"Sophie, I need to talk to you." Dwayne spoke seriously when she opened the front door of her house.
"Uh, ok." Sophie stepped out and closed the door behind her. She sensed that something was not right from Dwayne's tone of voice and sense of urgency. "What's wrong? Is everything alright?"
"Well, it's kind of hard to say…" Dwayne sat down on her porch steps and beckoned for her to join him. "Listen, there's something wrong with me."
"What? Are you sick or something, or is it something different?" Sophie asked, a little worried.
"No, no, it's nothing like that; it's just that I'm scared." Dwayne took a deep breath. Things didn't usually faze him whatsoever, let alone scare him.
"About what? I'm sorry, but I'm confused." Sophie responded honestly.
"Us…I'm scared about us." There, he'd said it, now he would have to explain, and that was going to be the hard part.
"How do you mean?" Sophie was still very clearly confused.
"I mean that I've never had this sort of thing. I've never really been in a relationship before, and I'm scared because I've lost control of myself now, I don't know what I'm doing anymore. Logical thinking has given its control to the way that I feel about you, and I don't like not knowing exactly what's happening with my life." Dwayne stopped talking and took a much needed breath.
"Dwayne, I-"
"No, Sophie, please let me finish." Dwayne cut Sophie off. "If I'd known you longer maybe, if things hadn't gone so fast, if Saturday night hadn't happened, things might have been different, but after everything - especially Saturday, I learned that I really didn't have any control." Dwayne finished his sentence and paused, silently telling Sophie that is was her turn to speak.
"So you're telling me that you can't handle the unknown?" Spontaneous or chance actions agitate you? Dwayne, no one can always control everything, you have to let chance and fate play in to some parts of your life. I really don't understand what you're trying to say here." Sophie looked up at him, her face still riddled with a look of confusion.
"I know, but I don't like being blind to my own emotions. What I'm trying to say is that, um, I think we need to break up…" Dwayne didn't like what he was telling her, but he knew that it was the truth.
"Dwayne, just because things got too heated in the bus Saturday, and you and I both lost control of ourselves, you think that we need to break up? I really don't understand you." Sophie didn't even bother trying to not to cry. She let the tears flow as Dwayne hurt her yet again.
"I'm sorry, I really am. I really do care about you, but think about it, a lot of things could have happened on Saturday, bad things, you could have gotten pregnant, or something."
"Dwayne, we used protection," Sophie was still crying, but she spoke to him with indignation.
"I know, but condoms aren't always effective, and if we lost control once, it could happen again, and I don't think that I could handle that."
"You can't handle it? What about me? I've poured so much of me in to trying to make this work, because I can't even begin to describe how you make me feel. It's not love, don't get me wrong, but we're getting there, at least I thought we were…" Sophie sniffled and began to cry a little harder.
"I think that we're getting there too. That's another part of what scares me. I feel like I'm too young to be in love, and I don't want to get to that points, and learn that I'm wrong. I've seen first hand how much falling in love before you are ready for it can hurt." Dwayne was growing tired from the energy that he was exerting trying to explain everything to Sophie. "My mom and my dad fell in love before they were ready, and the got married too early, and had me. They didn't make it, because they weren't ready for it, but they thought they were. They were wrong, they lost control, and a lot of people got hurt. I don't want that to happen to me. I don't want that to happen to us." Dwayne stopped talking and sat there, unable to say another word. As he listened to Sophie cry, his heart was hurting, but it wasn't breaking. That was exactly what he was trying to protect himself from, if he fell in love, he knew that when the relationship ended, the pain he was feeling now would be ten times worse then it already was, and he felt that an emotional over load of that magnitude might kill him.
"Listen, I'm sorry that you had a fucked up child hood, and I know that I can't fully understand, but I really wish that things weren't this way. I really like you Dwayne. I like going out with you, I like kissing you, and I even liked having sex with you, but, uh, I want you to be happy, so if you think that this is what you need, then I guess that's ok with me." Sophie sighed through her tears. She hated saying this, but it was the truth, and she couldn't deny it.
"Thank you. Really, I'm sorry that it has to be this way…" Dwayne muttered the words more to the sidewalk then to Sophie. He felt awful enough as it was, he didn't need to make things worse by looking at her, or by watching her cry; hearing the tears was bad enough.
"You should go now," Sophie said, not trusting herself to be around him right now.
