KOTLC Oneshots

In Love With Him

Because once she spoke those words, she couldn't take them back.  

In love with him.

She had never let herself consider that possibility. It had never even crossed her mind, so why did she say it?  She desperately tried to shove the thought back into the pits of her brain, tried to extinguish the flames she just conceived in her heart. But her heart wouldn't stop repeating the words, her knees wouldn't stop wobbling.

She threw herself onto her bed and shoved her head into a pillow. Sophie told her mind to shut up.  SHUT UP, she screamed at her thoughts. But it just kept repeating it over and over and over again: in love with him, in love with him, in love with him.

With him...Keefe.

Keefe, her best friend who'd she known for years. It couldn't possibly be. She couldn't dare let herself imagine it....imagine what it would be like. What would his lips feel like?

She had meant it as a joke, but it had triggered some sort of cataclysmic collapse in her head, set a chain of events into motion that made the hair on her back stand up and her stomach fly with fluttery things, and her heart beat out of her chest. She had never felt her heart like that before. Never felt that alive before.  

In love, in love, in love. In love with him.

Once you say something like that, you can't take it back. You can't just pretend like you didn't say it.  Can't just rewind time and stop yourself from thinking it. She wished she could grab the words and put them in a box, bury them in the pastures, and let them fade in time.

But she couldn't.  And now she couldn't think of anything else.  The question drowned out everything else in the world.

Love, love, love, love, LOVE, her brain screamed at her. So demanding, like an ocean roaring. Who knew love could sound so violent? 'Not this time', said love. It wouldn't let her ignore her feelings this time.  And now only those blue eyes occupied her thoughts. Those blue eyes that were so deep she could drown in them. Suddenly she had the overwhelming urge to rush to him. To lock her eyes with his and pour over every feature of his face. She needed to know, to confirm that he was really as gorgeous as her latest memory of him. Was he really that beautiful? Did his laugh really feel like the breeze on a summer day? Did being held by him really feel like coming home? Did talking to him really feel like exchanging stories by a campfire? Was she remembering right?  Or was this just some fantasy her crazy mind had made up? Had it always been this way or was her memory just over exaggerating in the midst of having been deprived of him?

Suddenly everything, every single moment they ever had together, seemed different.

All those times....

Before he left to the Neverseen, when their boots were almost touching, when his breath tickled her cheeks and felt warm like the sunshine.

When the use of the word love in his letter seemed to be glowing from the page, begging for her consideration.

When the intensity of his stare always made her heartbeat change rhythm and her cheeks warm with anticipation. 

All those times she held his hand, and leaned on his shoulder, and how he always felt like home.  

All those times they had window sleepovers and she fell asleep with the last thing she laid her eyes on being him every time.

All this time, her brain was so loud that she couldn't hear herself think. Her nights were never quiet enough for her to contemplate their relationship. To ponder why she cared about him so much, why she always chose him. But now the world seemed to have nothing but time for silence, leaving her to be practically tortured by the bombardment of 'what if's' in her head.

All of those moments: now painted some kind of different color.  All those times, had all of those words and touches really meant something more? Was every squeeze of each other's hand some way of saying something more; every whisper of reassurances the shadow of what they couldn't say? Now that she thought of it that way, she couldn't unsee it. Being friends was one thing and being in love was something entirely different. That would make sense, that would be a rational explanation for how she was acting. Suddenly everything seemed different. It was like she was seeing him for the first time.

 All those moments, slowly building up.

All this time it had been slow, and now all at once.

His smile, his laugh, his words, his touch — how did she not notice it before? Every little thing about him...oh God — it was so perfect.  He was so...so... there weren't enough words to describe him. So she would settle for everything. He was so everything.

She wanted to remember every moment, to write it all down and reread him over and over and over again.

She went over him in her mind.  There wasn't anything she didn't lo...

No, she thought. Don't say it. Not that word. Once you say it, you can never, ever take it back.

But she said it anyway: "love."

And at the end of it all, her heart was set in stone and a single terrifying conclusion reached her mind: She was in love with him.

She looked in the mirror and the girl who stared back was a totally different person than she last remembered. She repeated the truth to herself: "You are in love."

A/N: Thank you for reading! Please don't be a silent reader and let me know what you think in the comments!  By the way, you should listen to the songs You Are In Love and Enchanted (by you-know-who) after reading this. They fit the vibe and were inspiration to me.

Published: 11/3/22

Word Count: 1,587