"BETWEEN THE LINES"
Author: cracksofshine (August, 2013 - _)
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Similarities of my characters to real people, events, places, and such are purely coincidental.
Prompt: Between the Lines – Sara Bareilles
"Leave unsaid, unspoken
Eyes wide shut, unopened
You and me
Always between the lines"
PROLOGUE
After all these years, I still continue to wonder how much of our pseudo-relationship was convinced. I look back on fragments after fragments of memories, all hazy and unfocused, and question myself of their truth. Carefully twisting and turning each interaction, each word we passed on to each other, and then breaking them off in particles of intention, innuendos, and doublespeak—the only form of language that we were so fluent in.
There was a time when I would get lost in our game of charades. We shunned any type of definition, choosing only to tread carefully in the spaces between the lines of what is actually said and what I thought was meant. Years was spent on this tiring game, believing that the absence of a label will make this idea of "us" last; believing that these tragic twists will eventually lead to the happy ever after of our story.
I try to piece all our fragments together—an old theater ticket for Grease in Broadway, a piece of paper you doodled on during one of our more uneventful English classes, a stained birthday card, a small piece of red crayon that I kept for you—in a valiant effort to prove that the "we" that I know is not just some form of delusion I made myself recall.
More often than not, the people who say they'll never change would eventually turn into the person they never thought they would be. I guess that was how it turned out for me. There are just some points in life when you are forced to choose between holding on and moving forward. Holding back would be useless, for in the end you are still faced with an unfinished chapter. When it all came down to it, I was forced to take a step back and choose happiness for the first time in my life.
Truth be told, not everything that has happened makes sense to me. And I don't think they are meant to. But here I am, still looking back in hopes of finding answers to questions that I have long buried at the back of my mind. One smart person I know once told me something about life. That if you trace it like a maze, it's going to lead you through thousands of loops and twists, but in the end you are only going to end up near the point of your departure. I say near because even if you survive the ride, you are never going to be the same again; and because regardless of how far life leads you, you eventually have a way of returning. I came back to this place in my mind where everything leads back to, because I want to see how many steps I have taken since.
The story of us can be summed up in 8 fragments of memory. These fragments are scattered in a span of 8 years. The 8 years of us started in 2005, inside the classroom of an English Literature professor who was then beginning her lecture on the doomed love story of Romeo and Juliet. It is as cliché as it is foreboding.
From that day on, I have always brought with me an extra pen.
Hey folks! This short story will be around 9-10 chapters long. It's not in a continuous timeline. Every chapter will feature a certain memory of Bella's. There will be a lot of angst, but I promise that I am firm believer in happy endings, especially for Edward and Bella.
