"Goodbye, my almost lover
Goodbye, my hopeless dream
I'm trying not to think about you
Can't you just let me be?
So long, my luckless romance
My back is turned on you
Should've known you'd bring me heartache
Almost lovers always do
I cannot go to the ocean
I cannot drive the streets at night
I cannot wake up in the morning
Without you on my mind
So you're gone and I'm haunted
And I bet you are just fine"
- A Fine Frenzy, "Almost Lover"
She watches him from across the room, watches his smile as he listens to the other girl speak, her arms gesturing enthusiastically because she knows that she has his attention. Lily sits on the other side of the room and tries not to think about how she wants that smile for herself, how she wants to sit in the armchair in front of him and garner his full attention, all of it, all for herself. It's not hers anymore. She gave that up; she pushed it away. Bye, bye, goodbye.
She tries to hide it away from herself, but it's there. She wants. Oh, does she want. He's only a few footsteps away but it's like a stretch of sky-black ocean, its depth unfathomable, dark and gaping, a distance she cannot cross. She is not God; she cannot walk upon that water and call forth the miracle that will erase the past and erase her mistakes and erase the green of envy shining through her eyes. She can only sit and watch and want. She can say goodbye to what she could've had.
She likes to think that she's getting along well like this. She likes to think that she's fooling everyone. It's working so far, they haven't a clue; they don't pay enough attention to the things she vehemently denied every day since the first day they met her. It's an impossible thought – why would they entertain it when they know, in their faith in her own black, lying words, that she would never change her mind? What would they think if they knew how she's crossed herself, if they knew how it's eaten her up inside? What would they think if they knew how she sits up at night to imagine about how the day could've gone, the words she could've said, the looks she could've given and received in return? What would they think if they knew she says goodbye to a little piece of herself every time the moon falls in adherence to that domineering, searing sun?
She sits, holding herself together, reading a book with words she's not really grasping. She hears him laughing – worse yet, she knows it's fake. She knows, without that second-guessing doubt that she got so damned good at, that it's hollow, that he's laughing at nothing. She can't hear what he says next but the sound of it is wrong and somehow so very blasphemous, and when she looks up, he's not smiling anymore. He's looking at her. His eyes are dark, dark like the steps it would take to cross the room to him, dark like the sky that's become her friend, dark like the caverns of her heart that echo her goodbyes into infinity.
She doesn't look away. She lets him see it in her face. She lets her eyes call across the distance because it's all she can do; it's all she can hope for. She is not God; she cannot make him cross that ocean anymore than she can wish for it. She lets him see the guilt and the jealousy and the resignation in her face, lets the fire illuminate them so he can watch from the safe place that is afar. She doesn't know if he cares, doesn't know what he's thinking, doesn't know how he feels. She knows what she cares and thinks and feels, though, and it's everything she could've had, everything she thought she had to refuse, every single doubt that she's dredged up and confronted, that makes him look across the room at her that way, with those dark, stormy eyes. It's his silence. It's the could have, it's the want, it's the pain of the goodbye.
She escapes first, right up the stairs into her tower, a princess without a prince. It's the most twisted love story: unrequited, unconfessed, unlit, unknown. Maybe she deserves it. She gave it up, after all. It was hers – it was always hers – but she pushed it away, and now she can only watch it given to others. She watches, though, and what she sees is half-hearted: half smiles, half laughs, half hugs and caresses and kisses. She broke him. And that's what haunts her the most.
Bye, bye, goodbye.