Author's Note: Written from personal experience, I decide to sympathize with Sara for once. Usually she just makes me want to punch a wall, or something, but this time I wanted to communicate what I know she's feeling. Plus, we all know Cath and Gris are made for each other anyway, right?
From a Broken Heart's Eye view
I've watched them for a while, you know.
It's not like I'm obsessive, or anything, but sometimes I can't help it. They're like a drug, an addiction—you can't stay away. I've never been able to rid my system of Him. I'll never be able to control my jealousy towards Her. It's just the way it works, you know?
Not that I like the way it works—far from it. Whenever he passes me in the hallway, his light scent of soap floating past my nostrils—he doesn't wear cologne-he says it could tamper with a crime scene—or when we're working, his skilled hands flitting about his kit, I can't help but recognize the tingling sensation in the tips of my fingers or the rapid flip-flopping of my stomach. He does something to me that no other man could. There's something about his short and curly, salt and pepper hair, something about the way his lips pout when he's thinking, even something about the sound of his voice as he reads off our assignments. I can't help it. I'm attracted, like a moth to a flame. And wrongfully head over heels.
I started losing hope the moment I realized there was a reason for my heart thudding so hard against my ribcage whenever he was near. I could sometimes see it in his eyes; the raw emotion I longed for was directed at someone else. I mean, how could I have even hoped, when me heart told me that he belonged to another? But I ignored it. Told myself they were just friends, nothing more. It was easy for me to live this illusion, I hope you realize. I didn't see what I chose not to see. And, in turn, he never said what I didn't want him to say. It was our unspoken agreement.
He broke that agreement one day, though. He'd sounded funny all day, smiling more than usual and more deliciously nervous than I had ever seen him. I'd asked him what was up while we all gathered in the break room. He told me.
"Cath and I are getting married."
Then I got that feeling in my stomach—you know, the one they always write about in books but you never really think you'd feel—the feeling as though your heart has plummeted right into your gut-they usually associate that feeling with great, great disappointment. Funny, I hadn't realized until then, stunned into silence as everyone in the room whooped and hollered, slapping them on the back and pulling them into congratulatory hugs, just what that feeling felt like. Odd, how those bursts of genius come to you, isn't it? Inconvenient as Hell.
You know, even though he'd voiced the thing I had unconsciously been suspecting for so long, I was still shocked. After the emotional roller coaster we'd been on-and he still chose Her.
Fair enough. The annoying little voice in my head that sounds suspiciously like a certain spiky-haired lab rat told me it was meant to be. They'd been through more, they'd known each other longer. They know one another frontward and backwards. They had incredible chemistry. They'd laughed, cried, worked and played—not to mention argued—for nearly twenty years. Still, though…
I guess I dwell because I'll never really give up on him. I watch them flirt, fight and love everyday. The passion that emanates from both of their beings is almost suffocating at times. And to see them dance—now there's a couple made to meld to the music. Often it's impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins, whether it be on the dance floor or in the field. They can read each other's minds. Sometimes I wonder if they're just one human being split into two different bodies.
The sad thing is, he'll always see me as the slightly awkward girl from his seminars, rather than the woman who had dared to love a man whose heart had found its true love so many years before. I suppose I'll be waiting for him for the rest of my life.
Until then, though, I have work to do.