There comes a point in a relationship where something happens, or you say something that can never be taken back, and that's when you know: no matter how desperately you cling on to the past, things will never be the same.
This was that moment.
Ebony midnight saturated the static air, freezing winter chill infiltrating the snow-white duvet Gill and I lay underneath. His slender fingers brushed a stray lock of fringe out of my hazel eyes, velvet fingertips glacial against my already icy skin.
It was only in the secluded, secretive, silent obscurity of night that Gill dared to draw out his intimacy; the darkness hid his vulnerability from the world.
"Molly."
"Hm?" I murmured in reply, letting my eyes leisurely scan the entirety of his face, the embodiment of winter melded with the most scorching elements of summer. Frosted snowflakes and blistering rays of sun.
"Be honest with me," Gill implored, demanded, piercing eyes attempting to sift their way through to my thoughts. Gulping anxiously, I nodded my head against the cream pillow. My vision fought against the dimness to focus on his pale features.
"Do you still think about him?" he asked, so inaudibly that it was almost impossible to hear him. His question drifted into the unmoving air, dissolving into the brittle stillness. Our hearts were beating so loud, they broke the tranquil quiet.
I contemplated playing the clueless game: who's him? I glanced up to meet his crystal eyes, and all at once, that possibility crumbled. The glass orbs mouthed don't do that. We both know who I'm talking about.
Chase. It was always him, wasn't it?
"Well, yeah," I confessed into the shrinking space, the walls of Gill's bedroom feeling like they were indisputably beginning to cave in on us. I wanted to stand up and lift my arms to the ceiling in a last ditch effort to keep it from disintegrating. To keep us from disintegrating.
Gill's eyes fell to my carnation lips, slightly pursed in apprehension. His ice blonde locks fell neatly against the feather-stuffed pillow, creating a striking sight. Cornea-searing lustre in the engulfing blackness.
"Do you still miss him?" he probed, bringing us to teeter dangerously on a saw-toothed cliff, ominous spears residing past the precipice; rearing to impale us at a moment's notice.
Silence. Deathly.
"Yeah," I replied, grabbing hold of his arm and begging him not to fling us both off the crag, sending us into unsalvageable shards; the millions of fragments from a broken mirror, some disappearing forever, so that the mirror could never go back to the way it was before.
My heart thrashed riotously against the creased bed sheets, having already anticipated his next question. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing him not to let the words tumble from his pallid lips; to ask what I could never lie about.
"Do you still love him?" his voice shook tentatively, uncertainty trembling on the cold notes. The room shivered.
What could I say that would have hurt the least?
I'll always love him. He's a part of me. Sometimes I find it hard to say I love you, because I remember the way his eyes smiled when I said those words to him.
Guilt soaked into my brain, seeping into my optic nerves and prickling at my eyes. There was nothing I could say that would soften the inevitable blow of knowing the person you loved also loved someone else.
I made a futile endeavour to steady my breathing, pretending that I had fallen asleep. Stabbing ruby flashed behind my drawn eyelids, involuntarily quivering; I could feel my short eyelashes flittering, and I knew Gill could tell that I wasn't really sleeping.
It was better this way. Wasn't it?
The sound of rustling sheets permeated my eardrums, as bitter cold came to whisk below the thin blanket. The hairs on my neck shuddered.
As Gill's back turned to face me, I could feel the unadulterated hurt emanating from his side of the bed.
I'm sorry, I wanted to scream into the smothering silence, I'm tired of being the one bringing you anguish.
I imagined myself as a mystic being, capable of conjuring potions; two gardenia petals for love, eight dog's hairs for reassurance, one untainted heart for healing. I wanted to wash Gill in the concoction, tell him I love you, isn't that what matters? Instead, I let us both plummet to our deaths, the spikes plunging into our withering hearts, splicing them clean into two.
Sadly, there was no magic antidote for insecurity.
Dissonance.
After the crumble came the wordless conflict, the unspoken discordance.
There were nights when he needed to sleep and I couldn't. Evenings when he wanted to forget and I couldn't help but remember. Dusks when he wanted to ignore everything and I no longer knew how to. Two clocks fallen out of time, one ticking for every second the other dropped silent.
There were days when I wanted to talk to him and he wouldn't. Hours when every noise I made interfered with his silence.
Weeks when there was a buzzing in the air, and we both pretended we didn't hear it.
"Penny for your thoughts?" I mumbled faintly, resting my bare feet on the mahogany coffee table before Gill's merlot sofa; soles stained dusty black by the inner grime of my boots.
