Jovie & Bash

Twenty || Hallelujah

|CHAPTER TWENTY|

April 17th, 2013

She broke my heart.

I wish she would have told me what this relationship meant to her. I wish she would have told me this was a relationship made out of ice, floating in a sea of warm water, everyday growing closer to being nothing. She knew she wasn't going to stay—so why did she say it? Why did she announce she loved me? Why did she kiss me goodbye?

She must be a damn good actress. She can breathe "I love you" like the best of them.

But, I worry now—Does she understand what it means?

I love you does not mean I'm secretly planning to leave you after I've had my fun. I love you does not mean getting bored and keeping others close behind. I love you doesn't mean "you were just a placeholder."

I love you is an ache in your bones. It's the catch in your breath like you've run a marathon, and nervous laughter as you undress them for the first time. It's trust. It's loyalty. It's lipstick stains on necks, and your cologne on their clothes. It's jumping off a swing and swimming in the deep end. I love you is their hand in yours. It's falling down and then standing back up. It's hanging over a cliff knowing that if you can't pull yourself up, they'll be there to help you. It's intense. It's real. It's chemical.

And, it doesn't have to mean forever, but it sure as hell should mean I'm the only one you're thinking about.

I've never really been in love before. This was the first. She knew she was my first. She knew she was in control.

I shouldn't have given her control.

My head hurts. Everything feels like it's throbbing. And, I hate how this feels. I hate the salty taste of tears. I hate how she did this to me. But I don't hate one thing. 

I don't hate that I feel everything. I feel it all. This experience has opened my eyes.

Dear future Bash, if you are ever to fall in love again, fall in love with someone honest. Fall in love with someone who doesn't keep you guessing what their next step is going to be. Fall in love with a girl who tells you how it's going to end. And, when she breaks your heart, perhaps you will feel this all again. And maybe, just maybe, you can do something about it.

Signed,

Bash Daley

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I flipped the leather bound journal over in my hands, feeling the soft cover and breathing in the new book smell. Quinn had wrapped it in nothing but a bow for my birthday, and though that felt like ages ago, I hadn't really looked at it since. I didn't know what I was going to do with it yet, but something told me that I needed it, that it'd somehow become useful. I did bottle things up, after all. I might have suggested I have one because that needed to stop. Then again, maybe I was inspired by Bash and his grandfather.

It was sort of daunting, all of those blank pages. I didn't think I'd be able to fill them all. Bash had filled up stacks of composition notebooks with his thoughts, but, well, he was articulate.

I fell back onto my mattress, holding the journal above my face with a narrowed, calculating stare at the smooth, leather cover.

It'll come to you, I thought. You'll find something to do with it.

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Greg sat in the open window of his and Bash's apartment with a lit cigarette and a painfully old Leonard Cohen track playing from the stereo. Bash and I sat on the living room couch with his head in my lap as he quizzed me on enzyme inhibition for my upcoming biology test.