A/n:thank you guys so much for the love and the kind messages that you all sent. I appreciate you all 💛💛
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"So this is it?" she murmured. "We're really doing this?"
"I don't know that there's anything else we can do. At least we gave it a real shot though right? You can go back to how it was before now... you were probably happier then."
She gave me an undecipherable smile. "For what it's worth, I'm really sorry. This isn't how I envisioned things going between us."
"It's fine Mani," I pulled her into my arms, simultaneously wanting comfort while not wanting to look her in the eyes anymore.
A few hours earlier...
Normani
"So why are you here today Normani?"
I rubbed my temples, my attempts to ease the aching that seemed to emanate from everywhere in my head futile. My headache was both as a result of the copious amounts of alcohol that I consumed the night before and lack of sleep and after snapping at several people and making someone cry, I decided that I needed to see someone before I really hurt someone.
"Normani?"
My eyes snapped up to her face, "Mhmm?"
"Why are you here?"
"I'm losing control, of everything." I looked down at my trembling hands; all the reasons not to do this bounced around my mind, as though my anxiety had awakened the negative thoughts in my subconscious. Shutting my eyes, I took slow breaths, relief flooding my veins when the calm began to settle over me again.
Dr Sullivan was watching me with an unfathomable expression when I finally opened my eyes again. "Coping mechanism. I get panic attacks sometimes."
"What triggers them?"
"Feeling like I'm not in control."
"What's making you feel like you're not in control?"
"Nine months ago, my life was perfectly fine," I mumbled, smiling when I realized what I had said. "I don't have a baby, I have a girlfriend for the record."
Dr Sullivan smiled, "how did getting a girlfriend change things?"
"She wrote an article last year about how falling in love is irrational and it's like free falling into an abyss. And if you fall for the right person, you never hit the ground. I think it's more like swimming. One minute your head is bobbing above the water, you're floating and the next, you're not. And you can't find the hand that's supposed to be keeping you tethered to reality. I feel like I'm drowning, and it's my fault that she's not pulling me out."
"Why do you feel that it's your fault?"
My mind instantly conjured up images of Dinah in tears last night. What should have been shrugged off as just a weird misunderstanding, turned into probably one of the worst fights that we've ever had. All because she hadn't gotten the message that I sent her about having dinner with Eli and our mothers, and she'd found out because she followed me.
We should have talked about the chasm that had formed between us, slowly widening with every argument we had and driving us further away from each other. That's what should have happened. Instead of us sitting down together, she walked away and I didn't follow, each of us retreating to our corners as we mentally armed ourselves for a battle that I won, if winning is measured by who ends up in tears and who doesn't. Really we both lost.
"I'm trying to protect her, like I promised I would. And I'm pushing her away to do it. So she can't even see that anything's going on with me."
"What are you trying to protect her from?"
"Losing everything she's worked her ass off to get just so she can be with me." There was a heavy sensation in my chest, like that feeling you get minutes before you're about to perform in front of a crowd. "On the one hand, I want to go back to how things were before. On the other hand, I want her. Consequences be damned."
"It seems like you have a choice to make."
"Except I don't, because even if I break up with her, it won't be the same after," I began, moving my hands theatrically in front of me as I tried to explain my thoughts to Dr Sullivan.
Staying up all night wouldn't have made a difference to my exhaustion. Why I had even bothered to get into bed to begin with was beyond me. By the time the sun came up and my alarm went off, my sheets were tangled up and I was dismayed that I had barely slept more than a few hours, most of which were fitful hours of confusing dreams.
"I want to reverse time so that we never become friends because then we won't be in this mess, but the problem with that is that I kind of like how things progressed." I was pacing now and my hands were moving frantically in a flurry of emphatic gestures. "I mean sure, I'd prefer to love her out loud, everyone else be damned, but other than that, I like the me that I am when I'm with her. I can be goofy, and nerdy, and girly and she just loves me regardless. She makes me want to jump out of planes and jump off cliffs."
The corners of Dr Sullivan's lips turned up into a small smile. "You love her."
"I do."
"Why can't you tell her what's going on?"
I stopped pacing briefly and silence lingered in the air for a moment as I tried to collect my thoughts. "She'll try to quit and I know she'll regret it. Especially if things don't workout between us."
"Would you walk away from your job—"
"–Oh in a heartbeat. But," I held my finger up as I sat down again. "I've thought about it, extensively. And I decided that I'm okay with walking away from it all, even if six months or 60 years down the line, she decides she doesn't want me anymore. She's worth that type of sacrifice."
"Aren't you?"
