Shawn regrets letting her go.
In his newly furnished condo in downtown Los Angeles, Shawn dries himself off with a towel in his marble-floored restroom. He stares at the tips of his toes, a while beneath him due to his lengthy height, and sighs to himself as he shakes thoughts out of his head.
“You know, when I come to you with my problems, I want us to talk about them. I want reassurance, not an argument!” Y/N pleads back as Shawn narrows his eyes. His hair is tousled, a bit messy with his cheeks flushed red.
“So you’re saying the arguing is my fault?” Shawn promptly bites back.
“That’s not what I said, I just…”
“You just what?” Shawn takes a step forward to shorten the gap between them, “You just think i’m the reason we’ve been arguing for the past fucking month?” Y/N flinches, “You think i’m the reason that our relationship is borderline toxic?”
Shawn lowers his arms, weakening his defenseful stance “It’s always my fucking fault, isn’t it?”.
The two linger in silence for a bit, Y/N suppressing tears while Shawn remains heated, eyes scanning across his condo in Toronto. He wonders if it was the right choice, moving into the condo in LA more permanently. The fighting had begun once their time was severed, and while both of them knew it, they could never come to an agreement on it.
After a few moments, Shawn clears his throat, “Are you happy, Y/N?”
She thinks to herself for a bit. All the anger exuded, the misunderstandings, and the arguments.
“Honestly?” She wipes the back of her hand against her nose “No.” She expects him to ask how they can fix it, how they can manage their time to fix the strain that’s been put on their relationship.
“I’m not either.” Shawn admits. He hates to say it, really does considering he’d thought about being with her for the rest of his life.
“Maybe we should break up.”
And Y/N freezes, because she doesn’t want this. She doesn’t want to lose the love of her life over a series of dumb miscommunications on both of their parts. She doesn’t want to let go of something she’s grown to love so much. They weren’t always like this, and they didn’t have to be.
But looking at her favorite boy’s stern face, with his cheeks soft and his forehead wrinkled, she can’t help but agree.
The first month was terrible.
Y/N would wake up every morning with an ugly feeling in the soft part of her chest. She didn’t want to think about it, but she’d wake up and her mind would scream, “He’s not yours anymore.” and she’d be put back into the grave of heartbreak that Shawn had dug for her.
She avoided specific locations, like the pasta place they frequented back when they were together. The clothes he’d given her were in a box, stuffed in the shadows of her apartment where she wouldn’t have to see them.
But now, Y/N watches the Raptors game with her friends somewhere in Toronto. They’ve all gone out for drinks, and there’s a prominent smile painted on her face. The jersey she borrowed from a friend fits her loosely, and she enjoys her night out.
Her phone buzzes, she looks at the caller ID and a wave of anxiety crosses her being, she declines and focuses back on the game.
It hadn’t always been this way, two strangers, one of them now lingering onto the past while the other was almost fully recovered. At one point, they were very deeply in love. But Shawn had given up. He’d left, and Y/N needed someone who knew how to stay.
For the first few months after the breakup, Shawn didn’t think much of it. He’d go out, drink, party, and listen to his friends chant at him to sleep with other women (to which he had gladly obliged at the time). He’d wake up some mornings with an achy headache and a girl he couldn’t remember the name of lying next to him, her hair tousled all over his sheets.
But after a while, his mind seemed to wander to how Y/N was doing. Like if she’d gotten the job she’d hoped to get, or if she’d fixed the hole in the wall of her apartment. Or how her classes were going, and how she was holding up mentally.
His mind would linger on things for extended amounts of time. Any girl with long hair would remind him of her, dimples pressed into a strangers cheeks would have him thinking, and he inadvertently found himself scrolling through her instagram sometimes.
He’d thought about it, really thought about the situation. That was when Shawn realized that he fucked up, when all he could do was regret, while she was doing nothing but having the time of her life. Happy without him.
So Shawn took out his phone, punched in a familiar name, and hit the call button.
Y/N’s phone rings for the 3rd time that night.
She should ignore it, she has every right and every intention to ignore it. But for some reason, she finds herself excusing herself through crowds of bunched up people to pick up the call.
“Uh, hey, this is Shawn” She hears from the other side of the line, she scoffs.
