Finding it

20

I wake up with steady and soft breaths as I keep my eyes closed due to the brightness in the morning day. I sigh and turn in the bed that I lay in, and just watch as people hustle around, it's really dizzying, and I eventually choose to sit up and get ready for the day that lies ahead.

I grab a change of clothes and head for the baths. I take my time in there, then wen I decide I used enough water to cause a drought, I get out change into my faded shorts, and t-shirt. I brush my hair with my fingers and twist it into a messy bun quickly as I head to breakfast. I keep my head down mostly, not wanting to make eye contact with Travis.

How are we going to get over this? We will get over this, that is a known fact--life goes on--but how? Will we break up? I hope not. Will they break up? That would be too selfish for me to answer. If we break up...will we just go back to pranking and being pranked? I can't stand for that. I won't.

I shake my head, clearing my thoughts. Life will go on. Come what may. I make my way to the table for breakfast and see my friends with my usual seat empty. In between Alex and Kia, with Miranda across from me who is next to Angelo. I don't know why, but it seems that I'm always the last one to the table. I flop into my seat and Kia gives a small smile and nudges me with her elbow and then I return back to him. I listen in to the conversation that my friends are taking part in and absentmindedly reach for the bowl in the middle of the table. My fingers skims an apple and I retreat my hand as if it has burned me, just an inch. I decide on cereal instead.

Alex catches the sharp movement and turns his head to me. I avoid his eyes and I don't look back at him, instead, I pour my breakfast in a bowl and start eating.

When breakfast ends we begin to go our separate ways and I start walking to the stables. I shout a see you guys later over my shoulder and they shout back a see you in return except Alex who calls out to me.
"Aye, Katie! Wait up!"
I wait and look back at him trying to escape from Angelo's grasp. Angelo was making a dramatic goodbye, fake crying, hugging and screaming 'No, Alex! No! Don't leave me! NO!' as Railyn, Miranda and Kia laugh. I give him a sympathetic smile and a light laugh as he manages to get out.
"Gods, he was suffocating me." Alex huffs under his breath.
I smile genuinely and teasingly now, "Yeah, looked like you were getting a bit pink."
"I was?"
"Yeah." I say, lying. "Here, and here."
His hands fly to his ears and cheeks, the places I indicated to and his face reddens. I let out a laugh and smile at his blush. He only reddens even more.
"Alex," I say when I catch my breath, "I'm lying. You weren't pink to begin with."
His mouth opens in playful disbelief and lightly pushes my shoulder.
I roll my eyes, deserving the push, but I wont' go down without a fight. I shove him back and then he shoves me. I shove him again and he returns the favor, we laughing at one another.

When we reach the stable I am about to grab a broom to start sweeping up the hay, but instead Alex takes my arm and spins me around softly. "Wait, before you start cleaning and stuff could you tie up my hair?" he asks.
"Sure." I reply and we go out of the stable and to a little soft grass patch right outside it's doors.

He gets down onto his knees and turns away from me, handing me the hair tie and I begin to comb through his hair, going onto my knees too. We stay in silence for a little bit and I am left to my own thought again as he closes his eyes. It isn't until a while when he speaks speaks again. "Katie?" He asks.
"Mhm?"
"Whats wrong?"
I almost freeze and stop for a second but I don't stay that way for long and instead I recover quickly, "What do you mean whats wrong?" I finish the tie quickly.
"I mean, whats wrong, Katie." He says turning around, "you don't just go and have a five minute talk with your boyfriend and come back crying uncontrollably. What's wrong? Travis doesn't like me, I know that, so what do I have to loose by you telling me?"
"I don't know why he doesn't like you."
"Well, he just doesn't, and I'm not going to try and be his friend if you keep getting hurt by him, Katie."
"You don't have to be his friend."
"Ok, so then I won't be. But that still doesn't explain why?"
I'm silent and I break out eye contact.
"Kates. Did he hurt you last night?"
I don't shake my head or nod it.
"Katie," he says, lifting my chin so that I have to make eye contact with him. "What did he do to you?"
"He did hurt me." I say, and it feels good to say, yet also wrong. If I am to be in a relationship with the boy I like, then I shouldn't be saying He hurt me. I am supposed to be saying He treats me well. He wouldn't hurt me. He would never hurt me. He loves me. But that is the exact opposite.
"How?" Alex's brown eye fill with concern more, if even possible.
"He-h-he." My voice hick-ups and close my eyes trying to trap the tears that once again threaten to spill, arrive. I even speak. I can't even speak about him and how he's hurt me--how he is hurting me--without tearing up.
"Did he hit you? Did he abuse you in anyway? Katie, this could be serious." He says taking his hand away from my chin and cupping my cheek.
"No, no Trav-vis wouldn't do t-that!" I say shaking my head. The tears have stopped coming so fluently now. They've stopped flooding over, but they continue to pool in the bottom my eyes.
"Thank gods, okay, then what?"
"He used me. He used me, Alex."
"What do you mean used?"

And then I was off. I couldn't stop explaining from the very beginning. How he wanted to get back with Myra, he used me. He used me for months. Then how we got back together, for real this time, and how we would no longer be faking it. Next I spoke about how we decided to go to New Rome to help out. How he started acting weird and then suddenly how he stopped entirely talking to me. How last night he unknowingly admitted to using me to cheat with the girlfriend that he already had.

How he used me and used me again. And not only that, but he used my time. Something that I can never get back.

Alex envelopes me in a hug and just lets me be held. He soothes me again and I let him. I don't even know if I should...but I do. "He used you to cheat, Katie." He whispers, realizing, "And he in a way, possibly cheated on you."
I nod in his chest. Cheating is when someone preforms intimate acts with your significant other. And Travis, though he claimed that they did not speak anymore, he had not broken up with her, so how am I to know if he is telling the truth? He stopped talking to me, he wasn't always with his friends. Sometimes he was by himself, or nowhere to be seen. How am I to know that he hasn't formed any feelings in return since coming to seeing her again?
"You really like him."
"Worse." I respond.
"Loved? "
"Worse."
"How?"
"I think," I say, "I was about to love him. And when you are in a relationship with someone, you never know when like will change to love. You only know that it has changes because you can feel it."
"But the space in between..."
"The space in between is the worse because that is when you are most fragile. It is that last chance before you can back out. Your other can go on and fall out of like with you. And it will sting, but you will get over it. When your other goes and fall out of love with you, it will hurt like hell. But if your other falls out of love or like when you are in that middle space, you have both emotions fighting at you. You have love telling you that you messed up in some way, that your love doesn't love you, you will start to question everything that you've done and said and blame yourself while feeling sorry for yourself and you can't seem to move on.
Then there is the like that is clawing at you too telling you that it's fine. You never loved him. You never loved him, and everything is fine. That you will get back up on your feet and you will go on with your day because it isn't someone who you love that has just dumped you, no, it is just a like."

I sigh, "The in between is half of you telling yourself to get over it and half of you saying that you don't know how you ever will. It hurts, it's confusing, and you just tear at yourself."
"It's hardest to get through, that's why it's the worse." Alex says.
"Yes."
"Katie, I won't say any sad I'm sorries or stuff like that because I know you don't wanna be thought of as weak...but Im here for you."
I nod. "Thanks you Alex. And sorry for crying all over you."

9 • 7 • 17
this chappie is longer than ur man's...uhm i mean what. never mind.
WHO WANTS TO CHAT?
MESSAGE ME AT MY PROFILE!!
edited october6th2017