33 + 39
33. — hide
jacob was tall and blond and taking up entirely too much space on her couch. the former two had been established facts for as long as she had known her cousin. the latter was something she had noticed many times already. her cousin liked to take up space, to make himself seem even more massive than he already was. for a man who was swift-footed and as graceful as the waves he could command, he surely liked to pretend to be a rock a bit too much.
not that she minded it. along with her grandmother, he was her favourite relative, even if he was just as likely to take a stab in the dark and meet his target than the old lady was. it could be annoying, being unable to hide anything from him, but occasionally, she was glad. hiding things was her nature, scribbling down weather observations that doubled as accounts of her mood in the margin of her research journal. and while jacob could not read her notes, he could read her.
right now, she was not hiding anything. well, aside from the birthday present they had bought for their grandmother, but that did not count, did it?
39. — heartache
whoever had started the myth that missing someone was impossible as long as one kept busy had been a liar. her desk was littered with paper and parchment, she had gone through three inkwells … and she still missed him. the nursery was decorated ( he had painted it, well, before ) and she had been knitting baby clothes, but she still kept looking over her shoulder, expecting him to come inside, still listened into the silence of the snow-covered world around her, waiting for the sound of his steps in the snow.
but when people asked if she was alright, she lied and said that everything was fine, mentioned that she had tried a new recipe, brought up a book she had been reading. she had never been a good liar, but few people had known her well enough to call her out. and maybe, this made her feel even lonelier — that she could hide away in a cottage in the middle of nowhere and it was just as well as hiding on another planet because no one could actually see her, the real her.
and sometimes when she curled up in a bed filled with too many pillows ( all to compensate for the absence of someone who was … gone ), she could nearly admit it to herself. that he had not broken her heart because she could have dealt with that. heartbreak was an old acquaintance, if one she had thought to be rid of when she had gotten married. this, this was different. this was phantom pain. wherever he had disappeared to ( and he was not dead until she saw a body ), he had taken her heart along with him. she could not fix the damage because it was out of her reach.
and then, fingers clinging to thin cotton sheets, she nearly could bring herself to hate him. but hating someone who was not even there was a lonely, ugly ( and frankly: pointless ) thing to do. it also did not help her, did not make her miss him any less. it only made her feel helpless on top of everything else.