"They cost more than that," he muttered back haughtily, his fountain pen drawing cursive loops along the margined paper of his notebook. Indigo ink blotted precisely into elaborately formulated lines. He sat away at the small circular table by the window, the two of us left to wallow in our own troubled reflections. I shifted my palms uncomfortably.
"I'm afraid I don't have that kind of money," I joked feebly. The stagnant atmosphere whirred with a foggy but distinct shrillness, like the constant zooming of avid mosquitoes.
"I'm writing," he responded evasively, Gill-speak for leave me alone.
"No you're not, you're drawing circles on paper. That's a waste of trees," I chastised, not knowing what else to say. We often found ourselves at a loss for words these days.
"The definition of writing is to mark a surface with a pen or pencil. So technically, I'm writing."
"Know-it-all."
We fell into deafening noiselessness again, and I wondered when we had lost the ability – the will – to trade insults for hours on end, barely stopping to catch our breath.
"You haven't been writing much recently," I observed, intruding on his icy pensiveness. My eyes lifted to sentinel his reaction – hoping to get one at all. He had withdrawn back into his usual polar shell ever since that night, and I'd had a rock caught in my throat for weeks; I didn't know how to say do you still want to be with me?
Gill set his pen – jet black, gold detailing, glossy finish – down on the ash tabletop and visibly sank, shoulders drooping downwards with gravity. "It's hard to be in love with someone who is in love with someone else." He glanced over at me, glass eyes glistening with gloom. A halfhearted smile came to settle on his face, weak and despondent; worse than no smile at all. "I don't know how to turn that into writing."
The jarring buzzing in the air grew louder and louder, and soon, it was impossible to block out.
I gnawed on the waxy inner surface of my cheek; ridged teeth digging into the raw membrane. Flailing desolation throbbed behind my temples. "I love you."
Gill brought his gaze back to his notebook, eyelids pulled down in bleak dejection. Murky droplets of coffee dripped into water. His lips parted, and I'd never known what true hurt sounded like until that instant, "You blink too hard when you say, 'I love you.' You're thinking about Chase, aren't you?"
The buzzing intensified, muffling anything else either of us had to say. My eyes grew into porcelain saucers, horrification at Gill having discovered the truth surging in my hazelnut pupils. My taciturnity only served to confirm his suspicions, draining all the remaining warmth out of his frosted eyes. "Gill, I-"
"It's fine," he cut me off, a sense of disorientation pulsating along his brow, "I think I knew it from the beginning anyway."
I hated this. I'd rather have the hardheaded, egotistical Gill who never had a kind word to say and who always managed to turn a conversation into a heated quarrel.
"Tell me what I can do to make it better," I beseeched, getting up to seat myself opposite him at the tiny table.
"I don't know," he stated resignedly, looking at me in contemplation, "I don't know where we go from here."
We found ourselves caught in limbo, not knowing what to do or where to go, and all the while, drowning in the earsplitting buzzing.
"Trust me to fall for a dunce like you."
"Dunce?" I echoed in faux offense, placing a calloused hand on my collar for extra drama, "Must be a pretty special dunce."
"Not really. Probably the most imbecilic dunce you can find," he smirked, as a sense of normalcy finally returned to our beings.
"You're such a jerk."
"Too bad, you're still my girlfriend."
You're still my girlfriend. My heart heaved a sigh of relief, patting beads of sweat off its drenched forehead. I couldn't help but beam.
"Unlucky me."
"It should be your honour," he sounded, both of us finding respite in our squabbling.
"Do you think we'll get past this?" I finally broke the eased atmosphere; worry pacing up and down on my words. Dragging its sneakers along the rickety ground.
"I don't know. I don't know if we can." Noticing how I looked close to tears, Gill quickly tagged on, "I want to, though."
"I do too."
He exhaled, the minutest traces of a smile playing on his pale lips. He nodded ever so slightly, stretching his slim hands over to the centre of the table. "Okay."
I let my fingers interlace with his, basking in transitory reprieve; of believing, for a split second, that things were going to be all right.
We latched on to one another, clutching on for all it was worth. Treading the imbibing waters and desperately trying to keep afloat.
"You've been crying." Kathy's emerald orbs traversed the width of my face swiftly, expertly drawing to her apt conclusion.
We sat in the glimmering light of the Brass Bar, swishing coconut cocktails in transparent flutes. The condensation from our glasses rained onto the oak surfaces, painting the littered spots a deep umber.
"You're one to talk," I nudged her side jestingly.
"Exactly. This is coming from the master," she joshed back, raising purposeful fingers to gently press on the puffy lavender bags that formed a gradient below my eyes. "What's the matter? Has Gilly been bullying you?"
"First off, even I don't call him Gilly," I clarified indignantly, drumming my hardened fingertips on the shaded tabletop, "And no, he hasn't. I can take the bullying. It's the forced pretending that I can't bear."
