This Must be Fiction

"Whens the last time you ate?" Nathan asked from his office desk. I bit my finger nail and stared daggers at him.

"Earlier today." I mumbled.

"That's bull shit, and I know it." He slammed his fists on the table. I had gotten very used to Nathan's fits. He had been acting this way for the entire time I'd known him, and as long as I could keep my cool, he'd relax and we'd go back to being friends.

"Listen, I'm not lying. I ate today. You can go check the empty bowls in my kitchen for cereal remnants if you like."
He scoffed at me.

"Ok well, I don't want you losing more weight. It's going to look bad. It's bad enough that you've been out partying all the time and the magazines have too many pictures of you drinking. I don't want you to get a bad rap, is all I'm saying."

It was true that a few paparazzi had snapped pictures of me drinking. But I had never driven when drunk, or done any hard drugs, so as far as I was concerned my public image was fine.

"Alright Nathan. Are you calm now? We were supposed to get lunch an hour ago and you've kept me in here." I said, standing. He shuffled through some papers and stood up with them in his hands.

"I've got to cancel, there's a meeting I've been called in to. Hope you don't mind." He kissed my cheek like an old friend.

"Don't worry about it. I'll see if Robert wants to go." I patted his shoulder before gliding out the door.

I took the back way from the building, not being able to bare to walk through the front lobby. It always reminded me of him. I had figured out over the last two years that if avoided places that we went together, I could keep him off my mind for at least a little while. But it never failed that his image would creep back into my thoughts whenever I had a spare moment. My greatest regret always replayed in my mind.

~"Leave me alone. You're better off with someone else who's going to make your life easier instead of fuck everything up..."~

Oh how many times had I played that scene over, thinking of some other way I could have handled the situation. But he didn't really try to stop me. He could have. I would have let him stop me if he had tried hard enough, but he knew as well as I did that I was leaving that day, and not coming back.

The last two and a half years had been the hardest of my life. The empty hole in the pit of my stomach was never filled. A piece of me left that day, and it stayed with Ville. I couldn't ever stop thinking about him. As hard as I tried, he was always with me in some way. My heart literally ached every time I thought his name.

He didn't love me- I came to that conclusion after six months of no word from him. Someone who loves you doesn't let you walk out of their arms without so much as a fight. And as much as I wanted to tell myself that I had gotten over him, and that I had stopped loving him, it was a lie.

XXXXXX

I parked outside of my house and looked up into the window. Robert was home.

"Hi friend." I said lamely as I stepped in the door. Robert was used to my mood swings by now. He knew all about what happened between Ville and I, save for the vampire part of it.

"Rough day?" He asked. I collapsed on the couch. He took my legs onto his lap and started massaging my feet.

"Nathan's still insistent that I'm anorexic." I said, moving my hands around.

"Well... sweetie... you don't eat much." He said. Robert was always blissfully honest. I hadn't eaten much since I left West Chester. Food, on occasion, repulsed me and I could barely stand to eat when I thought of the mistakes I'd made.

"I know. But, we were planning to go out to lunch but Nathan had to cancel. Do you want to go?" I asked him. He hummed softly for a moment.

"I was supposed to meet with Michael, but I can change our plans for dinner."

"That would be great. It'll just be a light lunch anyway." I said, taking my legs from Robert and walking towards the kitchen to check my calender.

He walked into his room where I could hear him speaking to Michael. He walked out moments later with a smile.

"We're all set. Would you like to leave soon?" He flashed his beautiful smile. I glanced at my calender. I had enough free time to have a long date with Robert.

"Yes. Let me go change my shirt real quick and then we can go."
I ran upstairs and changed into a tight white shirt and a black vest. I slipped on my black high-heeled boots ran as quickly as I could in them to get to the car before Robert left without me.

"Why must you take forever?" He asked, immediately pulling out of the driveway as soon as I got in the car.

"You're just terribly impatient."

He drove us to the quietest restaurant we could find just so we would be sure not to be followed by reporters. Robert was one of the most well-known male models in the United States, and we were constantly getting caught together. People had started to believe we were dating. It would have been a believable rumor, had Robert not come out of the closet only months ago. Still, the rumors persisted considering we were living together.

"Just a salad, thanks." I ordered once we arrived. Robert ordered the same.

"Are you even going to eat it this time, or just look at like you always do and just pick the cucumbers off?" he said. I kicked him from under the table. We had gotten a table in the corner of the restaurants patio, making sure that no one would be able to hear our conversation.

