Stained

Chapter 120

Crying, I shake my head yes. "We're a mess waiting to happen, Damien."

He wordlessly nods his head yes before looking away.

Deafening, painful silence falls over us as the wall I hadn't noticed I finally managed to break and climb over slowly builds back between us. I watch it happen. Brick by painful brick. Destroying all the progress I made — we made.

I can't take it anymore when it reaches the middle of Damien's chest. "We should..." I trail off, pointing a finger behind me, unable to tare my eyes off the wall no matter how desperately I want to. It's as if my body is forcing me to feel the pain of my mistake in order for me to not make it again.

But I have learnt my lesson. I have endured so much pain in these past couple of minutes it is enough to last me a lifetime. Because of this, I will go back to adamantly following my rules, ensuring it doesn't happen again.

'If we had a penny for the amount of times we've heard that we would be rich.'

Damien steps closer to me and the wall disappears but I'm not naive enough to believe it's gone, I can still feel it moving with him. It stays between us, a barrier.

I involuntarily flinch when he leans down, afraid he's going to bang his head on the invisible wall on his way to kiss me. And then I flinch even harder, afraid he's going to kiss me.

He frowns. Guilt overcomes me and I give him what I hope is a reassuring smile but it feels as forced as it is.

He brings both hands to my cheeks and wipes my tears away.

My eyes flutter shut. And just as I'm about to tell myself that this is the last time I will ever feel this so I should just revel in his touch, I realise I've told myself this countless times before yet it never has been the last time.

He's like a stain I can't get rid of — a tie-dye I find very beautiful and want to keep in my life forever.

'But can't," the voices remind me.

Right yes.

"I knew this would happen," he murmurs more to himself than me, tenderly rubbing away the tears under my eyes. 

I open my eyes. "Knew what would happen?" That we'd fight? I almost laugh out loud but his expression doesn't allow me to do so.

"That we'd have something close to beautiful before falling back into pretending we don't know each other."

The tears that were gradually dissipating return at full force as shards of glass pierce my chest. We were living a fairytale. I had a few moments to pretend I wasn't broken and that I was good enough, and he had a few moments to pretend so too.

But all fairytales come to an end and this is our — my reality. Nothing is plain and simple, there's never only one path to take, there are multiple jumbled together, with borders and trials constructing our way. Movies and books made it look so simple; girl likes guy, guy likes girl and boom they're together. Things are so much more complicated and difficult in real life. I have demons I'm constantly fighting, questioning every little thing in my life and I can see in the depths of those vivid blue-greens that he is also suffering an internal battle.

Our past has created a massive wall between us and there's no way of breaking it. We are utterly hopeless.

"I just didn't think I'd be the one to fuck it up," regret fills every syllable, pulling at my heartstrings.