"Pretending?"
I created a pause, reveling in the complete quiet; no inescapable whirring in the background, dragging spindly talons down my earlobes and encircling sharpened fingernails around my constricted neck. I luxuriated in being able to breathe without choking on the glutinous air. "Have you ever tried to hold onto something, even though you can see it slipping right through your fingers?"
Sadness came to settle on Kathy's neatly groomed brows, forming puddles of creased skin between the arches. "Only all the time," she sighed in feigned lightheartedness, mind indubitably drifting to Owen and their poisonous, never-ending cycles of why aren't we what we used to be and you're worth this pain.
"Kath," I purred meaningfully, looking her dead in her dulled eyes, "I'm just going to ask this once, okay? Why have you stayed with Owen for so long?"
"You ask some good questions, Molly," she mused redundantly, buying herself time to devise one singular reason. She took a torturously prolonged sip from her glass, sweet, milky liquid slipping down her throat while simultaneously providing that gratifying burn. I eyed her carefully, patrolling for telltale signs of dishonesty or artificial cheerfulness. "Maybe because a part of me believes that we can still fix everything."
"Aren't you tired?" I could detect it in her clouded hues; silken platinum ponytail wilting just an inch lower everyday. Electric emerald irises etched away at the edges, blurring into the stultified whites of her eyes. I resented Owen for inflicting such damage onto her, and yet, I could never truly blame him, because I knew: Kathy actively chose to go back to him, every single day.
"Always," she confessed, mulling over her slowly depleting drink. She brought her eyes up to stare at me, determination coating her angulated face. A lone spark flickered in her meadow orbs, grass blades upon grass blades creating an emerald ecstasy. The wafting pasture caught flames, vermillion and crimson scorching the earth below. Inferno; tangling to the charred end. "But I'll let you in on a little secret, Molly," she enticed, leaning her frame in towards mine, "He destroys me in every way possible, but I want to be destroyed." The blaze flared higher, reaching their fingertips to the heavens. Her marshmallow lips curled at the sides, and I knew that there was life in that smile. "And I want him to be the one who destroys me."
"I don't really get it," I disclosed, confusion swirling in my mind like shadowy watercolours, tangoing reds and sobbing blues and kissing pinks mushing together to create a dreary olive drab.
"Neither do I," Kathy sighed acceptingly, may I be love's prisoner, "but I know that, at the end of the day, I want to come home to a fight with him, and I wouldn't trade that for peace with anyone else. I know that may not be ideal, or fit anyone's version of perfect love, and maybe we're not even good for each other, but he makes me feel so alive."
I nodded in resonation, as she continued, "I guess I'm still holding out hope that one day, we'll be good for one another."
"And until then?"
"Until then," she trailed off, taking another drink of her cocktail, corkscrewed coconut flesh adorning the edge of the flute, "I'll do everything I can to hold on to it."
"You really love him."
"Crazily so."
"You genuinely think it's all going to work out?"
"I don't know," her eyes sidestepped the hazardous broken shard, prancing their toes on padded soil, "I want to believe that it will."
"Okay," I finally granted, agreeing to let go of the asphyxiating topic once and for all, "I trust you. You know what's best for you."
She cradled her pointed chin in a supple palm, smiling lazily at me. "Love is knowing better, but doing worse."
"That's also called being a fool," I teased, clinking the crystal rim of my glass against hers, before lifting it up to my lips.
"Same thing, really."
"I've been looking for you all day."
Frigid winter wisped against skin, breathing icicles through my mauve wool coat. A lone pebble knocked against my boot as I descended the dusty stairs in Celesta Church Grounds, my words sending whirling condensed vapour into the icy air. Getting lost forever.
Gill stood in the middle of the graveyard, piercing eyes – diamond with just the slightest tinge of cobalt blue – lowered to focus intently on the stone slab before him. For once, his eyes betrayed him; scarlet tinting the usually pristine whites, swelling tattling on his well-kept secret.
He nodded mutely in response, biting sorely on the right corner of his lower lip: his coping mechanism for pain. His fingers curled up in their gloves, digging into the covered flesh of his palm. A knife into the tender membrane of an orange.
Gill's mother's death anniversary.
I stood, immobile, unsure of whether my presence was wanted. If not for our breathing, we could have passed off as a painting; frozen in time. Captured in my face: palpitating hesitation. In his: throbbing sorrow.
"Come here," he mumbled incoherently, gelatinous thickness stuck in his trachea. The remnants of his weakness, or the very beginning of it.
