My Eyes They Despise You for Who I Am

He’s beautiful. It doesn’t matter that his face is streaked with tears and sweat, or that his knuckles are bruised and split. It doesn’t matter that he’s just come out of a blazing row with her, the one he’s in love with. Because he’s here now, with me, and I can keep him safe. He’s not a violent man; his cracked knuckles are the result of his fist through a section of dry wall, and not a collision with her face. He takes deep, gulping breaths in the dark, me sitting on the couch and him flat on his back, recovering, with his head on my lap as he splutters and coughs and tries to stop the tears.
He cares too much about her; I’d always thought so. But I couldn’t change how he felt, so I’d kept a respectful silence. And now she’s done it again, and she’s sent him back to me, and he’s lying on my couch playing with the red and blue bracelets on my wrist distractedly and the close proximity is driving me mad, but there’s nothing I can do about it.
He takes a deep, shaky breath and opens his eyes again. They’re usually a soft brown that shines when he smiles, but tonight they are dark. Dark with anger, and something not as easy to define. It might be humiliation, shame, or embarrassment, for letting someone see him like this. It might be pain, and my heart aches at the thought. It might be a combination.
“I’m stupid,” he croaks. Ah. Stupidity. So that was it. He winces at the way his vocal cords have to force the words past a solid lump of unhappiness in his throat, shuts his eyes for the longest time, then speaks again. “I’m stupid for caring. Stupid for loving her. She’s back with him, you know? For the third time.” He tries to talk again, but he can’t get the words out because he’s crying again, so I run my hands through his short dark hair in what I hope is a soothing way.
“You’re not stupid. You’re human. I understand, okay, I really do. You talk as long as you want. Cry as much as you need. I’ll be here when you’re done.” I tell him, and his eyes slide open again. They’re focused on mine, and the tension is palpable, the room so silent I can hear the shaking in his breath. He sits up abruptly and wraps me in a cocoon of warm, strong arms, soft jumper, a wall-like chest, his breath in my hair and a smell that I have inexplicably linked to him.
“I love you,” He mumbles and holds me tight as he begins to doze off, leaning back against the lounge and pulling my old crochet blanket over us.
“I love you too,” I whisper back to him, and my heart cracks in two. He loves me, but not the way I want him to; crazily, head over heels, volatile, fresh, never ending love. I’m not the girl he wants to take home to his mum and grow old with and kiss under the stars or in the pouring rain. After all, you don’t kiss your best friend, or your little sister, and really, that is what I am.
I know this, just as I know tonight is about his pain, not mine. So I shut my mouth and let him fall asleep holding me, imagining for just a second, he loves me and not her, the girl who can’t make her own mind up. The last thing I see before I myself drop off is his tear-stained face, and his mouth curved into a quiet smile.