I Pretend You're Mine

16. Tears

Lucy scrambled for the pair of jeans and pulled the ring out of the pocket where it had been stored. With a sigh of relief, she inspected the engagement ring and had to force herself to keep from putting the piece of jewelry back on her finger. Instead, she whispered, "Tamara?"

She looked up from the book she was reading in bed to make eye contact with Lucy. "Yeah?"

Cradling the ring and treating it as the precious thing it had become to her, Lucy tip toed over to Tamara and sat on the edge of her bed. "Can you hold onto this for me?"

"Your ring?"

"It's not really mine. Tim and I were never really engaged I guess."

Tamara could see that Lucy's lip was quivering and her eyes were growing wetter by the second. She reached out to hold her friend's hand. "Maybe it was a fake engagement, but you have a real relationship."

"Not anymore," Lucy's voice was barely audible due to the emotion coating her throat, making it hard to speak.

"You two broke up? You were only really together for like 2 days including today! What the hell happened?"

"What I was afraid of. I hate that I was right, but...I just lost the most important relationship in my life." She could not hold back anymore and the dam broke; her tears fell freely as she hugged her arms around herself.

Tamara set the engagement ring on her nightstand before pulling Lucy down to lay on the bed beside her. She wrapped herself around her friend and held her tightly. "It's gonna be okay, Lucy," she tried to say comfortingly.

"For once, I really don't think so." Even when the oxygen was almost gone and her vision was blurred as she was curled inside a barrel buried in the ground years ago, Lucy still had the smallest semblance of hope that she would be okay. She had faith that Tim would be able to get to her in time. Lucy tried to keep singing, at least in her head, and she held onto the chance that she would be okay once Tim found her. But now as she was curled up on Tamara's bed with plenty of oxygen, Lucy felt like she was suffocating, since all the hope for her and Tim to be something more had evaporated, and now she was fated to spend the rest of her life without him.

As she tasted the saltiness of her own tears, Lucy bitterly regretted ever allowing her feelings to get in the way of what was supposed to be a fake engagement. She cried herself to sleep, mourning the loss of Tim.

♡ ⋆˙⟡ ♡ ˙⋆ ⟡ ♡ ⋆˙⟡ ♡˙⋆ ⟡ ♡

Barely awake after not sleeping well, Lucy looked over to see Tamara beside her instead of Tim, and she missed him. She saw her engagement ring on the nightstand, and while she was half asleep, Lucy slipped it on her finger as if on instinct without even really noticing.

Soon after, she went down to the kitchen and started making breakfast. Lucy really wanted to make Tim's special pancakes, but she had not been following him closely enough to note the recipe, since she had been so preoccupied by TIM to pay attention. After taking out a bag of premade mix, she frowned at the thought of eating those instead of Tim's, but she would have to get used to living without his pancakes along with a million other small things Lucy loves about him that she would never have again.

She swallowed back from crying as she started making waffles with the premade mix, because she wanted to delay eating pancakes again.

When Tamara joined her in the kitchen, she helped cut fruit while staring at Lucy, but she did not say a single word about their conversation the night before or anything else really.

They heard the front door open, and rushed to welcome Amy back home.

"Oh, girls! I'm FINE! Stop fussing," Amy smiled as she accepted a warm group hug from Lucy and Tamara.