“I know who this is. Why are you calling?” She wants to go back into the sports bar, and enjoy her night as soon as possible. With all the suffering she’d endured, she knew she deserved nothing less than that.
“Just…” Shawn trails off for a bit, “To see how you’re doing.” He finishes speaking, and Y/N feels a surge of anger and hurt beat up to her chest.
“Why do you care?” She swallows a pebble-sized lump in her throat, “You gave up on us, remember?”
The line goes silent for no more than 5 seconds, and Y/N hangs up. She goes back into the bar, orders a drink, and high fives her friend for the Raptors’ lead in the basketball game.
Shawn feels hurt, incredibly hurt. And, as if this could possibly make things better considering the amount of damage he’s done, he books a flight to toronto and wonders how he could possibly fix the mess he’s made.
Because somehow, even after all the times he’s washed his sheets, they still smell like her. And somehow, even after all of the words she said out of spite, she still feels like home.
Y/N just wanted to watch her Game of Thrones.
She just wanted to sit there, wth her bowl of over buttered microwaveable popcorn, and watch her TV show.
But instead, she’s met with a boy, a very familiar brunette boy at her door. With tousled hair and a suitcase behind him, he somehow still pulls off matching a trench coat with sweatpants of some sort.
“Bye.” She goes to shut the door, but Shawn reaches out to stop it before it closes.
After a childish round of push and pull, the door swings in Y/N’s direction and she’s distraught because it’s knocked over the full bag of popcorn that was resting halfway on the counter.
Shawn stares at her in awe. He’s never seen anything like it before, he thinks. The girl he’s still so deeply in love with, with her hair in a messy bun and her body clad in shorts and a baggy tee with her university’s logo on it.
“Leave.” She suggests again, as if she should even try with her knowledge of the boy in front of her.
“I’m sorry.” He immediately blurts out.
“I don’t care.” Y/N shrugs, and she turns around to make another bag of popcorn.
“Must suck.” Y/N presses numbers into the pad of her microwave before leaning down to clean up the spilt kernels from Shawn’s dramatic entrance.
“Close the door on your way out.” She exclaims, before hopping on the couch to the theme song of Game of Thrones, the microwave making a slight buzzing sound in the background.
It’s 2 am the next night.
Y/N is stumbling across the street, shoes drenched in mud and spilt whiskey as she carries herself to her apartment. She remembered locking it, a regretful decision now that she was too intoxicated to even find her key.
But when she walks into the hallway where her place is, she’s greeted by a boy, asleep on the dirty carpet of the hallway with a bouquet of red roses grasped in his fingers.
“Get up fucker.” Y/N pokes his forehead, not having to lean down much from her short stature, “Help me find my key so I can sleep in a bed.” She slurs out, the room spinning around her. She meant to poke his cheek, but coordination proved to be difficult at the moment.
Shawn shuffles, feet brushing against the carpet before he opens his eyes and prop himself up.
“Y/N?” He questions, “You’re drunk.”
“Duh dummy head. Now help me find my key!” She exclaims, just wanting to be in the safety of her own bed.
He finds it rather quickly, tied to the shoelace of her sneakers. A clever way to keep track of it. He laughs a bit at how small her feet are, but stops once he realizes that no part of her is his anymore.
“Y/N?” She rushes into the apartment, opening the fridge and grabbing several containers of food that doesn’t mesh well together.
Shawn finds it amusing, just staring at the girl he loves eating tiny pickles out of a glass jar. And before he can think about any of his actions, with his mind only focused on the fact that she was drunk beyond belief, he says it.
Y/N chokes a bit, mouth full as she spits some chewed up pickles out into the sink.
She coughs for a bit, but then fails to make any noise. All movement is halted between both of them, and just as Shawn is about to speak to end the stark silence, he hears a small whimper escape her.
Shawn feels his heart aching a bit. It throbs where it is, somehow forging a lump in his throat that makes him want to break down. He watches her crumble a bit, face scrunching as tears begin to drop out of her eyes. And all he can think to himself is that it’s his fault, that no one could be blamed for the damage but him.
“You gave up.” Y/N speaks softly, sniffles interrupting the flow of her words.
“You said I was the love of your life. Then, you gave up.”
