Last Bouquet

Letters. Letters and numbers on a piece of paper. A piece of paper being held by a trembling hand. A piece of paper fluttering to the ground noiselessly. A disappointed sob breaking the room’s peace.

Pain. Disappointment. Anger. Frustration. Confusion. Hurt.

Already, he knew that the letters couldn’t mean anything good. They meant failure, repeating courses, sinking down into nothing, hurting and aching with no real solution other than to try again. They meant being set back a semester. The letters and numbers had just snapped a dream in half.

“I’ve never done this terribly,” she breathed, and he dropped down to kneel beside her, his hand touching her cheek and turning her head, his heart crumbling at the sight of tears streaming down her face. “It’s never been this bad.” He felt the remnants of his heart twist, and she turned to him, leaning against him, using him as support.

Her hands clutched onto his blazer, the tissue dropping from her fingers as her face was buried into his chest, his shirt absorbing her tears instead. His arms wrapped around her, and he was silent as she clung to him, depending on him, needing him to feel whole, needing him to absorb more of her pain. He kissed her hair, and he shut his eyes, and he held her close to him, and he let her hold on for dear life.

For a fragment of a second, she felt like she had something, she felt like she was okay, she felt like she was good enough. But then the weight of the letters and numbers on the paper came crashing down on her, and she fell apart in his arms. Her body shook in full-on tremors as true rivers of pain ran down her face, and her fingers tightened around his shirt and held on, and everything that had been weighing her down finally broke through, finally fell through the widening cracks.

And she felt fear.

It churned in her stomach, and it ate at her insides, and the fear of her family’s disappointment wrote out plays in her head, each one going differently, each one ending terribly, and each one only egging on the hurt, making the tears flow more rapidly, making everything explode into pain of exponential proportions.

And he held her, silent, cradling her, protecting her, as he always had done. He was the one that had never hated her, had never left her, and had never let her down. He was what she’d always turned to, what she’d always depended on for a shred of happiness, a shard of hope, a millimeter of love. He was the one that never cared if her pain ruined his shirt. He was the one reason that she hadn’t gone completely fucking insane and jumped.

She held on tighter, pressed herself closer, and for a second, she just wanted to pull him into her, absorb his strength and his hope and his love and his power and his success. She just wanted to feel what it was like to be him, just to know for one second how someone like him could be strong enough to absorb all of her failures and all of her hurt and then have love and hope to give her in return.

She must’ve cried for hours, and he never pulled away. He sat with her, holding her, softly singing for her, anything to make her form stop shaking and her tears stop flowing and her disappointment stop eating away at her insides. She must have clung to him for ages and left the most insulting wet spot on his shirt with her tears, and he never made her pull back and wipe her eyes and deal with it herself.

So when the tears stopped and the pain had ebbed away long enough for her to draw back, he smiled at her, and the love in his eyes broke her heart, and the gentleness of his hand as it touched her cheek made her tears stop flowing, and the trembling in her body had subsided into numbness, and fuck all if she could look back up at him with anything but love.

He smiled, and he kissed her forehead, and while his lips lingered, she shut her eyes and placed her hands over his.

And then the headphones came out. And he was gone.