like the bullet you never saw coming; beth

[adna]

one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing
one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling
one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide

He doesn’t meet her and she feels her heart constrict painfully in her chest.

He keeps himself separate and even though she is aching to find that softness of him, to uncover it again, she doesn’t press it—not anymore. She just stands there and feels the space between them as a physical thing. She feels it like an ache, like a dagger buried in her belly. She wraps herself around the pain of it and then lets it simmer, fester, until she feels like she may go mad with the longing and the need.

When he looks away, her face falls, the anger rushing out of her.

“Maybe let me decide who I think is worth missing,” she says and her voice is quieter now, softer. She wishes that he could see her through her eyes. She wishes that he could see how much of him she has thought about—how much she has come to care about. She wishes that she could press it into his palm like a gift and then let it sink into his bones until her truth became his reality. Until it shored up his heart.

But she nows that life doesn’t work that way, and she doesn’t expect it to.

She doesn’t expect him to understand her—or even want to, after how she’s been.

And how could she blame him?

So she continues to just watch him, feeling her heart pound painfully when he gives her that sad smile, when she studies his face. “It’s okay, you know,” this is quieter, as if she is scared others will overhear, and her smile is a shadow of a thing on her face. “If you didn’t miss me. That’s okay.”

Adna rolls her shoulder, trying to shrug it off like it hasn’t already buried deep inside of her.

“Is it odd to say that I would rather have the suffering?”

Another swallow. “I would suffer a thousand times over for that night.”

ADNA