You're Not Even Mine to Miss [Fall Out Boy - Wattys 2014]

➽ Track Thirty-three (London's POV).

Track Thirty-three (London’s POV): People like people, and sometimes it doesn’t work out.

(July 2nd, 2008)

Patrick was not looking at me, but I couldn’t help staring at him after I had placed a hand on his shoulder. His eyes were fixated on the wall behind me, as if he was trying to make a hole in it with the intensity of his stare alone. It was as if he was scared to break me just by looking – or even glancing – at me. “It’s not easy to avoid you, Donnie. Trust me,” he muttered quietly. I could hear from his voice that he was telling the truth, and like me, Patrick Stump had never been a good liar, but his answer wasn’t good enough for me.

“Then why were you doing it if it wasn’t easy?” I asked him, silently wishing for Patrick to look at me again.

He was evidently hesitating – with his stare elsewhere and him wringing his fingers so hard that they were getting red already – because he probably didn’t want me to know exactly why he was trying to avoid me. Maybe he had a deeper reason aside from the obvious fact that he wanted to save our shared friendship with Pete and out of respect to my boyfriend, but I badly wanted to know what his reason was. Patrick was hiding something from me, and I hated not knowing what it was about.

“Y-You don’t know how difficult it was every single day,” Patrick began, and there was a catch in his throat when he had said that, and it made my heart ache. “You don’t know how hard it is seeing you happily in love with Pete, how your eyes light up whenever he’s around, how you smile at him. It’s so… painful, because I wasn’t the reason of your smile and your laugh. And I wanted to be, at least once.”

“But, P,” I licked my lower lip, trying to fight my tears back as I took my hand away from his shoulder. I knew that he was so close to tears, and I also was, but I didn’t want to cry in front of him. “Come on, give yourself some credit. You also make me happy all the time—”

“Not the same way as Pete can, Donnie. You know that very well.” He was looking straight at me, his eyebrows furrowed together as he blinked back the tears that were trying to escape from his eyes. “Honestly, I’m willing to trade anything just to be Pete Wentz for at least one whole day, so that I can try living his life, to be in his position right now, and to be the main source of your happiness.”

To be honest, I was starting to think that Patrick was crazy. He might be my best friend, yes, but I just couldn’t deny the fact that he was starting to get insane, and falling in love with your best friend wasn’t supposed to be the cause of his mild (or probably severe) insanity. If I were him, I would have given up on me as soon as Pete had entered my life. But because he didn’t want to give up on the girl who didn’t love him back just yet, he had been carrying the heavy burden for more than a decade already.

“I know what you’re going through right now—”

“No, you don’t know how it fucking feels!” Patrick countered angrily, his voice louder than usual, and with his bloodshot and teary eyes glaring at me. I could hear the desperation in his every word he was saying. “You don’t know how hard it is to wake up every day and knowing that your best friend will never have the same feelings for you because she is head over heels for your other best friend.”

He probably didn’t mean it – maybe it was the sudden build-up of anger and frustration that had caused that – because he had quickly muttered a sincere apology to me. That wasn’t the first time that Patrick had shouted at me, but it was definitely the first time that he had said ‘sorry’ after doing so.

With a softer voice, he said, “I think I just learned something from you. Now I know that it’s difficult to fall in love with someone you couldn’t be with because of certain circumstances.”