You can't tell the exact moment when the realization slides and locks in. Perhaps like tides, your feelings had come and gone, ebbing and coming and you got scared of trying to think of wanting her-- of loving her, because you always thought she would never reciprocate.
So you cope up, and you release your pent-up frustrations over faceless girls, scantily clad, throwing themselves at your feet, and you try to drown on the sounds and lights of the night and convince yourself this was the best for you and for her.
But you knew otherwise.
Then you start to fuck up one time, and she glares at you and that's it, the remaining thread you have, that glimmer of hope, dangerously tipping into oblivion. She offered you silence after, and you wish there was white noise over her thinly veiled anger.
But there was none.
You're both prancing around for quite some time. No one liked to offer their hearts out first; it means weakness, it means defeat, it means you loving more than her, but you do it. She watches you with a sad smile as you laid every storm, every thunder, every large swell of the sea that resided in you.
And she sighs and tells you it's fine to nurse storms inside your heart, that it is not that calm that bids love, it is the chaos.
She smiles, rests her head on your cheek, and the storms inside you grew, and you knew right there you covet the idea of her.
Perhaps she liked broken things, those that needed mending. Looking for others were second nature for her, giving unconditionally was easy like breathing.
Were you broken? You start to find cracks in every bit, every fibre, but she cups your face and tells you it doesn't matter, she never looked at your cracks, she only looked at the parts that were whole and complete, that who you are, your heart and your soul, they're more than enough to fill the gaps in you.
You return the smile she gives.
I like you.
It came out of nowhere. You were in her place, a console in hand, a cold beer just a hand's reach in front. She was sitting beside you on the cold floor, and she froze when the words thudded on the white walls.
She's at it again, her frustrating silence. You move and drop the console, place your hands on her sides. She made a little noise at the back of her throat, refusing to look at you, and you were insanely aware of how close her lips were against yours and there was almost a maddening want to graze your teeth on her collarbones thudding in your chest.
James.
She whispers your name and before better judgement can pull you back on the surface you dive in and kiss her.
She pulls away and something shifts inside you.
No, you don't like her.
You love her.
The idea that is her would never be enough.