I shrugged, "Dinah is the kind of woman who wears her heart on her sleeve and puts all her cards on the table, face up. She loves recklessly and gets hurt because of it. It doesn't matter that she thinks I'm worth that type of sacrifice because I need to show her that she's worth it to me and that she should be worth it to whomever she spends the rest of her life with, even if it's not me."
"You're pushing her away to show her that she's worth that kind of sacrifice?"
"My delivery needs a lot of work. I'm working on finding a way to not hurt her to protect her. I don't like seeing her cry,"
I didn't feel better when I eventually left her office, I also didn't feel worse though. Not wanting to go home to my empty apartment immediately, I decided to walk for a while to try and clear my thoughts.
By the time I got home, I had formulated a plan, but my plans for a quiet night were interrupted when I got home and saw Dinah in my apartment. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she quickly wiped away her tears when she saw me. Any lingering resentment that I felt from the things she'd said to me in her anger dissipated, replaced by the sudden tightness that I felt in my chest.
"Please don't cry babe," I murmured, heart breaking when my words had the opposite effect.
"I'm sorry," she said, her voice barely above a whisper as she stood, "I never meant to make you feel like I don't trust you. It's just— I don't know what's happening with us. Something's changed and I don't know how to fix it. The worst part is that when you tell me you love me, I believe you, but I still feel this dread in my heart and it's not because you've been avoiding me, it's why."
I didn't go to her, partially because she was pacing, but also because the wedge I had driven between us had pushed us further apart than I realized. I had never seen her that emotional, and certainly not because of anything that I had done to upset her. I felt a knot begin to form in my stomach, but Dinah wasn't done speaking.
"I can't help but feel like there's someone or something else that's keeping you from me and I don't know how to fight for you because I don't know what I'm fighting against in the first place. And I love you Normani, but I can't—I won't compete with anything or anyone for you. We both deserve better than that, and I have way too much self respect to let myself go through something like that again. And I'm not going to push you to be here or to talk to me if you don't want to but you're obviously going through something, and you need space to deal with whatever it is."
"Dinah—"
She cut me off. "–I don't want to end up hating or resenting you. And I can't avoid that if I stay with you and things continue as they are. So maybe we need space away from each other."
Fight for her...
Despite her tears, Dinah actually seemed calm and collected, like she'd had time to think this through.
Please don't do this. I cleared my throat. "I understand and for what it's worth, I love you, and I'm really sorry. You deserve better."
I know things between us aren't great but they're not even close to bad enough to just call it quits.
Dinah's face fell. "Right," she answered, disappointment lacing her tone. "I brought your stuff, and I got my things. I hope you don't mind my being here. Your spare key is on the hook. Can I have mine please."
"That was quick," I mumbled as I took it off the key chain.
"There's no point dragging this out further," she answered. Once her spare key was back on her key chain, she picked up a small travel bag, that presumably had all her stuff. I shifted uncomfortably, I came home with the intention of trying to find a way to stay with her and protect her, she came over with the intention of ending things between us. Not that I blamed her.
Dinah
"I guess I'll see you around at work," I mumbled, trying my best to keep the disappointment out of my voice.
I was at the door when she finally spoke again. "Dinah wait, please don't go? Things aren't that bad between us are they? We still love each other, I can make this better—"
"–how?"
The sudden increase in the frequency of our fights had led me to another discovery about her. Normani hated feeling like she was losing control of herself. And when she was dangerously close to doing so, the right curve of her upper lip would twitch and she tilted her head as she studied me.
Normani shut her eyes, and I could see that her frustration levels were already rising dangerously high, but I needed to hear the right words without having to tell her what to say.
My stomach growled, and her lips stretched into a smile that I hadn't seen in a while. "Can I get us dinner? It'll be easier to focus if your stomach isn't empty?"
"Fine."
"Do you mind if I shower? It's been a long day," she said quietly.
"Okay."
I sat down on the couch while she went upstairs. A few minutes passed before I finally heard the shower going.
–Flashback–
I smiled at the memory of Normani pretending she didn't know how to skate.
She's been lying to you for a while, the thought popped into my head and I quickly banished it. I pressed play, and my eyes welled up with tears when September started blaring through the speakers. There was a quiet knock on my door before Ally and Lauren walked in a moment later.
I quickly wiped my eyes as I folded the ridiculously colorful sweater that she'd worn on our date. They both wrapped their arms around me and I felt the tears begin to stream down my face in full force.
"I'm okay," I murmured when the song ended, "she just seems to have a thing for this song."
"Are you sure this is what you want to do?" Ally asked, her voice soft as she rubbed circles into my back. "This seems more painful than it should be if it's just space."
I nodded, "I'm sure. If we keep going like this, we'll break each other's hearts."