"You and Nathan are exactly the same. Do you not recall the month before your Gucci photo shoot? You barely ate ice cubes." I said while taking a sip of water.

"Yeah, but I eat consistently. That was once. I never see you eat anything and we've been living together for almost a year."

"You know why." I said, looking into my glass. He got silent. The waiter brought us our food and we sat and looked at the meal.

"You can't keep dwindling on the past. It's been years Molly. Don't live like this. Don't live your life like this." he shook his head at me.

"You don't understand." I ate a mouthful of lettuce.

"I know I don't. I don't understand how you can keep living like this, knowing it makes you so depressed. It was one guy. There's millions of them in this area alone. You're a beautiful young woman who has guys practically begging to be seen by you, and you're still thinking about this fucker who broke your heart years ago?" He paused to think and chew his food. I didn't respond, I knew he was right. It was practically insane behavior to be thinking about him... god I couldn't even think his name. He was still surrounding my thoughts.

"It was more than that. And it was partly my fault that I left in the first place. It would have been different if we had left on better terms, but I just freaked and left him. It was the night after we said I love you to each other... he clearly didn't mean what he said... why am I such an idiot?" I ate another fork-full of salad.

"I think that you should just forget all about it. Would it help if I set you up with some guys? I know a lot of male models that would kill to date you." Robert was always trying to be nice, and I was always rejecting his suggestions.

"No, not now. I'm really busy with my career it's probably better to wait until I'm not swamped with work." Excuses, excuses.

"You're just going to save yourself for him aren't you? Just going to wait for Ville?" I knew Robert had the best intentions when he yelled at me like this. I sulked constantly, and I didn't understand how he could even be friends with me always being so depressed. He had met me during one of my more depressing stages of my life, only weeks after I had returned from West Chester.

*Flashback*
"Fuck!" I slammed my hands down on the bench in front of me. The girl sitting next to me sulked and slouched in the other direction, trying to avert her attention elsewhere.

"Something wrong?" A soft, manly voice came from my other side.

"No. I just..." I flicked the lighter again, not letting it burn the side of my thumb this time. "I burned myself. I'm fine."

"I've seen you around. Never very sociable." The boy sat down next to me. I quickly glanced in the other direction. I instantly hated him, for no reason.

"Well you can go fuck yourself then." I mumbled. He didn't even look shocked to hear me say that. His deep brown eyes looked into mine for a second. I took in his face. He was handsome, startlingly so, but he couldn't compare to the image that had burned itself onto the back of my eyelids.

"Do you want to talk? I never really see you connecting with anyone around here." He put a warm hand on top of mine. I immediately thought of the feeling I got from his soft palm. Relief. He wasn't a vampire.

"I don't even know you." I let my guard down and stopped being so cold.

"You can if you'd like. Here." He held a lighter up to my cigarette which refused to light. I inhaled and looked at him with sorrowful eyes.

"I'm Molly."

"Robert. Nice to meet you."
*End Flashback*

"Shut up. I don't want to talk about it anymore." I reverted to my old ways of yelling at Robert instead of reasoning with him.

He lightened the conversation and we were able to eat in peace without arguing anymore.

He rushed out of the house once we got home to meet with his current boyfriend, and left me to sit with myself and my pity. I hated feeling like this, feeling like I could never move on. I had felt this way for too long, it was beginning to make me dive deeper into whatever form of depression that I'd gotten into.

Robert hadn't brought up Ville in a long while. It was bringing back my memories of him, just as I had forced them to the back of my mind. I ran upstairs to my room and dug under my bed.

The shirt was lying under there, like it always was. It was Ville's shirt that I had accidentally worn home the day that I left West Chester. I had, for some reason, kept it all this time and left it thrown on the floor. I remembered unpacking it when Robert and I first moved into our house. It still smelled like him. I had taken it out of the cardboard box that it was stuffed in and shoved it under my bed, presumably never to be taken out again.

I pulled it out from the bed and smelled it briefly. How could I still be obsessing over him? He had never even tried to see me again. He clearly didn't love me like I loved him, or else he would have done something.

I threw myself onto my queen sized bed, landing comfortably on the purple down comforter. I tossed the shirt back under the bed, trying not to think about him anymore. It was always around this time of year that I started to think about him more and more. We had met at this time three years ago. Would he be thinking of me?