Same Boat

The mirror doesn't do me any good this morning. How I wish last night would've given me some sleep, any kind of sleep that would erase these tired lines and dark shadows that hang over me today. Somehow, today seems more important than any other day, filled with a certain expectation of something unknown, something that could possibly make everything different. Something in the form of a reaction, because there's bound to be reactions for what happened last night. Even if she chooses to ignore me.

i
Arms retreat from around my shoulders, hands distance themselves from my cheeks and it feels lonely as they leave my skin. She takes one glance at me and then hides, hides in the confidements of her arms and knees, tucking her limbs around her. She looks so small beside me, smaller than I've ever seen her because although we're the same height, she's always been taller than me, taller in confidence and presence and suddenly now she's deflated into something completely different. Fragile, that's how she looks, and I'm afraid I'm the reason for her sudden transformation.
I shouldn't feel anything but worried about her and guilty for making her this way, but there's a small part of me that is oddly fascinated by what is happening, her retreating like I usually do and me being the stronger one. It doesn't keep me from trying to make it better though.

"Spencer."

I can barely see the side of her face as she's got the palm of her hands over her eyes, hiding whatever emotions that are running through them, possibly out of them. But I do see her form shaking so lightly that only my complete attention gives me the ability to see it.

"You just don't get it, do you."

I wish I did, I really wish I did but how can I understand someone who refuses to let anyone in, refuses to let anything shine through from within and instead only emit indifference and coldness. So I tell her.

"No, I don't."

She sighs so heavily, breath shaking as she does so, and now I know she's crying, I know because I can hear her voice cracking ever so slightly, ever so unwillingly at her next words because she's trying to be strong, trying to hide what is already evident.

"I just-... I just really wish you did, you know?"

They echo inside me, these words she just uttered, but I can't seem to grasp their meaning however desperate I am to understand them. My eyes have still not left her and although I know it's a bad idea to let our eyes meet once again, I can't help the hand that suddenly lands on her shoulder, urging her to look at me.

"Then tell me."

She finally looks up, eyes barely watery but still noticable, and she looks at me so intensely that I stop breathing, I stop every movement I planned to make. I'm afraid any kind of interruption is going to spoil this, take away from me this moment I so desperately want to get out of at the same time as I never want it to end.

"I thought I just did."

And then she casts her gaze down, shrugs my hand off of her shoulder as she stands up and leaves me, leaves me with a sentence I wish she never said to me. A sentence I wish would say more and less at the same time because for once, for the first time since I met her, I finally think I understand.

/i

Her words still echo inside of me, over and over like a song that just won't leave you. They've been doing so ever since last night, robbing me of any chance of peace and solitude before this dreaded day started. And now it's too late for sleep.

If only my apprehension was because of how she might react, if only the tension I feel brooding in my body was of fright, if only the regret that surges through me was because of what I let happen. If only the thing haunting me every minute, every second of the day was something other than how I wish I'd just let her kiss me. How I wish I'd just kissed her back.

And when I finally see her in the hallway, walking past me with shoulders slumped and head hanging low all I can think of is how easy it would be to take a step to my right and stand before her, close to her and maybe touching her. And when she sits down beside me at the breakfast table, all I can think about is how little it would take to slip my hand through hers and place them on her thigh, gently squeezing to show how much she means to me.

And when she places her cutlery inside the dishwasher at the same time as me, I can't help but entertain the thought of how easy it would be to just turn my head and kiss her.

I've been thinking about it all day ever since I saw her for the first time this morning, when she stepped out of the bathroom with hair disarrayed and PJs still on. She merely looked at me, so hurriedly before she shuffled down the hallway towards her bedroom and as far away from me as possible.

That's all she did. Ignored me.

And I've been aching ever since, aching to see her, aching to talk to her, aching to be near her. She, on the other hand, seems to be on a completely different thought as she stops and turns away whenever she sees me in a room, so obviously avoiding me that I wonder if she means something by it. Means to make it obvious. Because there was a time she did avoidance perfectly and now it's anything but.

I know I did the right thing last night, I know I did what I had to but I can't help but resent my own actions, my own over-active conscience who robbed me of something I would've cherished forever, especially now when I see last night didn't have any major consequenses after all.

