It felt like getting your heart ripped out. The funny thing is you knew what that felt like. Will did it once as a joke. It was put back before anything could happen, but the emptiness that had quickly overcome you was something you had never wanted to feel again, and you didn't think you'd have to. Not willingly anyways.
Laura had been the sun in your very dark sky. You were the stars and the moon, something that was only bright when it was truly dark, but only on the best of nights when there wasn't any other lights around to block you out. Laura had been the opposite, the pro to your con, the plus to your minus, the smile to your frown.
You knew she loved you. You had to be an idiot not to. The intensity you felt towards her was reciprocated. It just wasn't feasible. Not right now at least.
She was lying on the floor above you. You could hear her heart. Could almost picture exactly how she was laying above you on the floorboards, a trap door the only thing separating you. You could almost imagine that if you were to place your hand against your ceiling, her hand would mirror yours on her ground. You figured that if this were the closest you could be to her right now, you would take it.
Images of her lying beside you in a bed soothed your aching back, the memory of her hands ghosting over your sides as you allowed her to hold you at night calmed you. The press of her lips against your temple right before she would drift off to sleep was your favorite part of each night you got to spend with her.
After the break up where the bed was no longer for you both, and Laura resided to the awkward and dusty cushions of a couch much older than her, you had cherished every single one of those memories. You loathed the lingering taste of her on your tongue. You feared the look in her eye every time you closed your own. You woke in the middle of each night with her name trapped in your throat with no air to produce it. Your tongue was dry without her to quench it. Your fingers were rough and your palms calloused without her smooth skin to caress. Your sharp angles were no longer reduced to soft curves. Your thoughts became your enemies once more. A feeling you knew all too well.
You had actually believed that Laura would never willingly have another civil conversation with you again. You had honest to whatever god thought that she would no longer look at you any other way than as the pathetic external vermin you had believed yourself to be. But she didn't.
She spoke to you with words that you had wished a thousand times over could sew you back together, and did, instead of weave a noose for you to shove your head into, which they didn't. Words that strung together made your stomach uneasy but not completely upended. She had made you believe again. Made you believe in floorboards, because maybe you weren't ready to be together right now, but your feelings for one another could be the foundation to what could arguably be the best relationship you would ever be a part of.
You hoped that you weren't imagining the faint warmth against your hand when you pushed against your ceiling. You hoped that Laura had found solace in her ground, and what was just beneath it.