A short writing exercise, that... grew to be not so short. Thought it interesting enough to put up here. Also, prepare yourselves. This story isn't my usual lighthearted fluff. Gotta expand my writing style with different perspectives and emotions, y'know? Anyways, enjoy guys.
"How do you like your grilled cheese?" You said, fixing my tie with sudden concentration. I leaned forward and blew on your nose. You wrinkled it at me, but patted my chest with a short little laugh.
"Grilled cheese for when?" I laughed, well more chuckled.
Your smile changed to the one where one your top row of teeth show, balancing on your bottom lip like a trapeze artist. "For when you come back next Monday. I have one week awake away from my baby." I didn't say anything, I just looked at you.
I did that a lot.
"I've always liked how you looked in a suit." You commented absently, eyes taking extra care to trail down my form. My gut filled with deep warmth, similar to a lava lamp had filled there and stir up my insides.
"Why a grilled cheese?" I didn't say it. I didn't answer your question.
You beamed at that question, and by beamed, I mean you looked so positively happy and electric my stupid mind happened to mumble those exact words. Sometimes I wonder if the universe or fate or god grants me the right words to say. I love to make you beam.
Then you answered, "When I first saw you at Ooo, I was such an idiot. You were talking with Finn and Jake and everyone, looking so interested in the conversation, and even though it was breakfast time and you were in these lazy and probably dirty hoodie and pajama pants, I thought you looked beautiful."
I looked silently on through the entire speal, and your eyes got that far-off-but-still-here look that I associate with looking at earth from space for the first time. "I know that sounds stupid and corny, and it was, but my mind just told me to not sit where I usually do." You smiled and continued on, still fiddling with my tie but I was riveted.
"You turned around and your hair, god, it was a horrid mess and flipped to the side but somehow I found it so fucking attractive, and your eyes seemed so bright and your smile from some joke earlier was still on your lips. All of that coming at me at once, really made me forget what I had planned to say, so I asked the first thing that came to my lips-"
"Which was… how do you like your grilled cheese, I remember now." I lied, because I wasn't really paying attention when we first talked, I was too busy focusing on how your lips moved so precisely and your light freckles to pay much attention. "But why when I get back?"
"It'll be the exact day. Weird huh; my brain just randomly reminded me of it today." You closed your mouth a closed smile and I pulled you closer. We shared a look and sometimes I thought that when we would just look at each other like that, the meaning of the universe would be in that one gaze, just existing and waiting to be found.
Maybe I was just being a sap. I don't know.
After that Marshall came and told us to stop being adorable and you laughed. I laughed, and it was so easy, so natural.
The overhead speaker called for me in the control to get prepared and your eyes got that desperate look they always get, like you want to come with me and escape this crazy world too. I wish you could. I would escape with you anywhere. Then you kissed me, and it was so….
It was beautiful, though it was in a rush. Though it like was thousands of time before.
I've always loved your kisses. They fed the fire brewing in my gut, from every time you looked at me.
But maybe I'm not making much sense, am I?
Sorry about the ramble. Let me shed light on the situation happening currently.
I… I'm going to die.
My gas tank has a hole and as I can estimate, I will die soon. Die. My cord dangles limply in space, torn from a malfunction in the system.
System failure, kinda like in a video game. Pssh, speaking of video games, I wish I had my x-box right now. I could definitely go for some first player shooters or some fantasy sword play. Just something.
Hmm.
Maybe I should be more serious about this, but the full effect hasn't hit me yet. I try saying this out loud, wasting my already precious oxygen.
"I am going to die. My life is over."
My mind seems to be zapped by a jolt of electricity, buzzing and sizzling at the thought. It flurries to make sense of it, whilst I just stare out at the planet I used to call home.
It's so close and so large, almost as if I reached out I could touch it, but I know better than that. It's over a thousand miles away. Maybe, my thoughts hope, I can make it to safety. I turn; the shuttle is too far away now, over a mile.
My brain finally chooses a predominant thought of the situation. I have to think something worthwhile… something for my last moments.
Wh-what do I choose to remember?!
Is it when I was a child, and my daddy held me up to the sky, pointing up and saying, One day you will fly higher than the rest of us baby. I know you will. I can still feel his steady hands around my wiry waist, digging into my hips.
The next is of my third grade math teacher, who failed me on a quiz I know I had right. She made me so mad.
Mad… mad…
The word echoes louder and louder in my thoughts, making me numb.
What's the purpose of being mad? Why couldn't I loved more? Cared more? Hugged more?
I wonder who hates me, who dislikes me because of something I said or did. It suddenly it means everything to me, even the coffee shop guy who wouldn't say Have a good day when I'd leave. Why couldn't I be nicer to him, or maybe spoke up about how much it really bothered me?
Why didn't I take more risks?
Then Ash comes into my head, a mistake in and of itself. I shudder. It's a good thing I stopped taking those kind of risks, but still.
I remember my dad working all the time, tie loose around his damp neck. Mommy always being in the hospital. Her smile when we'd visit was the light in my sky on cloudy days. I still remember now, in full definition.
She was so alive, so vibrant even tucked into those wires and such. So full on life. She told me when I asked one day, I've lived so much life honey, I have nothing else I want to do. I'm complete. It made and still makes no sense. But I guess now I see part of the meaning.
She was always so thoughtful.
I remember doing so well in school, and doing crappy in school. The tests that brought me dread and the ones that made me eager.
