Dreams Don’t Become You || Solo
How could she sleep when all she could think of was her?
To begin with, she had blamed it on the humiliation. No wonder that every time she closed her eyes it was like someone had painted Devan onto the back of her eyelids; she’d rejected her immediately after they’d kissed. How was she supposed to stop thinking about it, stop thinking about how her lips felt, when she’d been built up to believe that Devan wanted her one moment, and couldn’t stand to have her nearby the next? Her stomach twisted into knots at the memory (“Maybe you should go…”) and yet it was like the empty space where a baby tooth used to be; she could not stop going back to it, torturing herself over and over and over again. Midnight turned to 1am and the hours rolled past until fuck it was sunrise and all she could think of was Dev’s hair, curling from under a beanie hat and the way that she called her ‘sunshine’ as though it was a good thing.
She’d barely stopped crying since she first got back to her room on New Year’s day. Not because of what Dev had said, or did, no, of course not. Because she’d almost cheated on her boyfriend, or she had cheated on her boyfriend, and Sienna… She didn’t do things like that. She wasn’t that kind of girl. And yet, she had. She’d wanted to. The knowledge that if Dev hadn’t told her to leave, then Sienna wouldn’t have been able to stop herself - that scared her. The feeling reoccured again and again, every time she closed her eyes; the intense, hungry desire to feel Dev’s lips on hers. And every time she’d whip her eyes open, pinching at her thighs, nails embedded into the skin. No. You have a boyfriend. And she doesn’t want you anyway.
It was the latter thought that had her spiralling into tears that she couldn’t explain away.
She couldn’t help comparing Devan to Ant. Ant, who had stood her up. Ant, who sent had left her a New Year’s Eve voicemail where he briefly detailed how his mother had gotten sick, just when he’d been supposed to come meet her. Ant, who she’d spent the past year talking to and confiding in and slowly, slowly falling in love with. He knew her. He would never hurt her. (Not like Dev, not like the girl she’d known for two minutes who had blown into her life like a sandstorm and changed her internal compass so everything pointed back to her, not ‘north’, DEV, and then told her to go.) They were good together, and once his mom was better and he was back at school and her classes were in session again, they’d be able to meet up and she’d finally get that perfect first kiss that she’d been waiting for. (Even though all you can think about is that girl who kissed you like she was apologising and then looked at you like she was begging you to understand.) Ant was what she wanted, what she needed. Sienna was hoping against hope that if she told herself this enough times, it might, somehow, come true.
She leant against the door, face buried in the t-shirt that she’d been wearing when she’d left Devan’s room, the one she’d been loaned. The one that Dev had chosen for her after stripping her out of that black dress that she now couldn’t bear to touch. The shirt didn’t even fucking smell like Dev, and yet Sienna kept holding it to her cheek, tears falling into it. Having it made her feel better and worse, all at the same time. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
It had been almost 36 hours since she’d left Devan’s room, even longer since she’d last slept. The tears were still damp on her cheeks when she eventually collapsed into a comforter on the floor, arms tight around the t-shirt which was the only evidence that proved that the whole fucked up episode had even occurred at all.
She woke to the bitter-sweetness of the slowly receding memory of Devan kissing her again, only this time her next words were, “Good morning sunshine.” Sienna’s swallowed the lump in her throat which was starting to feel painfully familiar.
