( &&. @liliannashulei / @ronanvvludolf / @emmalinefaun )
They were friends. Friends could attend events together, right? Even if said friends had once been...romantically involved. Even if their relationship would never be wholly platonic--not on his side, at least, though he had been the one to end things between them out of necessity of grief. True, Lilianna had been nothing but kind and gracious to him in the months following Emmaline’s disappearance, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a yawning chasm of awkwardness and unspoken thoughts and feelings that spread between them, as dangerous as teetering along the lip of an unstable cliff.
Most days, he wanted to call her; ask her to come over like she used to. And he knew, somewhere deep in his heart, that Lilianna would oblige with his request. But he knew, even just looking at her, that he wanted more than friendship with her. He always had, and deep in his heart, he knew he always would. There was a part of his soul that spoke to her; begged her to return to him. He wanted to nestle against her on the couch, pressing his face against her hair as they watched old romantic comedies and made fun of the trials and tribulations of the characters onscreen. He wanted to spend hours in the kitchen with her again, tediously learning the art to folding and crimping fortune cookies to prepare or teaching her his mother’s recipe to fried chicken. He found himself missing the mornings they spent in bed, his fingers tracing circles along the smooth dip between her shoulder blades; the way he would kiss along her spine as though each and every atom of her was a map that continuously led him to something deeply-rooted inside of himself.
Even now, as Christian and Lilianna made their way inside the sprawling ballroom and banquet hall of the Garden Hotel, he felt himself overwhelmed by the sheer force of his emotions. He loved her--he loved her with everything in him, and he’d let her go because of it. In his grief, Christian knew he had become a shell of the man he once was; it hadn’t been fair, making her stay tangled up in his grief and PTSD. It wasn’t fair of him to love her when he had let her go.
“You know,” he said as they made their way into the room, nervously adjusting the floral vest jacket he’d donned for the evening (he’d tried to match the beautiful blue of her dress, but there was no telling if Lilianna had noticed or not). “I heard the food tonight costs more than an entire year’s rent.”
Smooth, dummy, he chided himself. Real smooth.