"But—"
"–Laur you didn't hear the things she said to me. The things I said to her. And I can't even really blame her because this time, I was the one that misunderstood, and I was the one who pushed her."
Lauren frowned, "is this all her stuff?"
I nodded, "yeah. I'll go and get my stuff whenever she's not home."
"Why don't you and Ally go and watch something. I'll take care of this for you?"
"You're not going to burn it are you?"
Lauren laughed, "if it was my ex, then I'd strong consider it, but no. I just don't want you to have to reminisce and hurt more than you already are."
"Thank you Laur," I murmured, squeezing her arm in thanks.
"How about we watch one of those cooking shows and try to replicate whatever they're making?"
"Do that because I am going to be peckish in approximately two hours."
***
The food arrived just after she finished showering, and fifteen minutes later, I had set the table for some reason.
It was difficult to not immediately be defensive when I sat down opposite Normani. And this time, I couldn't even blame Normani, who looked completely relaxed after her shower.
She poured us each a glass of wine before sitting down across from me. "It's been a while since we've done this."
"Yeah well you've been working a lot," I replied.
"You say that like it's a bad thing." Normani leaned back in her chair as she took a sip of her wine. I would have believed that she was as relaxed as she appeared when I sat down had I not seen the way the right curve of her upper lip twitched.
"You were telling me how you'd make things better."
"You didn't answer my question." She leaned forward.
"You didn't ask one."
A smile played on her lips, but it lacked all the playfulness and warmth that I had come to love about her smile. "Whatever."
"Yeah whatever, it's not like it matters anyway right? Nothing matters but the assumptions we make about what the other's thinking. Nothing matters but letting this resentment that we have fester instead of talking about it. We seem to have lost the ability to communicate entirely and I accept that blame because I allowed it to get here, but tell me where this gets us if not heart broken right now or in a few months when this all ends badly?"
Normani pulled her knees close to her body and took a deep breath. "I don't know where we went wrong."
We both fell silent as though somehow not talking would delay the inevitable outcome of our conversation. "You stopped talking to me, to anyone else."
"I'll communicate more. I know that me keeping things from you is what got us here in the first place. So I'll be better. I'll go to therapy and deal with my issues—"
"–You'll go to therapy and deal with what issues? How will you communicate more?"
"My issues with my friends and everything. And I just will, I'll talk more. Please just tell—"
"–I'm not telling you what to do because clearly that's part of the problem and that's why you've been avoiding me. And I'm tired of always being the one to tell you things and later being accused of trying to take your control from you."
Normani's eyes widened, "that was said in the heat of the moment. You know I didn't mean it."
"Still, maybe the problem is that you always need me to tell you. You needed me to tell you that I wanted this to be exclusive, you needed me to hold your hand through every step of this relationship. You needed me to tell you that you should talk to Eli and get the answers you knew you wanted and needed. And you felt the need to lie to me about getting those answers even though I was the one who told you to speak to him, knowing what I knew. You needed me to absolve you of your guilt after your fight with your friends. You always need me to tell you and maybe I'm tired of that."
"I—" Normani tried to respond, but I wasn't done.
"I can't do this, and I'm sure as hell not going to accept empty promises from you."
"Dinah please don't do this. We can—"
"–What?" I asked, ignoring the frustration etched on her features. "You're saying what you think I want to hear to make me stay. But tomorrow you'll wake up early and stay late at work just to avoid spending time with me. You'll do it the next day, and the day after until I get fed up again, then we'll just repeat this conversation. I deserve better. I'm not one of your hoes Normani, you don't get to just start giving me enough to keep me coming back. I deserve to matter to someone and I deserve better than to suddenly start feeling like I'm not enough!" I cursed myself when my voice broke at the end.
"You're so wrong." Normani came around to my side of the table. "You are enough Dinah Jane, don't you dare starting thinking that you're not."
She kissed me, and in the back of my mind I knew that being with Normani was like breathing. It was natural and easy.
Desperation, urgency and need took over as we all but ripped each other's clothes off. Despite the frenzy that had led to us ending up naked on her couch, Normani took her time exploring every part of me, hands roaming over my body as though she were memorizing me.
Something about the way we spent the night felt reminiscent of our first time, when we had spent the night and the early hours of the morning, discovering and acquainting ourselves with the contours of each other's bodies. I allowed myself to bask in the warmth of her moans and screams; the intensity of her gaze set me ablaze.
Perhaps Normani believed that leaving was easier than staying, pulling her close and promising to fight. She was wrong. The memory of her expression right before she cleared her throat and the words that she spoke into the void between us made it clear that she wasn't going to fight for me broke me. At least until she did. I couldn't forget how she'd gone from standing in front of me, posture regal, to shoulders sagging and head hanging low with each nail that I attempted to drive into the coffin that I had shoved our relationship into.
