Twenty-Eight.
I felt your eyes studying my face as we lay next to each other staring at the ceiling, saying nothing at all. I suppose we were both wondering how we didn't figure this out sooner. How we'd been around each other all night, and not known it was us. I guess in a way we probably did, but subconsciously chose to remain blissfully oblivious to reality. I knew why I'd been at that club, and your reasons were probably the same. I closed my eyes.
"Fate, huh?" You said quietly.
"Do you find it weird that this keeps happening to us?"
"Not particularly."
Silence. I was mentally cursing at the universe for continuously letting this happen. Why couldn't I just leave you? Why couldn't I just have a normal life? Or sort of normal anyways? Why couldn't I, like everyone else, at least sort of pick the people in my life, and where I was going to take my life?
"Why did you leave?"
I'd been waiting for that question, yet, somehow, it still shocked me.
"I could ask you the same question."
"But I asked first." I hated it when you won these pointless arguments.
"I couldn't stay with you forever."
"Why not?"
"Because."
"Because what?"
"Because I needed to move on with my life. It was getting too hard."
You took that answer, but I knew you weren't happy with it. The silence returned, but I didn't mind it. Sure, there were unanswered questions- and plenty of them- but with you that never seemed to matter. With you, nothing but the moment ever seemed to matter. My mind spent too much time wandering its dreams, which often involved you. I hated that.
"The blue in your hair is gone."
"Yeah."
Getting the blue out of my hair had been the last thing left reminding me of Mum, so a few days ago I bought some dark brown hair dye, and put it through my hair. Yes, my hair was fairly close to black now, but the blue was no longer visible. I thought the feeling of strangeness would fade, but it hadn't. I also thought I'd only ever notice it when I looked in the mirror, but that didn't quite work out that way either. I always knew, and it was always there, nibbling at my conscience.
You looked around.
"So is the picture frame."
"Yep."
"What about Benn?"
"We broke up."
"For real, this time?"
"Yes."
"Wow."
You paused, and sighed.
"Why are you doing this, Bec?"
"Doing what?"
"Oh don't be like that. You know what you're doing."
"I got sick of the blue, and forgot the frame at home."
"No, you didn't. You hate that it's gone, you've never felt guiltier in your life."
True. But I wasn't going to admit that, because I was still waiting for the feeling to go away.
"And you miss the picture frame. It's sitting in a drawer at home and you wish it was here."
Also true. Dammit; you knew me way too well.
"You seem lonely, Bec."
"I'm fine."
"You're not. I know you're not. You danced with me tonight because you ached for someone. You took me to your apartment with you, because you didn't
want to come home to it alone. And you kissed back because you didn't want to wake up alone."
"I had a lot to drink."
"We both know that was nothing for you."
"You don't know me anymore."
"You just keep telling yourself that."
"You don't even care. You just come and go as you please. And I was more than fine when you were there, but I wasn't coping when you left. Which is
why I had to go."
"I didn't leave you."
"You disappeared to Portugal one day, without a goodbye!"
"Yeah."
I was waiting for a reason, but I was suddenly unsure I was going to get it. There seemed to be more to this. But I wasn't going to let myself fall into the trap again- I couldn't have you around, because it meant I couldn't cope without you.
"Remember that day at the park, back when we first met? The guy in the black SUV?"
"Vaguely." I replied.
"That was my Dad. He was in Portugal when they arrested him."
"What for?"
"Fraud of some sort. I went over there with a lawyer to try and get him back to Britain."
"Oh." Suddenly, I felt guilty for thinking you'd just carelessly abandoned me.
Suddenly, I felt guilty for having felt abandoned. You had no responsibility for me. At all. This wasn't your fault, it was mine.
"We did get him back. But he's been advised to just plead guilty, and go for a lesser penalty."
"Is he going to jail?"
"Yeah. But for four years, not seven, now."
"That's good, I guess."
"Better anyways."
You moved your hand closer to mine, and I didn't pull away. You noticed, and slowly thread your fingers through mine. You squeezed my hand lightly. I turned onto my side to face you.
"I'm sorry." I whispered.
"What for?"
"For thinking so little of you."
"You never thought little of me. You just wanted to, because you needed a way to explain things to yourself."
"I dunno..."
"I do."
You pulled me close and hugged me tight.
"Oh, Bec." You sighed, and I felt you slightly shake your head.
I'd tried to run, so many times. I thought you'd left, so many times. But somehow, fate kept bringing us together. I still didn't remember the day we first met, but I was beginning to think that that day, we got ourselves into something beyond our control. Our lives seemed irreversibly intertwined, and I was beginning to think that maybe that wasn't such a bad thing.
