Life is Funny Like That

Fihftine. Bloody Cookie

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Daffodil gone, the diner is strangely dim, even with the sun bestowing its brightest rays for the afternoon. Adrian still stares out the window, lost in the wake of his memories and regrets. And now he can add another to the sea which only drags him deeper till it seems he'll drown. No amount of 80's pop could catch his attention as his eyes drift down the street Daffy took.

But it had to be done, right? There was no other way. They would only end up hurting each other.

Besides the terrifying possibilities, there are countless roadblocks. A relationship won't solve the insecurity, the emotional damage he has, still bandaged, still raw and red. Every injury is still fresh. 

Giving this broken, damaged, and lost piece of a pathetic excuse of a person to someone as pure and wholesome as Daffodil O'Brian... He couldn't. His unhealing cuts would only bleed all over her. It would taint her sunny demeanor, like a raincloud building over a bright summer day.

The picture of a struggling smile beneath the scarlet blood gives Adrian chills. She would try to help, maybe ignore the blood all over her and reach down her hand to pull him up. The harder she pulls the wider the cuts on him open. The stitches would begin to give way, maybe even making the wounds worse.

"I can get you out of this! Trust me!" she would yell, her tears blending with the blood running down her face.

But Adrian glances down at the chains on his ankles, the quicksand eating up to his knees. He only sinks deeper. 

"You have to let go of me," he whispers, guilt feeling as strong as the bindings keeping him down.

"No, no, we just have to work together. If we both fight it, we'll get out of this together," Daffy denies. Her voice bubbles into hysterics. "You just have to believe me."

She holds on tighter and tighter to his arm, ignoring the fact that the sand has climbed closer to her hands. She won't let go, being dragged down into the quicksand along with Adrian.

Adrian can only watch as her fingernails dig into his torn wounds. She drowns in desperation to save him.

Relationships aren't meant to be some sort of way to be saved. Relationships don't solve the internal problems we all have. They are meant to enrich life, not fix it.

Adrian isn't sure what Daffy wants out of a relationship with the likes of him, but she wouldn't get all that she hoped for if he agreed. A healthy relationship means giving one's self completely to the other, dying for the other person. But what if he isn't a whole person in the first place? How could he give his whole self if he's just a fractured piece? It would be like breaking a cookie into crumbs and then offering it to someone. The very idea feels insulting and demeaning.

The longer Adrian considers the possibilities the more determined he becomes. It has come down to the fact that he won't give the beautiful girl who deserves everything good and pure in the world, a broken, sat on, stale cookie. Even if she likes the crumbly kind. There are plenty of those in this world. She can have any of them that she likes, and lots of them won't even have any crumbs to deal with. They will be perfectly round, fit comfortably into her glass of milk. Into her life, into her world, into her heart. And they will be happy. 

He won't be part of the equation. A bloody cookie like him doesn't belong anywhere near Daffodil. 

There's a statistic of how many lifeguards die a year, saving someone from drowning. The person drowning will push the lifeguard under water to keep themselves above the surface, therefore inevitably drowning them.