Degausser

“I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.”

When everything was said and done and the guys had gone their separate ways, Logan collapsed onto his bed, the familiar give and sink of the mattress easing some of the tension that had collected in his muscles over the course of the day. As his brown eyes gazed up at the flecks and imperfections on the ceiling above, a despondent sigh escaped his lips.

Words couldn’t express the flurries of thoughts and memories that were swirling around in his mind. The only common thread that tied them all together was that sunken feeling of emptiness.

And no matter how much he tried to push those thoughts from his head, every single one led back to Carlos.

Logan shifted onto his side, his eyes falling onto the back of the one girl that had stood by him for four years as if somehow he could find the answers in the blue lint that clung to her white t-shirt.

Kandi had kept her distance since she heard the news, partially because she didn’t want to feel like she was intruding on their grief but mostly because that was the way she dealt with things: on her own. She’d lost so much in her life already that she’d become hardened and numbed to the emotional aspect of it. In her experience, it was typically easier and less emotionally exhausting to just keep yourself distracted and not dwell on it so much. She’d never told these things to Logan though; Logan had a different way of dealing with grief.

Logan was the type of person that had to process everything, to talk it all out and calculate it and know the reasoning behind everything, when not everything had a clear-cut reason. Everything doesn’t happen for a reason, life’s not fair, and sometimes Goliath kicks the shit out of David. And though she knew that this was when he needed her the most, she didn’t have anything to offer him, nothing that would take away his or her own pain. Kandi just couldn’t fill up that void inside of him.

And just seeing the expression on his face plunged the knife a little deeper, and she didn’t think that she could stand to see him so torn up. Her eyes fixated on the beige wall across from her as she watched his shadow bend and blur as he tried to get comfortable.

Logan’s eyes were tired and swollen from saline. He’d waited until he was alone in the shower to finally allow himself to break down, his tears flowing into the stream of the shower as the steady downpour drowned out his labored breathing. Wet clumps of dark hair matted against his forehead as the tiles of the shower blurred into white fog.

He wanted to be strong, he didn’t want her to see him broken like that, even though he had perfectly good reason to be.

Logan wrapped his arms around her, letting his chin rest amongst tangles of brunette waves. Her elbow fit into the crease of his own perfectly, and his fingers laced into hers, his index finger absentmindedly tracing the never-ending infinity sign on the ring he’d given her.

He just wanted to feel something warm, something real, something that he could touch and feel against his skin. Something that wasn’t hollow and vacant like himself.

Kandi could feel the warmth of his breath against the back of her neck, feel the slight pressure of his lips against her shoulder, and she couldn’t help but think that none of them deserved this pain. Carlos didn’t deserve to have his life suddenly cut short, Logan didn’t deserve to have himself eaten away from the inside-out, and she didn’t deserve to be forced to pick up the pieces of it all.

Logan’s voice was hoarse, but there was a boyish waver in his words. “I love you more than anything.”

She felt the air force from her lungs. “I love you too,” she whispered as she gripped his hand in her own.

Hours passed without words or sleep, just two sets of brown eyes staring as two pairs of lungs expanded and collapsed in time with their lost thoughts.