Fallen (in, and out of love)

.1

A rush of cold air hit me, an involuntary sigh leaving my lips the same way he had just moments ago.
"Jace?" I whispered, eyes crawling over his pale skin and somewhat defined abs.
"I'm sorry." He grunted, turning away from me and sighing. "I can't."
I reached out to hold him, to pull him close and let him know he wasn't alone.
The light turned off and the door closed behind him.
I don't know why I thought this time would be different. I don't know why the half-assed yes I got when I asked encouraged me— I guess I was just desperate for him to show... Anything... Any sign of the love we once had. I cried quietly, knowing he was waiting just outside the door, eavesdropping for the soft patter of raindrops against the hardwood floor.
He told me once the rain helped him to sleep.
He told me once he loved me.
Two years ago he had been diagnosed with Dysthymia, or chronic depression. He ate less, lost 30 pounds, stopped exercising or going outside; he started to decay, and it was all I could do to watch.
I remember one day he sat down and asked me "How can I love you if I don't love anything?" I sat down next to him, and for the first time since I had met him, I cried, chest rising and falling like the ocean, heart pumping so loud I'm sure he heard it. "Can you pretend to love me?" I asked "Can you love the idea of loving me?"
"No"
A cut.
"but I can stay with you until I do."
A dozen more.
He never cried, I used to watch him when he was at his worst staring longingly into a corner of a room, or into the open fridge while it dinged at him for hours, I didn't have the heart to close it.
"You are my world," I told him one day.
"You are in my way," he responded, pushing me away.
I wish there was a word for the crackling asymmetry of emotion in a room, so intense you think your two hearts might stir up a tornado of love and emptiness, lights bursting and windows shattering to the floor around you so that you have to tiptoe around the broken remnants of your two souls.
They say the opposite of love is hate, but at least hate brings closure.
I wrapped the blankets around my own smaller, but muscular body, and walked up to the door, sitting down in front of it. There I sat, listening to him breathe, imagining how his chest rose and fell.
"I have to go to work tomorrow," I said.
"Uh huh."
"You have to make sure you eat something, I won't be here the whole day," I continued.
"Yeah ok."
"I'm gonna call and make sure, ok?" I asked.
"Please don't."
"Why?"
"You always get mad."
"Because you need to eat!"
"I'm not fucking hungry ok?"
"Please."
"Fine."
"So is it ok if I call?"
"No."
"I'm going to anyway."
"Fuck you," he said, and I heard him pull away from the door and walk down the hall to the old brown couch, listened to the soft squeak of its springs.
I turned the light back on. Jace had turned it off because he knew I hated the dark, knew I hated it because he loved it more than he loved me, knew because I told him.
Somewhere in the other room he laughed. A sad, empty laugh.
"Jace," I called out.
"What."
"I love you."
"I know."
I crawled back into my bed, leaving the sheets on the floor, staring into the light until morning, shivering in the cold, missing, for the thousandth time, the warmth of his body.
Another cut.