Two Headlights

This time twenty four hours ago you asked me to go for a drive. I knew what it was about and needed to tell you about it, I had to. You took me to the beach because you wanted me to feel the sand and you left me to watch it rise and fall against the shore, you left me to enjoy my happy place. You watched from a far off rock and after a while I came and sat down next to you. You were wearing the smallest shorts which was well planned for a late night drive to the beach. We talked about things that are important to us, like we always do and you finally said what I had been waiting to hear. You said “I bet you’re wondering why I bought you here” and you didn’t even need to explain because I knew exactly the words that were going to leave your mouth and when they did, they honestly sounded glorious. “I don’t know whether I should say this or not but I have feelings for you and you have no idea what you have done for me this semester, you honestly have no idea. I’ve really struggled this semester and I was talking to my sisters about it and the only person that makes me happy and feel alive is you. I haven’t felt like this in two years. During all of our chats, especially in LA, you sat and listened me out and gave me such good advice and I have never been able to talk to anyone like that. I wouldn’t change anything about this or about how I feel. I would not change a thing. Besides, you can’t help how you feel, emotions just come and you can’t help it” and I wasn’t going to sit there and lie to you because I felt exactly the same. I couldn’t hold it in anymore and then it was out. It was out and the months of trying to be close to you without showing it were out and in that moment you no longer had to question it because you knew everything. I spoke with a broken voice and tears that clouded my eyes. 

But the next words tore me apart and all I could feel was the lump in my throat that threatened to remove me of my words and my fiercely burning eyes. “I think I need a week to not see you to get used to it and accept the fact that you’re leaving in two weeks. I’ll have winter break to come to terms with it and hopefully not go into the new semester feeling as if I’ve just lost a best friend” and it felt as if everything was crashing down around me. I wanted to stand up and scream no because that was the last thing that I wanted, I don’t know that I can do a week without you. It’s like a drug, I have to see you and I have to at least be in the same room as you because I feel a bit lost without that. Last week you were away for five days and I struggled, I almost couldn’t be without you. I would look out for your car and see that it wasn’t there. I told you and you replied with “I really struggled and I had to do everything to try and get you off my mind” and I had to do everything to get you off mine. That was when it clicked. Three days in LA was what it took to make me realise what I had actually been feeling all along and those days weren’t long enough. We joked and talked and you rested your hand on my leg and you woke me up by hitting me with pillows and you rubbed my hands whilst surfing and said “you’ve got to keep them warm baby”, it kickstarted my brain into realising what it was, this isn’t just friends. Can you call me baby again?

Nearly two weeks later I caught myself thinking about kissing you.

We sat in your car and sat in a silence that spoke enough for how we were both feeling. “So we both feel mutually but probably won’t act on it”. We both feel mutually. You thought that it was fate that we met because the smallest coincidence bought us together. We spoke about our families and childhood and laughed in a dark car. We were there for nearly three hours just talking and it was the kind of conversation that resonates with you as a person and somehow roots itself in your bones because it was so pure and innocent. We drove back, trying to make good of the timed situation that we have on our hands. Two headlights shine through the sleepless night. The song came on that we always sing so loud to and the relevance of the words were so clear. We were singing words that somehow added up to everything that we had just spoken. So much so that you reached across and took my hand in yours and I thought my heart was going to escape from my chest with the rate that it was pounding. You took my hand in yours with the line of the song that said “say you’ll remember me standing in a white dress staring at the sunset” and that line will never be quite the same again.

I saw you smile. I remember the weight of your arm on top of mine and the way that it felt when you stroked my fingers with your thumb. I felt so happy, I did. I didn’t want to let go and had been waiting for that. I had wanted to hold your hand without an excuse. Without an excuse of seeing how clammy they are, how cold they are, without squeezing it for support on a ride. You let it go at the last moment. I thought how much it is going to hurt to leave. We both got in and cried. Cried at how unfair it is that time can remove you of things that feel good and of things that feel as if they shouldn’t end yet. How can this be fair?

Our friend told me that you said how hard LA was going to be and how we would be in the same bed and it would be just us for three days. You said that you felt something from the first week that you met me and that you remember that first day. I was always intrigued by you.
Our friend told you that I’m not ok with what is happening, that I haven’t been sleeping but how can I when I replay you at 3AM?

My mum said that this a lovely thing that we should be happy about but what about the time that we will both have to watch eachother leave? She said that you never know what will happen in the future and what happens if I always think “what if?” I think a part of me will. I get so happy about it but then I remember that we are stuck in a situation in which we will never have what we want and I am stuck yearning for a girl that I won’t have.

Taken from eachother when nothing has happened but we feel as if something has.