospital, he never would've had to suffer through everything with me. If he hadn't taken me to that party, she may have never felt the need to do drugs, and even if she had, Nathan would have stopped her.

Nathan hadn't been there to stop her, and the people she had around her definitely weren't going to. He hadn't been there because he was with me, because I had felt the need to drag him everywhere with me while I took advantage and wrung his kindness dry. I was completely dependent on him because I felt that I had no one else, that I had nothing else to cling to when nightmares claimed my every thought.

The moonlight reflected off of her falling tear. "Was that before or after you fucked him?"

"If that's you're way of asking if I had sex with him or not, I really didn't. I tried to few times, but those were just my desperate attempts for affection and he saw right though them, I guess." my eyes went back to the sky, where a jet was visibly flying over. "You probably want to hit me like you hit him, but I don't think you'll ever understand what it's like to be alone or lose the only person who made you feel like you weren't by yourself. He's probably the only reason I'm alive right now."

"And I don't think you'll know what it's like to do everything in your power to make someone notice you, only to have him stolen away by someone else." her head's slight turn revealed a sliver of a glare. "The day I realized I loved him was the day that I realized I never had a chance with him unless I changed. I was fat and ugly, yet he still talked to me even though he was popular, even though I wasn't good enough.

I lost count of how many times I skipped meals and passed out along the way, but I lost all that weight and I looked at what other girls did with their makeup. I knew missing meals wasn't healthy, but I figured that and exercise would have only made it faster. By the time we started high school, plenty of others guys looked at me and asked me out, but they weren't who I wanted. They weren't anything close to him. Nathan just. . .refused to look at me as a woman."

I knew firsthand that being in love made people do things they wouldn't normally do for regular people. Whether that was looking better or talking differently changed for everyone, but nobody was immune to it. Joanna was no different, she forced herself to lose weight for Nathan, she forced herself to look different for Nathan. Even if her reason and the way she went about doing those things were unhealthy, those were small problems to her. She had one focus, and she would've done anything to get the attention of it.

It was something else we had in common. The same way she felt for Nathan was the same way I had felt about Grace. Everything I did and put myself through seemed small when I compared what I was doing to who I was doing them for. I hadn't really cared if it came off as desperate to other people or not, but I would've done anything to see her happy. If that meant killing, then I would have asked how. If that meant leaving with her, I would have asked where. Perhaps Joanna felt the same way about Nathan, or maybe she hadn't, but I knew what she felt had been real. I knew what he felt was always real.