It went so fast it seems now.
The memory of my final exam in my senior year of high-school comes back. The ticking of clocks, over and over and over, the tapping of pencils and labored breaths.
I remember finishing it, dropping my pencil in accomplishment and fear. Fear of failing. I ran a hand through my hair, and then looked over my shoulder. Another girl had done the same, far across the room. I could barely make out the side of her face, in the rows upon rows of desks in the building.
That girl was you. You've changed so much.
I remember your gaze meeting mine. I remember you smiling.
Suddenly, currently, I snap out the memory and I regret about why hadn't I come out the closet earlier. You know the saying, being open and honest about my sexuality and stuff. I had told myself up until now it was because I hadn't known until college.
But I had lied.
Looking back now, in this fleeting moment, it's so much clearer. How I felt the air rush from my chest, how I relaxed against the chair. It wasn't obvious, no, how I swiveled back around the next second and looked back to check at my test. The share of glances was only a second or two, not long enough to be substantial.
But.. it was. Whether I knew it or not, I fell in love with you.
Love. Now images, brief movements of you fill my head. Your many laughs flash by so quickly, too quickly, and I desperately grasp onto each one. Grasp unto your smiles, your eyebrows, your lock of hair that was so stubborn and wouldn't stay anywhere else but in-between your eyes, and god your big, expressive eyes.
Y-your..your lips and how they curve over your teeth and how they move and how you move and your body. Your body's arms, legs, and so, so, soft thighs that'd melt when my palms would graze over them and your cute pink toenails, that always, positively must be pink at all times like you'd say and how'd they curl and how your voice would curl through the air even when you whispered and make its way straight into my ear.
Your voice when you're excited, frustrated, purposefully stubborn, and angry, mad, furious- then I stop. I stop remembering for a second. And tears fill my eyes.
Because I'll miss your anger, your frustration, your yells.
Your yells, your cries, your moans and your eyes when you'd moan and how my spine would tingle at the sound of it and your chest, neck, baby ears and stomach that'd dip with every breath you took when I'd… how we… how we laughed during the first time we did it so it wasn't as awkward and laughed again the second time and third time and how we never stopped laughing, even now.
How that's why everyone said we'd stay together, because of laughing. We did, our relationship lasted and I'm sorry, so sorry I was surprised it did because they never do, yet somehow we were the exception. How your eyes glittered when I told you how much I loved you with a ring and showed you by trying to get on one knee, but you wouldn't let me- just because you're that stubborn. How you barely let me wear suit, just barely, and I had to beg you to let me, and even daddy, Finn, Jake, Lady and everyone had to ask beg you until you agreed and how happy you looked, how happy I looked, how happy everyone looked then.
I never was found of weddings, and still aren't, but you changed my mind for that one day. That one day.
Happy... you make me so happy Bonnibel. With how smart you are, I'm sure you already know this, but the fullest extent I'm not sure you can grasp. Grasp how much I love you.
Nothing I can do seems romantic enough, express enough, words can't express enough, nothing can express to the fullest extent of how much I love you. Everyone uses I love you so much that the words don't seem unique, reliable enough. They're not adequate for you, Bonnibel. Nothing is.
Nothing.
Here and now, the distance from me to you probably isn't enough of an example. Here and now, on the verge of death, I'm stressing over if you understand how much I love you.
Love, not loved. I haven't ever stopped loving you. I never will stop loving you.
So it's this love, this unbearable yet so addictive feeling that's become a part of me, that apologizes for this.
I'm sorry. I'm so, so, so very sorry Bonnie. I know you love me so much, so much, but I bet I can't grasp how much you truly love me too.
So I'm sorry, for everything.
Do you realize how confusing it is, to wish I could hold you so tight against me, all over me right now, yet have that exact thought being my worst nightmare? How my dream, could be hated by myself? If you were here, you would die.
And I hate thought that more than anything.
So I'm glad I'm here alone in a way; call me selfish. It's my last attempt to keep you safe.
I'm sorry I can't protect you anymore.
As my memories fade, a headache throbs at my temples and in my lungs. How everything I've learned grows from a novel, to a poem.
Shorter, short.
I'm sorry to everyone. I'm sorry for being sorry.
So as my sticky eyes flicker to the valve that tells me it's over with a arrow on red, I don't feel anything.
Nothing.
I stare at the moon, other stars around me. The earth, and why I chose to be an astronaut, to explore, to fly.
And I stare at you in my mind, you curled up against my chest, breath so light and fluffy it's barely there. I chant your name in a last desperate attempt. I want to remember you. I need to remember you.
Bonnibel.
And it slowly stops. My death is not quick.
Bonnibel.
I know my lungs will shudder before they do. Know my mind will blur with a haze, not of a particular color. It's too hard to say your, beautiful, beautiful, full name.
Bonnie.
Bonnie.
Know how everything will feel like my whole being is being erased, like someone rubbing out my memories and thoughts as if it were a mistake. It gets too hard to say even Bonnie, so I go simple and say You. I'm desperate now, clinging to whatever bits and pieces that are left.
You.
You.
I know how my body will curl into a ball, as of my own will and my hands shake up to my helmet, bile rising in my throat. My heart beats slow until its almost inhumane that I can register a thump.
You?
Call it anti-climatic, but when I slowly fade away, the
last thing
I think
is,
How do I like my grilled cheese?
