Without You

'Spoken Like A True Poet'

The night was a hot and sticky one. Heat beated down on the couple as they tried to sleep. Jules had the duvet draped over her legs, leaving her top half exposed. Brent laid on his back, without the duvet covering his body at all. He was dressed in light blue pyjama bottoms and a plain white t-shirt. Just before going to bed, Jules had questioned how he could ever sleep in such heat like that. And Brent had just shrugged, "I feel the cold." This comment had made Jules giggle. Brent wasn't trying to be funny but he liked it when he made Jules laugh, it always made his heart burst with joy to see her happy.

Brent's body was stiff as his mind drifted into deep thought. He starred up at the ceiling, focusing on the space above him, lit by the small lamp that had remained on, in the corner of the room. Although a summer night, the room was already getting swallowed up by the darkness causing the small lamps light to become weaker and weaker. Jules body was beginning to feel weightless. She could no longer feel the mattress beneath her but instead, her subconscious created the illusion that she was floating. The noise of the traffic whizzing past leaking through the open window, steadily grew quieter, as if she was slowly walking backwards from it.

"Would you leave me if you found your dream guy?"

Brent's voice dragged Jules back into reality. She jumped as she suddenly felt the mattress below her and heard the loud traffic outside. Brent would've felt bad for waking her up except he was so worried for Jules's answer that he didn't even notice the bed shake slightly and a small gasp escape Jules's lips. It took her a while to answer, she almost had to ask Brent to repeat the question because her brain was just not responding. Finally, she processed his words and rolled over so she was laying on her stomach, not her side. "You are my dream guy." she yawned, sleepily. Brent sighed silently, not wanting to upset Jules. But she obviously wasn't taking the question as seriously as he was. "No, I mean, if you found a guy who was better than me. A guy too good you haven't even dreamed of him yet?" Brent asked. He suddenly found his position quite uncomfortable and sat up, resting his back against the wooden head board. He fumbled around on his bedside table, studying the dark silhouettes of the multiple objects perched on it. After seconds of some struggle, his hands landed on his glasses and he put them on. "Impossible. No one's better than you." Jules smiled, gazing up at him as she rolled over again, this time so she was on her back. Brent sighed, this time it was audible to Jules. It was a heavy sigh. "You don't know that for certain." he argued but in a soft tone- Jules thought he sounded sad and defeated. If it was anyone else, Jules would've asked if they could've just spoken about it in the morning but Brent wasn't just anyone else. And she knew what he was like. She sat up, moving closer to Brent on her knees across the mattress and held his face with her hands. "We've been through this before, you're the only man for me. Okay? What's making you like this?" Jules asked him, whispering through the growing darkness.

Brent didn't reply, he just looked into Jules's eyes and gave her a weak smile. "I'm sorry I'm like this." he sighed, finally responding to her question after some moments had crawled by. Jules face twisted into a slightly irritated expression as she raised a brow and chewed her lip. "You saw Henry today, didn't you?" she asked, but it was more of a rhetorical question for she already knew the answer.

She had tried to get along with Henry, she really had tried. But he was just impossible. And no matter how hard she thought, she could never wrap her head around him being Brent's best friend. They were just completely different people. Brent was kind, gentle and caring. Henry was rude, stuck up and difficult. The first couple of times they had met up, Henry was polite but Jules assumed that was because no one, least of all, Henry, had expected Jules and Brent to last longer than two weeks. Jules was used to the 'he's too old for you' comments and the 'she's just a gold digger' comments but coming from Henry, it was just a thousand times worse. Because Henry was sneaky. He had made it very clear that he did not agree with their relationship and when trying to pay Jules to leave didn't work, he turned to manipulating his best friend.