If You Love Me

32

a v e r y

IT'S FUNNY HOW OUR HEARTS can still get hurt by something we saw coming. How even though our hearts and minds are conjoined in an entangled web of nerve endings, thoughts, and emotions, there is nothing that stops the brutal impact of what we had already known. There are no stop signs, or road closures, no pillows, or cushions, just the sudden impact of the inevitable.

From the beginning, I had expected Dean and I to be removed from the white cloud we had spent the last couple months drifting on. I had expected for us to make our way back down to earth one day or another. I had expected and anticipated, yet it did nothing to change how much it still hurt.

I have given Dean a lot of reasons not to trust me. I was irresolute on the passions that I wanted and had once been on if I wanted to be around to indulge in them; I was irresolute on how to be the half to the relationship that he deserved, the way that a lot of other girls could be; and I was irresolute on if I was the one that he truly wanted despite the ways that he has shown me like he has. I was irresolute and unclear on a lot of things, but never on if I trusted him. And yet despite having written him a whole novel on why he shouldn't trust me, it still hurt to have him read the end of the book and agree with the title.

I hadn't even so much as looked at my phone since I hung up, knowing that if I did and saw any of his texts or missed calls, I would have to convince myself that I was okay being with a boy that didn't believe that I would never hurt him and couldn't find it in himself to trust me back. So, I let my phone spend the night in my jacket on the plush chair as I laid next to Olivia in the bed made for one. On the bed with the flattest mattress that I have ever come across, her body curled up next to mine and tears having soaked through her pillow, I spent the night next to my best friend and pretended.

Olivia faces me, one of her arms slightly extended towards the end of the bed and attached to the IV that the nurse came in every hour like clockwork to check on. Even in the dark, I could how red her eyes were, how the bags underneath her eyes consumed nearly half of her cheeks, and just how lost she looked. How the beautiful girl who had once exhumed sun rays at every single hour of day slowly began to dim. She didn't say anything and neither did I, we just simply laid side by side until the dark drifted and slowly became light.

The door slides open with a small knock as Asher slips into the room. He wears the same jeans from yesterday and a different t-shirt with a sweater slung over one of his arms. He closes the door behind him and heads towards us, his blue eyes kissed with a small smile.

"Good morning." He greets as he takes a seat in the chair.

"Morning." I say, shifting from where I had been laying until my back is against the headboard.

Olivia keeps her head on the pillow, her eyes red and distant. Bunches of hairs swarming the tops of her forehead, the curls brown, dancing, and free.

"Hey Liv." Asher says, his eyes moving to search her.

Her gaze lifts to his for a split moment before they fall back down and stare at the nothingness around her.

"Hi." She says, her voice just above a mere whisper.

I look back towards Asher to see him slowly peeling his eyes away from Olivia.

"What are you doing here?" I ask.

"I came to see if you wanted a ride back to the dorms," he speaks. "Get cleaned up and come back."

The truth of the matter is, I would love a shower and to be able to change out of the clothes that I had been wearing for the past two days, but I didn't want to leave Olivia.