𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 | 𝐠𝐮𝐲 𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐞

⁰⁶ | When the world stops

ɢᴜʏ ɢᴇʀᴍᴀɪɴᴇ

𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐎𝐍𝐋𝐘 a few times in my life that I've felt the world stop.

The first might have been when I was seven and noticed Mae. I mean, really noticed her. I think it was over something my brother had said--something he had heard from the moms. He told me that they thought I'd love her and she'd love me. That was all they said. That we would love each other someday. That changed me, for some reason. That changed everything.

When I went into her room that night, the smell of whatever food was being made and the sounds of football carried up the stairs after me. But when I shut the door, it was just us. The way I liked best. I liked myself best when I was just with her. She was sitting on the floor in her pajama shorts and one of Thomas' band shirts. Nirvana, I think. It was huge on her, fell almost past her knees. Eric always laughed at her when he saw that.

Mae was sitting there, her legs crossing over one another, and just reading. I don't know what book. I never asked.

I didn't know what it was, but she was just new in that moment. She felt like everything.

The floor had become more solid under me, like for the first time, I was being pulled off this cloud that kept me floating for my whole life. But then, with Maeve Williams sitting on her bedroom floor, I was grounded.

She didn't even look at me when I sat across from her. But I looked at her. There was a fresh cut under her lip from when she scraped it against the pool walls earlier in the week, I remember. We were really into swimming that summer.

"Mae," I said.

She flipped the page and hummed a response.

I repeated her name until she put the book down and looked back at me. "What?"

I grinned because I didn't have anything to say in the first place. It was just easy to make her mad. Soon enough, she smiled back. I never forgot about that feeling. The way everything around me stopped and the ground felt like the ground. She picked her book back up, though.

I didn't feel it again until my dad died. The world stopped completely when it happened, and didn't start again. I remember thinking that it never would. But, it did--slowly, at least. You do get back to yourself, eventually.

It happened again when I kissed Maeve in her driveway. It happened when I started hating her--and myself.

It happened when we were 13, and she told me she was going away for a while. And then when she came back.

When I saw her, and she saw me, for the first time in two years, the world stopped spinning. The ground became the ground, and the arm that held Connie close to me felt so, so heavy.

Don't ever let a girl make your world stop. If you do, it will just about kill you.

☆∵☆∵☆∵☆∵☆∵☆∵☆∵☆∵☆∵☆∵☆

a/n - I had no idea where I was going to go with this chapter but everything just spilled out of me. I feel like two chapters in one night is completely deserved, though, considering I've been away for the past month.