It was late when we drifted off, and early when we finally woke up. Well, when I woke up alone. I threw the covers off, and after putting on one of her shirts, I found Normani downstairs on the couch.
"Hey," I murmured. "Did you get any sleep?"
Normani smiled, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. "A bit. Come over here."
I sat down beside her, but instead of leaning into me, or putting her arm around me, Normani pulled her knees up to her chest and continued staring straight ahead. Her phone was unlocked beside her, but besides the picture of us, I couldn't see who she was texting or what she was saying to them.
She locked her phone and put it aside. My heart beat as if it would rather stop, and thoughts flew around chaotically.
"I love you, you know that right?"
"I do," I answered, my voice barely above a whisper. "I love you too."
Normani hesitated as she reached out to take my hands in hers. "The only thing I've ever wanted was to make you happy, and for you to have your dreams. I'd do anything for you."
"I know Mani," I mumbled, "I'd do anything for you too."
Her eyes snapped up to my face. "Anything?"
I nodded, "Anything."
"What if I wanted to move to an Island somewhere? Would you move—"
"–I'd go anywhere to be with you Mani."
Normani tilted her head as she studied me, "What if that's the place that I belong? Would stay there with me?"
"We'd work something out."
"What exactly could we work out?"
I shrugged, "I don't know babe, I'd try and find a job that would let me write from wherever I am."
Normani dropped my hands, and I sensed that I had failed a test that I didn't even know I was taking.
"Mani?"
"We should take a break."
I frowned, "we can make figure things out—"
"–I don't want space, being away from you is the last thing I want right now, but you need it. And it's selfish of me to ask you not to do something that you need to do, when I can't promise that I'll be better."
"What is going on with you? Why are you suddenly pulling away from me?" She looked away. "Is there someone else?"
The hurt in her eyes was enough for me to believe her when she spoke, "there's no one, I promise. I love you, and you're the only person that I want."
"So what is it?" I sobbed.
"I can't tell you," Normani murmured, and for the first time in weeks, I knew she was telling me the truth. "But you deserve better than I can give you right now."
Normani turned to face me, she reached across the space between us to brush my hair out of my face. "I'm so sorry Dinah Jane."
"Why do I feel like this isn't just a break, or space for a little while?"
"If it's meant to be between us, then we'll find our way back to each other. And if it's not, then I know you'll find someone who will love you with everything they have, you'll wake up every day feeling special, and there'll never be a moment of doubt with them."
"But I had that with you..."
Normani stood, "I know... I'm sorry, for everything."
"Don't be," I shrugged. "If anything, you have given me a lot of writing material, so thank you for that."
I quickly got dressed, and Normani insisted on walking me downstairs to Jax's car. He took my bag, and sensing that the conversation we were having was private, he went back into the car.
"So this is it?" I murmured. "We're really doing this?"
"I don't know that there's anything else we can do."
"At least we gave it a real shot though right? You can go back to how it was before now... you were probably happier then."
She gave me an undecipherable smile. "For what it's worth, I'm really sorry. This isn't how I envisioned things going between us."
"It's fine Mani," I pulled her into my arms, simultaneously wanting comfort while not wanting to look her in the eyes anymore.
Jax started driving as soon as I was in the car.
"I'm sorry for waking you so early."
He waved me off, "I'm always up early Miss Dinah."
We both fell silent, but the air remained tense with words unsaid. Jax didn't even glance at me through the rearview mirror as he often did with his smile that said he knew more than he let on. And when we finally got to my apartment, he didn't try and insist on carrying my bag upstairs for me.
"Thank you Jax."
"Would you like me to wait for you?"
I frowned, "no you don't have to do that anymore."
I knew by the look on his face, that I had answered the question that he was afraid to ask. "It's been a pleasure Miss Dinah."
I looked to the ground, trying to hide the fact that I was dangerously close to crying. "Take care of yourself Jax."
"You too Miss Dinah."
Kamila was home, but she was still asleep and probably not waking up for a few more hours considering she had an event last night. I put my keys on the dining table and left the bag next to it before collapsing onto the couch.
At first there was silence, a foggy haze settled over my mind. I could a lump in my throat as the tears that I had been holding back since I left Normani began to form.
Finally, they burst forth, spilling down my face angrily as I felt the muscles of my chin tremble. I never learnt how to cry with style, silently, with perfectly shaped tears rolling down my cheeks from cute, blood shot eyes, leaving no streaks on my face. Kamila often said I sounded like a distressed child.
I had no clue when she came out of her room, but I suddenly felt her arms around me as she reached into the hollowness and pulled me out.
"It's okay I'm here now."