She didn't understand why his lips felt strange upon her own. Why he did not quite fit well enough against her. It seemed like he should, after all they were a pair of the young and beautiful. From faraway they were freckles and sunshine, but close up they were mismatching colors, clashing against a dark sky.
Some days she felt that he would be perfect, if only she had never had someone else, if he had been her only then maybe he would be her all. Not that her other had been perfect, but he had changed her slowly, made her see that the world is beautiful in ways you never realize if you only search for aesthetics. Her now was simply the remains of a rotten peach, the slivers of tough skin that had enough strength to stay above ground, to stay with her for the sticky mouthed kisses.
He was not breathy whispers and she was not beautiful, not when she was with him. At those times she was hurt and aching, she was nothing but tears and the sour burn of vodka on someone else's tongue. It was horrible, but she needed him terribly, needed reassurance that not everybody disappeared with the ocean.
But everybody leaves.
And she never again wanted to acknowledge someone that she thought could take away pieces of her heart, there wasn't very much left for her anymore. She couldn't risk losing the rest. So she stayed herself with nows and wrongs. With anyone who would pretend that they were going to stay. Suspension of disbelief is her art and she can't say that she's happy with it, but she is better than broken.
She found him strumming at six strings in a smoke filled room off the coast. A welcoming smile and wandering hands that were more than happy to play her as well as his quickly abandoned instrument. She never complained, said very little, it was comfort in a form that she was well acquainted with and the familiarity of the situation reminded her of times before her other, times when she never stopped to think that she was hurting.
Every moment with the other was fear-filled. It was new and unchartered, their relationship a map-less wonder for her to explore. And while at the time she had only slight hesitation at that, now it all seemed so ridiculous. That she would change herself for the restless. Her now is not new.
Sometimes when his fingers match her skin she cries. When they are close enough to see the imperfections and the reasons with no remedies of why they should be apart. They are like leaves from different trees, all swept away together for a suicidal romance in the last minutes of their youth. They crumble into each other and forget their others for a day. But it is only a day.
Her trouble will not always be so easily controlled, she knows. One day when she is older her other will come back with sea shells and stories of places that she will never be. Sand ingrained into his skin like tiny trophies. And she hopes that he won something where he went, because he lost her.
He will apologize and she will pretend that she never loved him. She's good at that. Fingering the gifts he will give her she will pretend, she will try and she will fail, but in company she is the perfect pretender. The only person she will crumble before is her now, he will watch her temple fall to her feet and he will not really care. They will fade away like the freckles and the sunshine that they never were, he will leave and she will keep on crumbling as her other dies away.
They are not interlocking pieces of each other anymore, pieces wear away.