And it hurts because Shawn knows it’s true. And even after 4 months, 4 months of ex communication and closure, she still possesses the hurt the string of words he’d always say to her to make her cry. Because he’d broken her heart, absolutely destroyed her, and he’d expected her to wait until he was ready.
Shawn wants more than anything to grab her in his arms. He wants her tears to soak through his shirt and leave puddles on his chest, he wants to tell her that it can be fixed. But how does he assure her of something that he himself is still unsure about?
“I tried to keep in touch after but you didn’t care, did you? You never did. I meant nothing to you. I tried so hard to fix things and you just - you just left.” Sniffles echo the room and Shawn desperately wishes that he could fix things. He wishes that he could’ve seen things clearer at the moment, but he was too selfish. He cared about himself, and not at all how it would affect her. The same girl he wanted a future with.
“I love you, Y/N.” He steps forward, “I want you back.”
“You’re just gonna hurt me again.” She shakes her head, tears making zig zags as they fall, “I’ve tried so had to fix myself and it’s all gonna be for nothing.”
It’s hard, and Shawn knows it is because he has the overwhelming urge to cry. Because when they’d first ended things he’d somehow convinced himself that being without her was better than all of the arguing, that she was holding him back from bigger and better things. He’d been having the time of his life while he left his favorite person shattered.
Shawn remembered the few texts that had come right after the breakup, Y/N pleading for him to speak to her. He remembered the strings of “I love you”s and “I miss you”s buzzing on his phone. He thought it was entertaining at the time, even showing his friends how needy she was.
But now, staring at the girl he’d broken and humiliated, Shawn can’t stand to think of all the cruel things he’d unknowingly done to her. Silencing her texts, making fun of her to his friends. He feels ashamed at the amount of pain he’s caused her.
“I’m sorry.” He hears her say and he’s confused, what could she possibly have to be sorry about?
“I’m sorry I wasn’t enough for you.” She sniffles, sobbing as her face looks down into the sink. Shawn feels a knot in his chest, and the guilt becomes unbearable as his heart begins pounding loudly in his ears.
“That’s why you left, right? Everyone’s left, I just never thought it would be you.” She managing to laugh, breathing heavily through all the tears and snot.
She never thought it would be, but it was, and perhaps that was the part that hurt the most. So when she tells him to leave, Shawn obliges, wondering how to fix something he so recklessly broke.
They’re both half naked. Y/N’s bra is still clad on her while Shawn rushes to unzip her jeans. He’s already pulled his halfway off and he can’t help but admire everything about her. The small freckle near her hip bone, the scar she got from falling when she was younger that never fully healed.
And just as he’s about to take off her underwear, she holds his hand back.
“Huh?” Shawn doesn’t seem mad, or impatient, just genuinely confused at why she seems like she’s changed her mind.
“I just… there’s just something I want to know.” She shyly admits, eyes avoiding his as she picks at the lace on her underwear. Shawn stays silent and Y/N knows it’s probably his cue for her to continue.
“How many girls have you slept with?” She asks. “You know, since we ended things.”
And Shawn feels his head swirl a bit. He had to tell her, he knew he did, but he had just gotten an inkling of hope that she’d take him back. And he didn’t want to lose her again. So without too much hesitation, he swallows his pride and answers.
And the moment he says it, he regrets it. It reminds him of the time he’d spent hours building a tower out of wooden blocks as a child, only for one stumble to make them all come crashing down. He sees her freeze, her eyes welling up in tears before she leans down and reaches for her pants.
He wants to time travel to 4 months ago, where he ended things, and just slap himself in the face. Tell himself that he doesn’t know what he’s losing. That watching her walk away will be scarier than any horror film he’s ever seen when time passes. That the love of his life was standing right in front of him, trying to fix the mistakes that he had caused, while he discarded her like she had never meant anything to him.
“I think you should go.” Her voice wavers a bit, and Shawn wonders if he’s ever felt more disappointed in himself than he does in that moment. She slowly puts her clothes back on, suppressing her feelings as she waits for him to leave.
Shawn doesn’t know how many times it’s been, but he finds himself sitting on the carpet of the hallway to her apartment again. Thinking it’s such a shame, such an absolute shame that sometimes, all a man has to offer are the stars, to a girl who deserves nothing more than a galaxy.
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