This is a one-off piece set sometime after the events of 'Spit and Eggs'. The only thing really referred to is the break-up. And, for anyone who reads my main story 'This Life', an update is near! Just having a bit of writer's block. Anyway, enjoy!
Slowly does it.
She repeats the mantra over and over in her mind, forcing herself to believe the words, even as her heart breaks a little more each day without him.
Slowly does it; take it slow, it will heal. Time heals all wounds.
The weeks pass agonisingly slowly, even as she desperately asserts to herself, this is good, this is the way; a way back to claiming her heart, a way back to being whole again.
It's only late at night, sleepless once more, that she lets herself cry, clutching a necklace he brought her, and a photo of them, laughing. It's dark now, no one can see her.
Her dad hovers around, day in, day out, worried eyes following her as she moves through the motions of each day, listlessly existing. She tells him she's fine, it's fine, everything is fine- but the worry never really recedes from his gaze, and she's not certain if he can see the truth in her eyes anymore. When did she become such a terrible liar, she wonders.
Slowly does it.
Her friends stop by, insisting on driving her to college, taking her out shopping, going bowling, partying. But everywhere she goes is a reminder of him, and a memory of a happier time, a place where she had began to thaw.
Her school grades begin to drop, and she doesn't even notice. Nothing much stays in her head for long these days, her thoughts shifting aimlessly from topic to topic, as she fights off thoughts of him.
Even her professors taking her aside, and expressing their concern for her fails to shake her from the melancholy that has invaded her once perceptive and astute mind.
She desperately begins to keep track of the days, mentally registering when The Event happened, and the individual days that follow, the random and unimportant events that follow. She dimly notes when the weeks click over into a month, and wonders if 31 days is time taken slowly enough to heal, but dismisses the thought immediately. I am healed, she is certain. She blocks out her fallen grades, her worried father, her anxious friends. All irrelevant, she knows. Hopes. As is her sudden disinterest in food, a sign her father and friends latch onto with alarm. Her once legendary appetite diminishes into half-hearted jabs at plates of food, to be thrown out, barely eaten.
Slowly does it.
Even as her mind catalogues the days since The Event, another timeline forms in her head. The future one, in which she records how long til she sees him again. This one is marked by glimpses of him in the distance. Sporadic dates that spring up in her mind- him crossing the courtyard before her; grabbing a meal in the cafeteria one evening; a lonely walk he took one night on the beach, where he didn't see her, pressed up against some rocks, heart pounding at the near-encounter.
Gradually, as the month passes, these dates lose their frequency, and she finds a topic she can stay focused on- the one topic she sought to avoid. She ponders his sudden absence from school, from society in general.
Subtle questions aimed at her friends yield little more than sad looks, pity in their eyes, and she realises they see right though her remarks. She falls silent once more, conversations always initiated by others. It's a routine no one comments on- what can they say, they worry. She's fading in a way no one can stop, no matter how much they try to paint life back into her.
Slowly does it.
Only no one realises the black smudges under her eyes, and the absence of mind point to another reason- she's drifted from partial-sleeping to barely-sleeping.
She is filling the night-time with activity.
She ponders his whereabouts, his activities, her mind in a frenzy as she conjures up impossible reasons and situations (then again, it is him).
Eventually, the obsession flows over into words, and she starts talking, questioning her friends, who continue to uneasily avoid her questions, coming with more and more directness.
Gradually, her best friend caves in, tired of watching her depressed eyes sink lower into her already shadowed face. He wants her alive again. He tells her to ease her grief, the grief she fights so hard to hide, and loses so badly.
She learns that he hasn't been attending any classes in two weeks, or seeing any friends. She learns he barely leaves his apartment, and he refused all attempts to console him. Attempts, she learns from her best friend, are being offered in the form of booze and chicks by his best friend. Naturally.
Armed with this information, she prepares to plunge headfirst into action, before skidding to a mental halt as she remembers he broke up with her, and besides, she's healed…right?
Slowly does it.
She returns to sitting listlessly in her room, barely eating or sleeping or studying. Gradually she is losing herself in the weight of a grief she is adamant doesn't exist. She stops agreeing to movie nights and clubs with her friends, and when her father asks if she's ok, the every-ready I'm fine sticks in her throat and she gives him a ghost of her once-radiant smile.
