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f u t u r e
Vivian sat up from her position in his arms, turning so she was sitting in front of him, the moment he asked her to be his girlfriend, officially. And after weeks and weeks that almost added up to a month, only now did she realize what she was really afraid of, and it wasn’t a fear of falling in love. It was the fear of the product of love.
“It’s not that I don’t love you.” she started, looking to his eyes, the eyes she adored so much, “But it’s the sound I heard when I was 8, and my father slammed the front door so hard behind him, I swear to god, it shook that house down to it’s foundation. For the next 3 years, I grew up, watching my mother break her teeth on vodka bottles while she thrived off of false love from men that she knew nothing about. I think she stopped breathing when he left. I think part of her died, and I think he took her heart with him as he walked out. Her chest was empty, just a shattered mess of a broken heart and depression pills.”
She bit her lip, holding his hand tighter than before, scared he would run, just as her father once had, “It’s not that I don’t love you. But it’s all the blood in the sink. It’s the night that I spent 12 hours in the emergency room, waiting to see if my best friend would be okay, after the boy she loved, told her he didn’t love her anymore. It’s the crying and the blood and the fluorescent lights, and white sneakers and pale faces with shaky breaths.”
Her face went pale as she took a deep, albeit shaky, breath, “It’s not that I don’t love you. But it’s the time that I had to stay up for 2 days straight before that emergency room night, with my best friend while she cried and shrieked and threw up on her bedroom floor, because her boyfriend slept with his ex. I swear to god,” she laughed uncertainly, tears threatening to fall, “She still has tear streaks stained onto her cheeks. I think when you love someone, it never really goes away.”
The tears were falling now.
“It’s not that I don’t love you, but it’s the time I had a substitute for 6 weeks in English, back at my old school, because our teacher was getting divorced and couldn’t handle getting out of bed. When she came back she was smiling, but her hands shook so hard when she held her coffee. You could see that something was broken inside, and sometimes, when things break, you can’t fix them. I got an A+ in English that year. I think her head was spinning too hard to read any essays or grade any tests.”
She furiously wiped away her tears, holding both his hands in hers, “It’s not that I don’t love you…
It’s that I do.”