And She Was Strong.

Lily got up, took a shower, got dressed, and then drove off to work. It was another Monday morning, and another reason why she hated her job. All she wanted was to be allowed to do something that she loved, and to do it without being forced to every morning. She wished that she had a job like Matt’s, a job that didn’t feel like a job, at all. Of course, Lily knew that what Matt had was a one in a million shot, and she’d never get to do anything remotely as rewarding as he did for a living. It just wasn’t in the cards for her, she supposed, and it never would be.

She parked her car, got out, and started toward the front door. She unlocked the shop, turned on the lights, then took a deep breath. This is how Lily coped every morning, how she dealt with the mornings spent alone at work. The entire shop was quiet, and was only dimly lit. It felt lonely, and desolate. There was no coffee being made in the small café that morning, so early at four o’clock. Lily didn’t have it in her to start brewing, not quite yet.

The other workers would arrive soon, and Lily wouldn’t be quite so separated from the world then. But mornings that she spent alone at work, with nothing being done that should be and the building coated in silence, she felt most isolated. And it was mornings like those that she wished that Matty was with her. Despite how early it was, and despite the boring aspect of brewing coffee, she wished that he was there to merely keep her company. Lily loved them all- Jimmy, Zacky, Brian, and Johnny- but Matthew was by far the one that she missed the most.

Everyone knew that those two were inseparable, attached at the hip, but they also knew that when he had to leave, she suffered most. When they all returned home, they realized what their absence had done to her; what Matthew’s absence had done to her. Sometimes, they could see the damage in her eyes, and sometimes they could hear it in the way she talked to them. They did not, however, feel just how deeply the scars had cut; the scars were not just by them, but they didn’t know that. No one else besides Lily and Jeremy knew just who had formed those scars.

Lily took a seat in one of the chairs in the café, still unwilling to start her day. Please, she thought pleadingly to herself, just let me sit here a few moments longer. Don’t make me start this just yet. Please. And in response, her body gave in. Her body allowed her five minutes to herself, to ready herself before anything had to begin. It was so early, that if it had given her even a minute longer, she would have fallen asleep, or her body would have responded far too poorly to the tasks it would need to carry out. So Lily just settled with five. Yes, five would be enough.

During those five minutes, she thought about how tired she was, how much she missed Matthew, and how terrible of a hangover her parents had on Sunday morning. All of these things added up to something terrible, a bad mix of emotions that made her stomach turn. Time would heal all of these wounds, however, and in time they would disappear. Someday.

There are some things that just don’t fade. Some things, you see, will stick with you for your entire life. They’ll never leave you, and the damage that they leave will be permanent.

Lily also thought about the terrible things that Jeremy had done to her. She felt like crying, but wouldn’t let herself; she couldn’t calm herself down in five minutes if she did start, and that would just ruin the entire day. So she just kept thinking. There wasn’t anything that she could do about it, she knew that, and she knew that- until there was something that changed in Jeremy- things would stay this way. She’d keep on being taken advantage of, she’d keep on being reduced to tears and shameful acts for his benefit.

The bottom line was that Jeremy would never stop, and she would always be powerless against him. It was an inevitable fact that she had come to accept, no matter how terrible it seemed.

Lily glanced up at the clock.

4:09.

It was time to start the day.

It was four o’clock in the morning, and Matthew was the only one still awake on the tour bus. The soft snores (or loud, in Brian’s case) were coming from the bunks nearby his own. Those snores weren’t what kept him up, though they did contribute a small portion. What honestly kept him awake was the loneliness he spent thinking about day after day. That pain which stabbed his gut in the early hours of the morning was what woke him up, and what forced him to stay wide awake. The throbbing did not subside, and so Matthew was forced to lay there and think about that aching in his chest.

He was in pain due to the fact that his life was virtually loveless. His friendship was made through bonds of love, true, but there was no one in his life that he could love every morning when he woke up, and every night when he went to bed. Matthew wanted someone in his life that he knew would accept him and feel the same way he felt about them. Matthew wanted a woman that was content with herself, and could hold her head high. Matthew wanted a girl that, rather than fucking her as he had with random girls whom he met while on tour, could make love to. He wanted someone so badly that it was now hurting. That didn’t sit right with Matthew; he knew something was wrong, and he was ready for a change so drastic that it would change his life for the better. If he could, he would change whatever he had to for that suffering he felt to come to a stop. Matthew needed closure, and, where he was at right then, he couldn’t find it.

That is what was tearing him apart, the feeling of insignificance in romance. It didn’t help at all seeing his friends with their girlfriends every day, hearing them talking to each other so comfortably that it didn’t make sense to Matthew how anyone could find someone like that, someone who fit perfectly in their lives. He was jealous of his friends, but none of them knew it.

God, did he miss Lily. She was the one person he knew that helped fill that hole in his life; when she was around, he could almost pretend that she was the one in his life that could be all of those things for him. She was everything he wasn’t: quiet, calm, frail, polite. Matthew was loud, obnoxious, strong, and voiced his opinions openly. They were so different, and yet…

When she was with him, things were just easier. Less strenuous, less complicated; things were simple. Matthew liked that. And he knew that Lily and he would never be anything more than friends, but sometimes…

It was alright, just pretending.