Two Arts

Chapter 13

A.N. I can't wait for the comments on this one.

The rest of the afternoon with Sadie at my place wasn't very eventful.

Not if one can ignore the infinite amount of times either Sadie's or my eyes got blatantly stuck on the other one's mouth, or the way I was eventually even envious of my cat once Sadie started to pick him up and hold him tighter to her chest. His content little body pressed between her boobs. She'd kiss his forehead and say, "He must've been sleeping on your pillow, he smells like you."

And I knew that she meant that if I genuinely wanted to, she could've held and kissed me instead, but we both knew that that would have taken a turn for a more dangerous gray area.

One where it would've been difficult to peel my hands off of her, and not only because I wouldn't have wanted to—that was the easy part, I wasn't an animal—but because Sadie wouldn't have wanted me to, and with that, I had the hardest time, depriving her of what she wanted, in particular when it was so easy to give it to her.

And so nice.

And it would've felt so right.

But it was wrong.

So I couldn't.

But man did I want to.

My heart raced at every hint of a touch, even when she was in my arms. It was sufficient for her to shift slightly for my body to react way out of proportion and be ready for all of the things that couldn't happen.

Before she left she had asked me if she could borrow one of my hoodies. She said it was easier to avoid the paparazzi if her outfit was different from earlier. I wasn't sure whether I believed her, but if she wanted to take my clothes with her I wasn't going to stop her, excuses made up for it or not.

She could've had anything she wanted from me.

That new awareness gave me an unreasonable sense of peace.

I couldn't pinpoint if it was the type of peace one gets from knowing that things would eventually work out, because I wasn't blind, Sadie did look at me in the same exact way she did when we were together in high school, like I could rearrange all of the stars in the sky just for her, and I was likely to do so.

Or if it was the kind of peace one gets from knowing for a fact that they're completely and utterly screwed, like after receiving a death sentence. Cause then I had a good sense that it was Sadie, and it had been Sadie all along, and I wasn't sure anything could be done about it with the way our lives were set up.

I texted back and forth with Colin in the following few days, and with every text I sent, I felt more and more guilty.

I felt guilty towards him because he had no idea of what was coming. I hadn't given him any clues of our imminent breakup. I didn't want to spook him while he was out for work with the band, and I didn't want to ruin that for him too. There was no rush in telling him about it right then. I wanted to do it in person, I owed him that after all the years together, with a decent explanation and all.

I felt guilty towards Sadie because irrationally I felt like it was wrong for me to be tied to someone who wasn't her, it felt as if I was betraying that bond that I was never able to find with anyone else.

I texted back and forth with Sadie, from when she left my apartment, leaving her hoodie behind and taking mine, 'till she'd come over again.

The conversation remained lighthearted and friendly as if we were catching up after a summer apart. She'd tell me about her job, who she had met, and what she had done, and I'd tell her some about Jesse and class.