It is really no surprise the evening her father hauls him into her bedroom, and tell them they are staying in there until they sort themselves out. Maybe it is her inability to feel much these days, or just the lack of sleep that renders her motionless, as her father locks them in, and shouts that he won't be home til the next evening. He also says that he is holding a bag of food and drinks to tide them over so they won't starve, and not to try the window, he nailed it shut while she was in the shower.
The front door slams shut.
They don't quite make eye contact, him glaring at her left shoulder, her at his hand that clutches the bag of food tightly.
Eventually he notices where she is staring, and assumes she wants the food. That much hasn't changed, he thinks, shock setting in when she refuses the proffered bag. It's only when she does that, that he notices the gaunt cheekbones, and the dark shadows under her eyes. Her slight curves seem sharper, she is all angles now, and he is confused.
Are you sick? the question floats out of his mouth before he thinks it, and her blue eyes snap up, startled at invasion of his voice into the thick silence. Wordlessly, she shakes her head as she comprehends his words. He crosses the room, and sits on her bed, carefully keeping a distance from her. We seem to be stuck, he notes wryly, wanna have sex to pass the time? The comment lacks his normal wit and bite, and is dry with some emotion she can't place. It doesn't matter, as his words unleash a torrent of her own pent-up emotion, and she bursts into tears. Alarmed, he reaches for her instinctively, wrapping her up in the safety of his arms. She clings to him long after the wave of intense crying has stopped, but he makes no move to detach her, too startled (relieved) by her emotional outburst.
Gradually, he realises she is talking to him, so softly that he has to lower his head to hear her words. She repeats the same phrase over and over, like a mantra, and they are three little words which impact him more physically than any punch his father ever threw his way, impact him more emotionally that then death of his mother ever did.
I love you, and the phrase in intercepted with heaving sobs as she falls apart in his arms again, the desolate cries breaking his heart over and over, even as the words make him whole again, so that as time passes, he is not sure if he is broken or whole; but it doesn't matter, because for the first time in a month, his is actually alive, feeling. Living. So he repeats her words back in time with her sobs, and cries in time with her words, so that they break and mend over and over til neither of them know what is whole and what is broken, but they can't stop, they are finally alive, they don't stop til oblivion claims them in the form of sleep, and they both collapse together. Asleep, for the first time in a month- soundly, deeply.
They wake the next morning, at precisely the same time, each gazing into each other's eyes, searching for an answer neither are certain they can find. It takes a moment, and then it is there, as blinding as the sun that shines in on the reunited couple as they hold close.
The day passes slowly, neither willing to do more than lie together, relief washing through their souls. Gradually, true hunger claims her for the first time in a month, and she demolishes more than her fair share of the food. He doesn't mind, laughingly watching her as she eats. See, not sicks, she reminds him, kissing his cheek. Hand holding, and kisses to the cheeks and forehead are all they have done, content to wait for a different setting to (re) consummate their relationship. A setting where they are not locked in against their will, they laugh.
As the sun sets, a key turns in the front door, and her father enters the apartment quietly. He is greeted with silence, and he instantly worries they have killed each other. Instead he finds them curled up asleep together in her bed, wrapped lovingly around each other.
Her father sighs, relieved, yet still worried. His price to pay for restoring his daughter, will be to ultimately lose her to the young man in her arms. It's a heart-wenching irony, to force the young man back into her life to save her when he was always going to be the reason he lost her. But her father concedes it was the only option, and gently shuts the door, leaving them to sleep.
The second morning dawns much like the first, as they both consider each other in the morning. The difference is, they already know the answers, and yet the sun shines as brightly as before.
It will be a battle, but it will be their battle. Everyday might be a fight to survive, but there is no one else they would rather be fighting with, fighting for. It is their destiny to struggle, to relentless move against every norm, every preconceived notion, every logic that would tear them apart. It is their destiny to be together, because apart- they cannot exist, cannot truly be themselves. It's a fight for survival, and a survival to fight.
So, for now, whatever the future tosses their way, they will rest here in this bed, eyes meeting, unafraid.
Nothing left to be said, save two words, the vocalisation of them.
"Veronica."
"Logan."
And they will wake like this each morning, answers in their eyes.
Over and over.
Slowly does it.