She wanted to die.
He wanted to live.
•••
A hand grabbed onto my wrist, yanking me back just as the train rushed past, before I'd even had time to comprehend whether or not I'd carry out the action. I stumbled back into the person's chest, my hear...
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Throughout most of my life, I tried to avoid making memories.
It wasn't the concept which I detested, but rather what came after the memory had been made, the feeling of loss and rue for what had once been. For me, memories were the most painful thing in the world, because they persistently stayed no matter how much you wished and begged to forget, a haunting reminder of how much worse things had become since the seemingly perfect past.
I preferred to be distant, hence the presence of only one close friend in my life, and refrain from making connections with others that I knew wouldn't last. That way, aside from the memories of my home life, all I had were recollections of good times spent with Theo from staying up late together on facetime or spending our time at school together laughing and talking about anything and everything.
Good memories were both a blessing and a curse, since sometimes they brought a smile to my face, the spark of light which lit up the darkness for a few fleeting moments, whereas other times they only served as a painful reminder of just how miserable I had become. I suppose the former was what Romeo meant when he said people could be stars in my mind; the memories I made with them would stay with me forever, and remind me of better times to help me get through the worst.
But although memories felt good in the moment, like me laying here in Romeo's arms as we watched the last moments of the fading stars and lightening sky together, in the days or even hours to come, when all I had left of tonight were the memories, I knew it would hurt a lot more than I wanted it to.
I didn't want tonight to be the end, and as crazy as it sounded, I somewhat found myself relating to Juliet. Not that I was in love with the guy, but I could understand now how she formed an attachment to a stranger in the space of a few days - or in my case, hours. It was probably more surprising to me that I had pretty much become the girl I judged so much at the beginning of tonight, and it was now that I realised time didn't mean anything when you belonged with someone.
My willingness to be so open with Romeo was purely based on my reasoning that I would never have to see him again, and telling my inner feelings to a stranger hadn't seemed like such a conflicting idea until I stopped seeing him as just a stranger. At first, I'd assured myself that I could tell Romeo things I would never even dare to normally admit out loud, because initially I had thought he would leave eventually, and the two of us would go back to being mere strangers who would never meet again - but clearly that wasn't the case anymore.
Without realising what I'd actually been getting myself into when I'd first answered Romeo's questions, I found myself with a colossal amount of memories made that I would probably never forget. The city of London would never look the same to me; the stars wouldn't shine the way they did tonight; train rides would feel like they were missing a presence; my poetry would feel worthless without another person to read it; even walking would feel mundane with no one to talk to.
