Before Take Off

21. the notebook

Buckle up guys, this is going to be a long one. Hope that you'll enjoy! xx-Cina

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"The bittersweet smile plastered across your face has me wanting to hug you so hard that all the broken pieces of your heart will stick back together."

*

"I don't want him to leave me yet," I mumbled, tears rolling down my cheeks as I buried my face within my palms. Sara, my best friend since middle school, was smoothing my frizzy and tangled up curls down, her one arm draped across my shoulders, keeping me close to her warm body.

I knew that she was and would always be there for me, yet I couldn't keep a suffocating feeling of loneliness and an unavoidable fear for the future from fusing with one another, forming a huge knot in my stomach.

"I know that he's your best friend but things happen Ayla, and we sometimes can't change the inevitable reality, no matter how devastating it is," Sara uttered calmly, but I knew that she was also trying so hard to keep herself together.

Tilting my head slightly back to glance into her honey colored eyes, between my wet and clumpy eyelashes, I forced myself to form a wry smile. "You're my best friend Sara," I pointed out in a trembling voice, feeling as if the sharp edges of the small pieces of my shattered heart literally stabbing the walls of my chest. "I freaking love him."

She drew in a deep breath before shaking her head calmly up and down, obviously not being taken aback after my forecasted confession. "I know it," she said before plopping down onto the floor next to me. "I know that he's the first person that you've ever loved, even if you guys have kept the truth from me. I know that you loved him so much that you couldn't break off your friendship with him. But you beating yourself off right now, won't be helpful in any way."

By that moment, I was pretty much on the brink of bursting into sobs, crying my eyes out as I punched and kicked the floor. However, instead of pushing myself off the edge of a nervous breakdown, I propped my head up against the wall, closing my eyes. I could feel narrow, black trails of mascara running down my face as I tried to hold myself together.

"You know all those facts," I spoke up after a few minutes. I opened my eyes once again but instead of turning my gaze onto Sara's face, I just stared at the dull and unsettling fluorescent lamp hanging on the ceiling. "But do you know that he never loved me as much as I loved him? He just went with the flow, maybe because he also didn't want to lose me as a friend. We just couldn't bear with losing each other and that's why even if we were never an official couple, we were a much better couple than everyone else."

I paused to glance at her as she smiled reassuringly. "You and Coen-" she started off but I silenced her with lifting my hand up.

"He's my first, Sara," I muttered under my breath as her eyes widened with surprise. "I just can't lose him because I want a second time with him. I want my every time to be with him. I want to love Coen until I die. And I want him to love me back until he does." By that time, the tears filling up my eyes were practically blocking out my vision, as the blurriness before my eyes isolated me from the rest of the world. "He can't leave me, Sara. He just can not."

*

I had been lying on Lewis's bed, heart-wrenching memories from the past swirling around in my mind. I was faking sleep as Lewis tiptoed around the room, changing into his work clothes. He didn't try to wake me up, probably because of our argument last night and I didn't let him realize that I was awake, listening to his faint treads and the rustling sounds as he went rumbling around in his closet for suitable clothes.