the love series, iv: when love is just (not enough).
It’s half past four, and there’s not much a handful of should’s between them. Should be asleep, should be dreaming, should be more than just two bodies sharing the same space as if not knowing their own.
She’s giving him a possibility and she should make it theirs, but this is never as simple and never quite as right.
He’s got her fingers tangled up in her hair, and she’s got her head pressed up against his chest. Any closer, and he thinks she’ll finally hear the muted sound caught between them, the buzz in the air they are both pretending not to hear. It’s always Sana that speaks first, and it’s a testimony to her courage, to everything he lacks when it comes to her.
“...Juwon.”
It’s easier to pretend to be asleep, much simpler to act like they are not the same. And yet it’s much more difficult to bring himself to be so selfish when it comes to her, simply because she is her, and no one else.
He shifts his head down and pulls away his chest to face her, eyes meeting. His only defense is the grin that comes, face of someone with all the ease she does not allow him in this moment; without the fear she manages to instill into him.
It’s his fault not being in slumber, and he only knows it when she truly looks at him, with those eyes of hers. “Look at me...” It’s in this moment that he wishes the room to be a little darker, for less light to bleed in from the windows. He wonders if this would be any easier if she was not so radiant to him -- if she was any dimmer -- if the universe would allow such a thing.
He looks at her with the same eyes she gives him, and he realizes again: he will never love her anymore than in this moment in time.
“You look beautiful.”
She shifts and the single stream of light pouring in allows him to see the slightest red hue on her right cheek. “That’s... not what I meant, you know that.”
And as if he knows what she will say after, he leans in, arms pulling her back in. He turns his head just a bit to hide it in the crook of her neck, where he keeps himself as close as possible he can to her. Above all else, he makes sure not to respond, not to answer, and continue to ignore the buzz of the obvious.
“Juwon... I want this to not be so complicated.” He shuts his eyes closed, and only holds her with more ferventness. “And it doesn’t have to be, that’s the thing. I’m good for you, and you’re good for me, and... and maybe, this could work. Maybe it can be enough, if... if you are willing.” There’s the slightest tremble in her voice and he is thankful for her gallantry, yet spiteful of just the same. “I just want to know...if this could be enough to last.”
He comes out from hiding, and lets the light hit him instead. His eyes are sure when they meet hers this time around -- more sure of this than any other aspect of the theory of them. His hands come to hold both sides of her face, and he gives a single shake of his own head.
“I love you,” The buzz takes over, and it melds with his voice. “...but it’s not enough to last.”
Love does not last / but it is different / from the passions that do not last. / Love lasts / by not lasting. -- Jack Gilbert @garciti
