The Sync

23rd of August 2014

I was waiting for him at the top of the stairs. My shoes were off and my hair was laced in curls down my back. It was raining, but only spitting slightly. I knew nobody would be down at the beach on a day like this. No I wasn't expecting to be getting wet or anything, but to be perfectly honest, I wasn't entirely sure what I was expecting. I was wearing my worn out jeans, with holes on my knees from going camping three weeks earlier. I had a long sleeved shirt on underneath about three jumpers. I'd been shopping the Saturday beforehand, and had bought a cheap $20 woollen jumper. They were all keeping me warm quiet nicely, when I didn't think about how cold my toes were.

I'd know his car and his plate anywhere, as I watched him drive up Beach Road. Pulling into the third space on the row closest to the entry, I saw him take off his seatbelt. Lifting one leg out the car, he failed to see me at first, although I doubt that was the case. His sister Christine reversed and continued back down the long road, with it's arms outstretched in each direction. He was wearing what he always wears. Black trackies, his state footy jumper and the ridiculously expensive Globes I bought him for his birthday. I had always imagined his draws and wardrobe filled with endless amounts of black trackies and state jumpers. I even checked the first time I stayed at his place. Walking at a painfully fast pace towards me, I stood up straight and prepared myself for incessant begging and apologising. His long arms and broad shoulders engulfed me into him. Pulling me closer and closer towards his chest, I didn't have time to react. I was paralysed, unable to move. My arms hung like the branches off trees, alive yet unwilling to move. He's stood there holding me like a rag doll, sucking all the breath out of me.

Scott hadn't touched me in almost a month. We hadn't seen each other in weeks. His warm embrace sent goosebumps down my arms. The silence between us had been going on, long before he thought that space was our only option. Regardless of our perfectly happy nine months beforehand, I knew we weren't designed for circumstances like those.
"Bells, I'm sorry, look I can't tell you how sorry I am. It was stupid of me to even think that having more time away from you was a good idea. I couldn't go five fucking seconds, without thinking about you. I can't even remember how many times I tried picking up the phone and calling. I'd get so close, until the look on your face the last time I saw you, flashed across my mind. But the sick part is, I know it's me that did that to you." Scott is too vulnerable when he talks like that. Listening makes all my anger deflate and I have to be strong to support him. Because without someone to hold him up in times like those, he can't maintain a rational sate of mind. He collapses and that only brings more pain.

The memory of being told by Scott what had happened, danced across my closed eye lids. The fact that he had done it before didn't really bother me, because I knew that we didn't need to be with each other that way. But being told was like a bullet to the chest. I could feel myself bleeding out. He had gone pale from the moment the heavy tears had started rolling down my swollen cheeks. I had gone numb from the moment the words had slipped from his lips. Everything was blurred, I couldn't think, I couldn't feel, I could only cry. But even those tears I had no control of. Sitting down on the kitchen floor of that strangers home, knees to my chest, suffocating on my one life, I'd never felt pain as afflicting.

"I don't know what else I can do. It's driving me insane. You're my Bells and I can't do without you. I need you; I need you so, so much. I need your smile to make me smile. I need those tiny hand to hold. I need those baby freckles to take. I need those lips to find comfort in when I'm lost. My heart beats only in time with yours."
"Stop, just stop! Don't you think it's driving me insane? Don't you think I have no clue what the hell I'm supposed to do? You had sex with another girl Scott, and you did it knowingly. Jesus, it kills me every day, because I wake up to the memory of you telling me. Don't you think that I can't breathe knowing someone else has taken another piece of you away from me?" The silence has retuned between us, although this time it's a welcomed friend. "I agreed to see you not because I wanted to listen to you whine about how hard you have it. I came because I thought that all it was going to take was one look. All it was going to take was one glimpse at you, and I'd know what to do. But the truth is, looking at you just cloudy everything."