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forty-five:: when he's finally frightened.

[Benji; PRBLMS by 6lack]

FORTY-FIVE: when he's finally frightened.

"Jules, table twelve." I'd been zoning out, thoughts popping up in my head as they did pretty often when I was alone. I'd been at work, a stupid little fast food joint and I wasn't paying attention to anything. I hadn't broken down in a while, it was numb now, I was on autopilot.

Since the last time I'd seen my boyfriend -if I could still call him that- we weren't on good terms. He hadn't called me or answered any of the calls I initiated but I was okay. Death hadn't struck me, I wasn't gonna fall to my knees and cry, life went on. He wasn't everything I lived for, he was everything to me, sure but I could survive without Paul.

Maybe I liked to feel a bit poetic, I was very much in love with him but I couldn't stop the world from spinning because he didn't want to talk to or see me. As selfish as it was: Paul was the one pushing me away, I didn't do anything and I didn't need to keep focusing on something that wouldn't change just because I wanted it to.

But despite how much I told myself that I didn't need him to function, I still found myself wanting to go home and crawl under my covers sleeping for a year or two.

"Thanks." My voice was dull, not having the energy nor caring enough to put on a happy front.

"You good?" My coworker, James, had asked. He was a reasonably tall Islander college kid, he was cute but certainly not as cute as my boy- Paul. "You've been a little off lately." Tapping my shoulder, he squeezed me through my long sleeve with the restaurant name printed on it.

Faking a smile so he didn't feel even worse than shown in the pitiful look that he was giving me, I nodded, trying not to see completely pathetic. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"You sure? Trouble in paradise?" James was a nice guy, he was, we could be friends if I got out of my head and stopped feeling bad over things I couldn't control. We'd bonded at my interview and he ended up training me on my first day, it'd been around a month since then and often we worked intertwined shifts.

"You could say that." He had brown eyes that reminded me too much of  Paul and a wide friendly smile. Being here longer than me, he'd been able to look out for me especially when I got like this. "Boy trouble, nothing much."

And he was straight, never seeming uneasy around the fact that I wasn't, Paul would like him. "Okay, well if you need to talk, I'll be here."

Ever since the diagnosis, everyone around me had been a bit overbearing; the guys never took their eyes off of me, all of them had been checking up on me. I hated being such a huge burden and I wondered if that was how Paul felt about me, I never seemed to give him as much attention as he did me.

There were a million things I would've done differently, the most frequent thought in my head was to not make everything about myself. I wouldn't listened to him, would've given him the space he needed, I was giving it to him now, wasn't I?

Mulling over my thoughts, James became preoccupied with texting his girlfriend, Christine, the one he raved about everyday. He was so in love with her, I envied it. I became lost thinking over everything.

It was officially a week since Paul and I had talked and that week consisted of work, school, and hanging out with the guys. I wasn't used to being away from him for so long and I'd missed him, a lot but I was giving him his space.

Or that's what Will told me to do when he'd dodged all eight of my calls the night he dropped me off and the days that followed. To take my mind off of him, we all ended up at that pizza place we went to the first time, apparently Will had a job here now and even though she wasn't supposed to, she'd been taking multiple breaks just to talk.