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Author's Chapter Notes:

Originally, I wrote this as a one-shot to try my hand at second person. Now, however, I have thoughts to expand it a little. If so, this would be a preface.




Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.


            You sit across from him with your back barely touching the fluffed pillows upon your bed, gnawing anxiously on the skin of you top lip, waiting on him to say something. Sitting at the foot of your bed, he is just close enough in the darkened room for you to see his every feature downcast in the light of your abandoned laptop. The tears in his eyes contradict the stone set of his shoulders and you can't help thinking those tears will fall once he leaves. For a few hours, at best, he might allow the facade to fall, showing no one at all the person you view as "the best thing since sliced bread." As anything less than he is now, he refuses to be seen, even in front of you; you whom he has seen through so many good and bad times. You try to understand now why he is this way, the way he has always been, questioning him the way you always have.

 

            Asking him those few questions that come to the forefront of your mind would be your instinctual response, but you refuse them voice. He won't answer, you know him well enough to know that. It's his opinion that you don't need to know and that alone will keep him from answering. Still, out of necessity, you do open your mouth and your lips form a near-silent question, "How long do you think you'll be gone?"

 

            Without an attempt to look at you, he shrugs, sidestepping the curious worry you're sure he hears in your voice. All the while your eyes, a pale brown so light that he had thought them to be yellow, take him in. Committing to memory the young man you are being forced to forget. His decision as the last thing you want to do is forget him.

 

            "You don't know or...you just aren't coming -?" Your throat tightens around your refusal to reiterate any further on the thoughts lurking in your mind, like invisible friends they say all the things you are too afraid to.

 

            "I don't know," he says, shrugging again. His so-gray eyes, devoid of that spark you have gotten used to, focus on you for the first time since you helped him through your window facing the backyard and, beyond that, the old railroad tracks.

 

            A glance, you think, nothing more.

 

            "You can't even look at me, Ali?" you ask, your voice shakes with the anger you first felt, knowing he could and would just walk away. Without truly looking you in the eye or one fraction of explanation, he can just up and leave - you and everything, everyone else.

 

            "No," he answers, unwavering in the face of your rage. His shoulders don't slump and his voice doesn't tremble, not once; it's all the reassurance you need to understand that he means what he says. "I'm gonna get out of here, Devin." he says, readying himself to leave even before you've had the chance to process what those words actually mean, and how final they are.

 

            Yet you notice it's Devin he's called you. Not Devi or sweetness, babe or, the one you've hated most, baby-girl. Steadying yourself when he gets up and exerting strength to calm your already feverish heart, once he turns his back on you, is the hardest thing you've done all year.

 

Your mightiest organ pounds in your ears, it sounds like boulders are crash-landing all around you. That vital muscle in your chest nearly causes you pain, rather than the pleasure you have grown used to where he is concerned. And an invisible weight lying on your chest has you gasping. However the air around you smells and tastes like him, like fresh air and the cologne you bought him, because it smelled like something he belonged to. Spiteful is your all-too-conscious subconscious, muttering: The way he doesn't belong to you.

 

            The tears you refused to cry so that he might not know the pain he's caused finally begin to fall. Drawing your bare knees up to your heaving bust, while Ali finds his way out of the same bedroom window he came in, you cannot stop yourself shivering. You press your cheek against your knees, salty tears slide over the bridge of your nose onto your skin but you barely register it. Despite the pain you force teeth marks onto the insides of your cheeks, in hopes of keeping your silence. After an hour - sixty of the longest minutes where your heart beat so hard that you thought you might pass out - your eyes still have not dried.

 

            When your Mother noiselessly peeks in, curious about the chill, she notices those tears. And though she is clueless as to why you are so upset, she knows something is wrong. You long to tell her that it is not something, but rather everything the moment she sits beside you in bed. Mistaken by the contortion of your face she wraps her arms tenderly around you.

 

No comfort comes.

 

Without strength enough to move you let her hold you, and your tears continue their descent down your cheeks onto her silk robe. "You wanna talk about it, baby?" she softly asks, raising your face in her palms.

 

            And a small part of you does, indeed, want to. But the sad reality is that there isn't much to say. He said to you he was leaving, and then he left. Instructions he gave you to "leave it alone," you followed despite every fiber of your being screaming at you to do anything but. A cowardly move, you think. Bitter, you wish you could breathe well enough to laugh at how pathetic you must seem to her. So many times before you laughed at those girls that got involved with those boys, even when they knew there was no chance for success.

 

            "No," you answer, your voice thick and breaking. In the darkness, with your head turned away from her, you don't catch your Mother's eyes flickering with a mixture of worry, sadness and anger. You just shut your eyes, preferring to see nothing at all.






Chapter End Notes:

Feedback: Point being, I would love some from you, whoever you are. This was my first try at second person and I rather enjoyed/confused myself several times but it was worth it methinks. Let me know what you think.

™PEACE.





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