Counting Stars • [Casey x Izzie]

It's Okay

Casey

"I look forward to hearing your decision soon..." I shook William Kelvin's hand as if we were making blood pact for me to sign my soul over.

He was giving me a week. A week to decide whether I was going to leave everything I came to know and... love. In a week I could be beginning to pack my life up even though I knew my heart would remain right here in the form of a brown haired girl with a kindness bigger than I could ever be.

But she wasn't talking to me.

It's been days since she made me walk out of her home, no calls, no texts, not a single sign. She hadn't come to school or practice, making the coach go off at all of the girls who needed to step up in her place. I hadn't spent a single second on a thought that didn't somehow come back to her.

When I ate I would envision her sitting alone at her dinner table, barely touching the food on her plate like I had been doing since the last time I saw her smile. Before I went to bed I would feel the cold side that she had put her name on, desperately trying to keep it warm enough before it faded completely. And when I ran for a team that could possibly take me half way across the globe, I thought about how my world was somewhere in her bedroom trying to piece together what she truly wanted out of her and I.

"Casey..." I heard my dad call after shutting the front door. He sat beside me where I stared off into an empty wall on the other side of the room.

Sometimes when look at a blank wall project images onto it. Like I'm watching a movie of my hopes and dreams. They used to be animations of gentle hugs and tender kisses. Nights when I had someone to hold and expensive dates with someone priceless. Now, I couldn't see anything.  Lately I've been trying so hard to see the future I so badly craved, to play out my plans in my head but they all seemed to fade away.

"Case..." My dad said again, making me finally turn my head. "Do you know what you're going to choose?"

I faced the wall again. "I do."

**

I walked out into the parking lot of school and searched for my keys. I cursed when I dropped them onto the cold concrete, but when I bent to pick them up, another pair of hands bet me to them.

Winter had been so cold for the past few days, and one look into the warm color of her eyes made the flowers bloom, giving the butterflies in my stomach a home again.

"Izzie..." I choked out.

"Hi." Her voice was so quiet; so... defeated.

"W-what happened with... how are you?" I corrected.

"I'm okay." She lied.

I took a step forward but she took one back.

I never knew it was possible for my chest to contract so hard but it did. And it hurt. Badly.

"Look, I just..." She started but couldn't finish.  Her eyes were glued to the floor. "I just need to tell you something."

For a while now I had wanted to hear those exact words from Izzie. It was because I was dying to say them too. And in the dreams that I projected onto blank walls, those words were meant to be followed by another three.

However, today the wall just just empty I wasn't able to see those words. And I don't think I would be hearing them either.

She was shaking. I could see her hands tremble inside the long sleeves that she tried to hide them with. I knew she was nervous but it hurt... God, it fucking hurt, to also know that it wasn't the usual type of nervous she would get around me. Deep in my heart I knew what was coming and I had almost been expecting it for the last few days. But I did better than to listen to my own head when my heart wasn't there to mediate the decision.