Glen didn't come home before this morning, sneaking into the house in the early hours but not fooling the creaks in the hallway hardwoodfloor as they squeaked when he walked past my bedroomdoor. I know he didn't fool the parents either, when they asked him where he'd been all night at the breakfast table this morning. Seeing him squirm in in seat, hungover and trying his best to hide it, should've put a smile to both mine and Spencer's face but as I felt the sides of my cheeks twitch upwards, I glanced ever so slightly in her direction and she didn't even seem to notice. She didn't even seem to be aware of a conversation going on around her.

I would lie if I told you it didn't wipe the smile off of my face in an instant.

And I've been watching her ever since, watching her when she didn't know I was nearby, studying her from afar as she seemed to nervously switch the channels on the television, sneaking glances at her as she walked aimlessly around the garden, whenever I had the chance to see her without her knowing. Because there's been a change this morning, a change in her face that I'm desperately trying to understand, to grasp just a lint of.

She seems more reserved suddenly, more vulnerable and I don't know if it's always been there or if I've just been blind to the signs before. Because when I ask Glen, ask him if he thinks his sister is acting differently he doesn't seem to understand me, he doesn't seem to see any change present in the house and although it confuses me I'm still glad. Still relieved to see that everything is not different. That the world didn't stop turning after last night.

And when I hear her voice flowing out from the entrancedoor, I'm worried that she might see me here, sitting on the swings in my own thoughts and reminiscing over earlier hours, earlier confessions.

"Dad, I'm going over to Madison's!"

But she doesn't see me, she doesn't even take a glimpse my way as she's out of the driveway and I'm conflicted as to which emotion I should hang on to, the relief of her not seeing me or the dissappointment that she didn't. I never get a chance to decide.

Hurried footsteps follow me across the lawn and I'm barely noticing them as my own, so caught up in what I'm doing that I don't have time to reflect on any reason or logic for why I'm following her. I just do. And when I reach up to her I'm still not sure as to why I'm doing this, walking alongside her when she obviously doesn't want me near her. Obviously with the way she closes her eyes in a split second before sighing in annoyance at my mere presence and looking at me pointedly.

"Why are you here?"

She stops suddenly, taking me by surprise as I have to walk a few steps back to be close to her again. But she only backs away.

"I-..."

And I'm lost for words, eyes desperately looking around me but never focusing on anything because I'm looking for my thoughts, looking for my reason to be here, following her when there's a reason she's leaving in the first place.

"Why are you following me if you don't have anything to say?"

"I don't know."

That's all I manage to get out, the only thought present in my head but at least it's truthful. Because I don't know at all.

She casts her gaze away, throwing it ahead of me, ahead of herself because I don't think she's focusing on anything right now, just lost in her own thoughts, in her own head. And then she smiles the saddest smile I've ever seen on her.

"I just don't get you, I thought I did but... I just don't. Not anymore."

Her words confuse me and I can't help but stare at her even more openly than before, urging her eyes to come back to mine, ever so slightly bending my head down so that she'll understand. Instead she throws them even further away from mine, sending them crashing to the ground, the ground between us that just seems to grow for every second we spend in silence. And then it diminishes, the space between but not in reality, not in the physical world. It's her eyes that seem to draw us closer together as they travel from my shoes and upwards, the path not much different from the one she travelled in the locker room ages ago but the meaning behind it so completely different that it shouldn't be possible to compare them.

Because the path she's travelling now isn't one of wonder, isn't one of confusion and appreciation, this time the path her eyes are digging into my skin is one of sadness, one of surrender. And when they meet mine she can't hold the connection longer than a second before she has to close them, close her eyes and clench her fists.

"Spencer..."

Her head turns away from me, jaw clenched like her fists and she's obviously upset, obviously angry with me. That's why I'm surprised when she doesn't turn away from me when I take a sheepish step forward, lessening the space between us. That's why I'm bewildered when she instead takes a subtle step toward me instead of running away from me. And when her hands suddenly comes in contact with my upper arm and collarbone I suddenly understand. Because she's pushing me away from her, pushing me hard and brutally but still taking steps toward me as I stumble backwards from the force of it. It doesn't hurt but even if it did, wouldn't have noticed right now because all I'm trying to do is stop her, stop these hands and arms that are only pushing me because she doesn't know what else to do, what else to say. And I don't blame her.

"Spencer, please stop. Spencer, stop."

They still push me, these hands that are clenched so fiercely, but instead of increasing their force they lessen, hands instead resting ever so slightly on my shoulders as she pushes me backwards on this pavement, and then they stop.

They stop, but they don't move away from me. They don't remove themselves from my shoulder. And it's in this moment I finally do what I know she wants me to do. What she needs me to do.

So I embrace her.