Hemorrhage.

What she said is what? True? Untrue? Holy fucking shit, I have never been so angry at a cell phone in my entire life. Why did there have to be time limits on voicemail messages? When did that law get enforced? Who enforced it? Because whoever enforced it obviously has never been in the same situation as I, before. I think that person should get in this situation, so they can understand what it feels like to not know what the most important person in his/her life is saying: confusing, frustrating, angering. All I wanted to do was retrieve the second half of that message, and I didn’t know how.

What was I supposed to do?

Call him back? Should I have called him back? Should I go see him? Should I just leave it alone, and let the words eat away at my brain until I can’t stand not knowing.

When the message ended, I listened to it again, trying to see if there was another beginning of a world, some type of indication of what he was going to say next, before the beep. I couldn’t detect anything. The machine must have cut him off right before he started to form his lips.

I then glared at my phone and violently threw it to the ground.

Now, I don’t have any muscle on my bones, so I didn’t give it too much force. It kind of broke anyway. The screen cracked and it made this awful noise when it came in contact with the pavement. When I tried to turn it on again, it didn’t work. I just got the blue screen and I heaved a heavy sigh.

I knew that I needed to see him.

It was so cliché, but for once, there was something on my mind other than the fact that I knew people were probably staring at my thighs and the puffs of fat protruding from my shirt. I needed to talk to John.

I just needed to tell him that I was sorry, once and for all.

That was all that mattered to me. I needed to sever some type of our ties. I needed closure. And I needed him to know that whatever I did, intentional or not, I didn’t mean to hurt him. I never meant to hurt John. He meant so much to me.

My mother was waiting in the parking lot, and when I got to the car, I asked her if I could drop her off at home and go somewhere.

She raised an eyebrow at me. “Where?”

“I need to go challenge myself.” I said.

She still looked confused. “It’s for the therapy group.” I clarified. Instantly, she looked less reluctant.

“Okay,” she nodded her head, and then I dropped her off in front of the house, and the car idled while I switched from passenger’s seat to driver’s. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I wasn’t thinking about what was going to happen. I wasn’t thinking about the way that maybe I could ruin everything, right here and right now. I wasn’t thinking about how I wasn’t entirely sure if I was ready for this, if this was the type of challenge that I could make it through.

I was just thinking about how I needed to see him.

I needed to see him so bad, because there was something about John that made me feel like home.

He felt like home, and he was my safety blanket.

I could wrap myself up in his arms, and I could melt our bodies together, and that would be enough. He would always be enough.

I just needed one last hug.

I needed him to wrap his arms around me, and I needed to feel him - chest to chest, stomach to stomach, thigh to thigh. I needed to feel him all around me, and I needed to feel safe. I needed to feel okay.

Because I realized that John made me feel okay.

He made me feel anxious and he made me feel like I was never good enough, but that was only when he wasn’t around. When he was standing right in front of me, the corners of his mouth turned up in that little fucking smirk, he made me feel okay.

There were tears, pooling in the corner of my eyes, but I refused to let them tremble over. I didn’t need to cry right now.

Not yet.

Don’t cry yet, Emelie, I said to myself. Save it until you really need to.

His car was in the driveway and I was so fucking thankful because I just needed him. I didn’t need someone telling me he wasn’t there.

I needed him to be there.

Just fucking be there.

I shut the engine off abruptly, before rushing out, slamming the door behind me. I don’t even remember if I fucking locked it, because I didn’t care that much. Someone could steal the car. Someone could shoot me in the fucking leg, and I’d probably still crawl to John, because I needed to see him one last time. I couldn’t die with him angry with me.

I needed him to be okay with me, and then I would gladly bleed to death on the gray pavement.

I wasn’t thinking. If I were to be thinking, I might have calmed down. I might have hesitated a little, before pulling open that fucking door and letting myself inside his house. Because John didn’t have the sense to open the door.

God, my life might have been so much fucking better if John had locked that fucking door.

Because he was there, you know. And she was there, and I hate my fucking life so much, because whoever is writing this storyline is really getting too fucking cliché. They’re just scraping the bottom of the can for ideas, aren’t they? Of course she was there.

She was there, and she was standing with her back faced towards me, but I saw that fucking bright hair, and my heart just about almost shattered.

And my stomach sank a little, but I didn’t really notice that because it hurt so much from hunger anyway.

I just noticed the way that his eyes turned up, because it was obviously a new occurrence when some random girl comes barging into your house, and then I noticed that his eyes seemed to light up, and he was immediately maneuvering his way around her still figure, and I was already ready to turn around on my heel and get the fuck out of here.

I was walkeding and he was walking but he was faster than me.

“Emelie! Emelie, stay! Stay, stay, stay, fucking please, stay!”

His fingers were reaching out, and they were grasping my elbow, and then he was turning me towards him but I was already pulling away and the tears were already flowing. Because that’s what tears do - they flow, like rivers, and they just go down, down, dripping into your nose and landing on your lips, little salty rain drops from your own personal sky.

And my fists, they were banging against his chest, because I just wanted him to let me go.

I got it now.

It took all of two seconds for me to realize that there wasn’t going to be a “not” at the end of his cut-off message as I had presumed there would be. Because she was right. She was spot-fucking on, apparently, and I just needed to know that, and I would be okay, now, I guess.

I would deal.

This was challenging enough.

I just needed him to let me go and then I could get back in my car and I could go home and I could starve myself for three days and then maybe I could just go to sleep and never wake up. Or if I did wake up, I could wake up thin. That would be good too, I guess.

“Emelie, please.” He was saying, and his voice was so low it almost made me want to cry even harder. But I didn’t.

Because I couldn’t.

“Stop,” I was saying, but I wasn’t meaning it. “Stop, stop, stop. I get it. I get it.”

And he was shaking his head like I was all wrong, but I wasn’t.

For once, I felt like I was right about something. Fucking something.

“No, you don’t!” He was yelling, and his voice was so loud, and my fists were still pounding, and there was a part of me that thought that I might be hurting him but there was another part of me that thought he kind of deserved it. Because he did deserve it.

Even if I deserved it more.

“Emelie, stop it. Listen to me! Did you listen to my message? Is that why you came?”

“You said she was right!” My voice was so fucking high, and I was blubbering and I didn’t know what I was saying, but I knew that maybe it just might have needed to be said. “You said she was right and I believe you! She is right, and I’m so sorry, because I’m such a waste of your time. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, John. You’re not supposed to feel bad for me. You’re supposed to feel good for me. You’re supposed to be good for me, and you are, but not in the way that I need you to be.”

John was looking at me like he was so sad that I thought that.

I was even sad that I thought that, because I didn’t want to think that.

But what else was there to think?

He just shook his head somberly, and somehow my fists stopped banging on his chest, and they rested up between our bodies. He pulled me in closer, even though all I wanted to do was pull away.

“I love you, Emelie.” He said, and his voice was so low it might have been a whisper, and it was right about my ear, so I heard it, even though my body was convulsing with these breath-catching sobs.

“I love you as a person, as a best friend, and she was not right, and she will never be right. I love you, and I need you in my life, and you need to accept that, because I’m not letting you go.”