Sometimes she thinks she hates him.
Sometimes she even believes it.
They fight. About everything, rather than anything.
They fight about thing that don't matter, things that don't mean anything.
The toilet seat, money, work, time, drink, groceries, jealousy,
Neither is angry, but they fight in fury none the less.
Anger is an emotion that they can control quite well.
But meaning…
Meaning hurts.
They've said terrible, painful things to one another; things they have meant.
So they abandon meaning, and meaning abandons them in the same manner.
When things get worse and when they sit at home in silence she sometimes thinks of another boy.
She feels nothing for him of course; never has and never will.
But she feels regret when she thinks of him.
He was nice, just… nice. Shimmery gold hair, baby blue eyes, chubby face, his warm varsity jacket that he would hang around her shoulders.
She recalls a bad movie, a disappointing dinner, and a sloppy first kiss that was never repeated.
She did not love that blonde boy. Not at all.
But sometimes she thinks what life may have become if she had loved him.
Blonde haired, blue eyes children. A big house with a picket fence. And a kiss when he came home.
Would it have been better?
She wants to say yes. That the much easier option would have been better.
But she knows in her heart rather than her head that she wouldn't trade all the bad times - the fights, the names, the put downs, the screaming. The hatred, the pain, the lies and the numbness.
She would trade not one singular second of those awful times,
Not when she had gotten the good times as a trade off.
The sweet kisses, the sunny days, his crooked smile and his soft hands.
She knows in her head she probably hates him.
But she knows her heart will never stop loving him.
But when he looks at her with his green eyes; no anger held within just this once.
She is drawn back in, as always. And she approaches desperatly, placing a kiss on his mouth, and kissing his creased temple, where the regret of a great many years is situated.
She feels it melt away, his eyes close and she follows.
They aren't He and She anymore.
They're Edward and Bella again. High school sweethearts, filled with certainty of happiness.
And it is lingering, because both know it won't last.