"Yeah, you're probably right." Dwayne sighed and stood up. As he walked away, he chanced one glance backwards, but Sophie had already disappeared back in to her house.
"Dwayne, are you alright?" Frank could tell by Dwayne's face that something was not right from the minute he walked in the door.
"Uh, no, but I really, really don't want to talk about it right now." Dwayne shoved past his concerned Uncle and went to his room. Once he reached his room, however, he decided that it was clearly not where he wanted to be. After giving it a moment of thought, he walked to Olive's room. "Olive, can I come in?" Dwayne tapped lightly on her door.
"Yeah, sure." Olive was sitting on her bedroom floor, doing a sea life jigsaw puzzle. The five hundred pieces were scattered all around her. Dwayne sat down and silently began rummaging through the puzzle pieces, looking for corners and edges. "What's wrong?" Olive asked finally after several minutes of silently working on the puzzle.
"I broke up with Sophie," Dwayne sighed deeply.
"What? Why? I thought that you guys were doing fine, yesterday you said that you weren't in a fight." Olive sounded shocked and confused.
"We were, but I thought about it, and things were getting out of hand. I lost control of the relationship." Dwayne didn't expect Olive to understand, maybe that was why he felt so comfortable telling her about everything.
"What do you mean?" Like Dwayne had suspected, Olive didn't get it.
"I mean that I lost sight of everything else besides my relationship with Sophie. I no longer had control over my feelings, which led to a loss of control over my actions as well," Dwayne explained what he could without telling Olive more then he should.
"Oh." Olive didn't really understand, but she didn't feel like prying into his life further then he offered. "I'm really, really sorry." Olive gave Dwayne a comforting pat on his shoulder.
"Yeah, well, it was definitely for the best. After all, I initiated the break up, I just don't like hurting her at all, it makes me feel awful."
"Then why did you do it?" Olive asked the question that had been on Dwayne's mind.
"I don't know, other then the reason that I already gave you." Dwayne sighed again, and shrugged. "It just seemed right, but in a way, now that it's done, it doesn't feel right; at least it feels different then I had expected it to."
"I'm sorry, but I really don't know what to say."
"I know." Dwayne fitted two pieces of the puzzle together, and shoved them in to another group of connected pieces to complete the formation of an over sized starfish. There was a silence, but not an awkward silence, this was a comforting silence, the silence of a brother and sister working intently towards a common goal. This was the silence of two people bonding over a puzzle. "I think you might be missing a piece." Dwayne had been searching for the sea tortoise's head for several minutes now, and was beginning to get annoyed.
"No, I just opened it. Just look around a little more, it has to be around here somewhere," Olive told him nicely.
"That's what I've been doing, I'm telling you, the fucking piece isn't here!" Dwayne was getting angry, but at himself and the puzzle, not at Olive.
"Dwayne please, calm down. It's right here! Geez." Olive had found Dwayne's so called missing piece, and handed it to him.
"Oh…" He took the piece from her and used it to complete the sea tortoise. He felt guilty for swearing and raising his voice at her. "Thanks."
"No problem, just try to calm down, it's just a puzzle." Olive giggled a little.
"I know, I'm sorry, I'm just stressed out."
"Are you sure that you made the right decision? Breaking up with Sophie, I mean." Olive asked.
"No, I'm not sure. I thought that I was, and I'm still pretty sure that it was the best choice, but I'm not one hundred percent positive, no." Dwayne shifted from his sitting position to lying, his stomach down on the ground, his head angled up so that he could see the puzzle.
"Maybe you should call her?" Olive suggested.
"No, I'm standing by both my decisions and my actions – I don't need to screw around with her emotions – or mine for that matter, and more then I already have."
"Alright, I guess that's up to you…" Olive took the last three puzzle pieces in her hand and put one in its place on the Orca whale's black and white stomach. She handed one of the two remaining pieces to her brother, and kept one for herself. Dwayne connected his piece to the bright green sea anemone, finishing it off, while Olive connected the piece that she was holding to the kelp that was floating up and out of the picture. Once she finished pressing it down, they both looked down at the now completed puzzle together. When they looked down at their finish product, they shared a small smile, a smile that told Dwayne that everything was going to be ok, and a smile that told Olive that she could help him make things better in his life.
A/N I know that this is shorter then the other chapters, but I felt that it was important to end the chapter with Olive and Dwayne bonding, so sue me. I also know that this story is a little weird, but for some reason, I like it, even though most people prefer my other ones. Well, I hope that you enjoy!