I unreservedly complied, trudging straight towards his arms, which he promptly wrapped around me. His heavy head fell against my shoulder, a weight that nobody could bear coming to rest along my collar. I ran my hardened fingers through his static strands, wishing I could absorb the grief from his body through my stroking fingertips.
Unfortunately, I was not some enchanted healer, who could relieve people of pain with an ethereal flick of my glittering wand, sparkles coming to kiss their torments away. I was only human, like everybody else, and all I could do was be there.
For all the battles Gill and I put one another through, that we went through together, I could say that much for the both of us: no matter what, we were still there for the other to lean on at the end of the day. Even if that sturdy shoulder came after a barrage of cloying insults, the point was that it still came.
And sometimes, that was enough.
"It's not fair," he muttered into the dip above my clavicles, his warm breath fiery against my nape, "She deserved so much more time."
"I know," I cooed soothingly, crumbling as I heard the cracking in his ordinarily steady, official voice. Seeing him so weak and defenseless, putting the shining words in my receiving hands, here's all of me, take it, seared into my mind, irrevocably: of course I loved him.
We deserved so much more time too, didn't we? Our relationship had done nothing to warrant its early, looming demise. And yet. Not much in life was fair.
"She would've liked you."
Even when we embraced, one was always holding the other a little tighter.
"You think so?" I echoed, wearing the cheeriest smile I could muster, sunbeams dancing from my grin, "I'm sure I would have loved her too."
"She'd probably tell me to treat you better and not be so mean to you," Gill murmured, lips against my coat muffling his astonishingly sweet words.
"You should listen to her," I teased, rubbing my thumb along the back of his neck comfortingly.
"Idiot. She already knows how awful you are."
"Jerk."
One side of his lips inched upwards, in a glum but heartened half smile. Rain and sunflowers. "I love you," I whispered into his ear, in such bare genuineness that it was like stardust falling from my mouth.
"I love you too," the reciprocation tumbled shakily into my ears, struggling to find their footing in his feebleness, "Stay with me tonight, okay?"
"Of course," I purred back, drifting fingers silkily through his titanium ice blonde hair, knowing that this fleeting moment would be long gone by tomorrow – that, in the morning, we would've lapsed back into suffocation and relentless buzzing, trying hopelessly to hold on to the water slipping through our fingers, "I'm not going anywhere."
For now, I savoured the sweetened simple.
"What are you thinking?"
Asking that question was the equivalent of opening Pandora's box; whenever we uttered that question, we never got an answer we had braced ourselves for. Gill and I were written in the stars, but we never aligned. When he revolved around Venus, I was prancing along Mars.
"I'm thinking," I trailed off, bringing his knuckles to my lips and pressing delicate kisses against the dipping indentations, "that I never know what you really want, whether I can give it to you, or if I'm already too late."
I jammed my eyes shut, skin upon skin folding to create crinkles that pleaded: make sure to kiss your knuckles before you punch me in the face.
His glacial eyes skidded over my face warily, sizing up whether I could handle what he was about to say. Trepidation leapt from his pursed lips.
"I want to be your first choice."
My eyebrows furrowed in bewilderment. "What do you mean?"
He sighed heftily, before continuing, "Can you honestly tell me that if Chase came back, right this very moment, you wouldn't drop everything and run to be with him again?"
He swung his arm, fist landing agony and shock square in my jaw.
My mouth gaped openly, carved teeth showing in my wide gawk. I wanted to reach out and wrap my fleshy arms around his shoulders, to say please don't do this, I love you, I love you, I love you. But my words often found themselves stuck in my throat, pride pushing them down and yelling at them to stay there.
"And I don't think you can ever give that to me," Gill muttered incomprehensibly, crestfallen, as my silence said everything he needed to hear.
I'm sorry I wanted to cry, hold him in my arms and assure him that everything was going to be okay. Alas, neither of us could promise that.
He lifted his eyes to the ceiling, lying on his back as I stared at him from my side of the bed. I wondered when we had stopped sleeping as a tangled mess and moved to territorial positions.
"I can't keep being your second choice," he breathed, glancing at my pained form before turning away from me, wounds bleeding onto the immaculate bed sheets beneath, "not when you're my first."
I thought of love as an equation, scratched out in powdered chalk across a gloomy blackboard; rose pink for the honeyed beginnings, pale yellow for the wafting middles, and deep gray for the excruciating ends.
Imbalance: more than or less than equaling disaster.
Disclaimer: I do not own Clementine von Radics' work or 'The Lover's Dictionary' by David Levithan.
Author's Note: Gill-lovers, please don't hate me! I've got absolutely nothing against him, I've actually taken quite a liking to him. But the story must go on. Forgive me for the angst-loaded chapter. And thank you, as usual, for all the lovely likes/follows/reviews!