Joey's POV:
A week later, I sat in my room, watching the last episode of Fairy Tale, after which I was undoubtedly going to rewatch Sword Art Online for the third time.
I was sort of in a daze. I often found myself staring off into the distance, not really thinking about any one thing. Sort of just, thinking. My extensive view of Los Angeles offered many things to think about. I thought about the hundreds of homeless people living in the same city as so many people who could afford to help them. They were busy trying to find out where their next meal was coming from, or where they were going to sleep; and I was laying in my warm bed, in front of my flat screen TV, crying just as hard as them, but over the fact that I broke up with my girlfriend. It made me seem like a conceited brat.
I found my eyes glazing over from time to time, every time my brain brought back a memory of the past. The tears would never fall, I just kept blinking them away and shoving them back into the dam that was filling behind my eyes. To help, I thought about those homeless people. But, I knew eventually, the dam was going to break. I was just procrastinating it.
As the weeks went by, I began to worry. About nothing. But nothing was everything, just under the name of "nothing" because I was worrying about nothing in particular. But I would get sudden waves of anxiety, like I was going to fall down the steps and die, or David and Meghan were going to leave and never come back. I was just worrying, so nothing became everything. But worrying like this was the worst way to do it, because it was like the ocean, I was drifting abroad, in a wavering sea of worry, and eventually it would be so terrible, and that's when the ocean threw me onto shore, in a wave, my skin scraping against the rocks. And then the water would receed, but I would be left lying on the banks, and it would feel like it was over. Until another wave came along and pulled me back out to sea. And this, was a constant cycle.
So I went to a psychiatrist. I described what I was feeling in the exact ways as I did just now, and so I was prescribed medication to help with the problem.
It worked so well. It was like I'd been given a life jacket in the middle of that ocean. It was like I'd been sent into a dream, where nothing was wrong, and I was on top of the world. But the thing with dreams is, eventually, you have to wake up. I can't decide if I woke up or if the dream simply became a nightmare.
Bethany's POV:
I was a wreck for the longest time. I knew I was a bitch, and so did everybody else. I never meant to be what I had become. I felt terrible.
Joey did so much for me. I never did anything for him, except hurt him. I wished I could make it different, and I wished that I could get Joey back. But even I knew it was too late.
I always thought of this saying: "When you drop a glass, it breaks. And if you try hard enough, you can put it back together, but it will never look, feel, or function the same again."
That's how I knew that it would be for Joey and I if he ever forgave me. We would simply be a fragile put-back-together mess of a couple. It was better than having the broken pieces of us, but I wasn't sure it was worth the cracks that would remain forever.
But I'm not even sure I would get something like that, a broken and scarred mess of put-back-together memories and feelings. Sometimes when you drop the glass just right, it doesn't break into a dozen pieces, but it shatters into a thousand tiny little shards that can never be fixed, and if you try, the small pieces of glass only give you cuts and hurt you as you attempt to repair something you so desperately want back. That's how it would be for us. I would try to fix what we once had, but there are too many small pieces to put back together, and I would only get hurt trying.
As I sat on my hotel room bed, I thought of all this, pondering it and turning over the emotions in my mind. I felt the tears running down my cheeks, warm and wet, falling onto the bed and soaking the sheets, forming small circles. Scooting down under the covers, still dressed in my jeans and sweater, I buried my head into the pillow, letting my emotions flow out onto the fabric in a thousand little droplets.
"I love him so much." Those were the last words I said before the tears pulled me under and I fell into blissful unconciousness.
Joey's POV:
This must be the worst part of my life.
It seemed like it was, an eternal winter where there was nothing warm to thaw the icy layer that had frozen over my mind. Perhaps my whole life had been this winter, and the only thing keeping me from noticing was the adrenaline that one day I would find my summer. And I did. It was Bethany. She was the sun in my life, hiding behind clouds my whole life while I searched for her. When the clouds receded, she was there, the sun bathing my world in light and warmth. The only problem is that there can be dozens of clouds in the sky, but there will only ever be one sun. And now that summer had gone, I finally realized that my life was frozen, and I gave in to the cold around me that had been pulling and taunting me, trying to get me to break. It finally won.
I stared out through my window, at the overcast sky covering Los Angeles. I felt a wetness on my cheek, and as I rose a hand to feel it, realized it was the first tear I had shed in weeks.
Another tear followed the first. And then another. And another. Before I knew it, I was drowning in the sea of tears around me. I sobbed, my mouth open in the shape only possible when you're experiencing the worst pain ever, my eyes squeezed shut so tight that I wasn't sure they would ever reopen. I guess the dam finally broke.
Through the tears and the pain I managed to fathom one clear thought:
I love her so much.
The End.
