It Was You I Was Thinking Of

It sat quietly on the desk, innocent enough to anyone who cared to walk by. A white envelope with my name scrawled in messy script across the back glowing slightly orange in the light of the morning sun. My fingers circled the steaming mug at its side, lips pursed as I watched it with a bitter glare. To anyone else it was harmless, a simple note. To me though to me it burned, it stung and seared.

I closed my eyes with a sigh, massaging my temples as one simple word glared in that same god-awful handwriting on the back of my eyelids.

Alice,

Blinking rapidly I fought off the rest of what I knew was to come, the words the letter contained I had memorized from time and time again of reading. In the morning sun it was more than difficult though; it was impossible. I looked to the window—open with no screen as protection from the outside world—just as I had found it the morning I returned from the airport. Nothing had been broken, or taken, or even really touched. But something had been left. The letter, my name scrawled across the back and on the top line as it waited for me on my comforter.

It smelled like him; even three days later as it sat on the table beside the scent was undeniable. The shirt I wore still smelled of him too; the one he left on the night he jumped out the window weeks earlier. It only seemed fitting he would enter through it again to leave one final burning note.

I could see the words in my mind, fingers finally separating from the cup to grasp the letter for the umpteenth time since I had found it. The worn creases in the parchment were familiar from the many read-throughs. Here was another.

Alice,

I came to you running, does it surprise you that I’ll leave the exact same way? It’s hard enough to get through every single day when there’s always something there to remind me of you. Even something as simple as the smell of cookies; I stopped at your counter; remember those cookies you made me that night? The ones that were a bit too crispy around the edges because you had left them in the oven for a little too long? I do. I remember that you had them there, waiting for me when I showed up with a forced smile and red eyes. You apologized for that, but then again you apologize for everything. You’ll probably even apologize for this. The thing is, we both know you have no reason to. And that one time you called me a prick jokingly? Maybe you weren’t so wrong. Because I’m doing this out of fear, and I might not regret it now but I think there will come a day when I will.

I can’t say this to your face; I can’t even call you. Because it’s going to make it hard, probably too hard for me to go through with any other way. I’m a coward and Alice, quite frankly you scare me. Not in the cower-in-your-presence way your Napoleon complex would like you to believe you do, in a you’re-getting-too-close way. You scare me because you’re something I’m not ready for. You scare me because of what I felt that night I jumped out of your window. You laughed so hard there were tears on your cheeks, all because I thought I heard your father coming down the hall. No shoes, no shirt, no belt, I stood in your yard, staring up at you with your hair a mess and that wicked smirk that hadn’t graced your face too often of late glowing in the pale light of the moon. I felt it then, just as I feel it now, just as I have almost every second since that night. It’s warm, and it’s comfortable. It’s you on my mind; it’s you everywhere I look. It’s just you. It’s that strange smile I get when I think of the playful glimmer that comes from your eyes whenever I tease you. It’s that protective feeling I can’t fight when I see you crumbling at the edges right before my eyes. It’s something I’m not ready for. It’s scary because it means you’re getting close—and a part of me wants that. But I can’t do it; I can’t let it happen. Not now, maybe not ever. So this is me running again, not to you this time, but away.

I looked for my things; the belt and the shirt. I can’t bring myself to ask you for them back, they weren’t anywhere near the chair you had put them in that night after I clambered back in your window. They weren’t in your closet either. I won’t go through your drawers; I may be a prick but I’m not that big of an asshole. More or less those are excuses I think. I came here on impulse, to try to get you out of my system before I fled from your life. But I don’t think it’s worked so well. Everywhere I look it’s even more you than usual; you dragging me down your hall; you climbing on your counter to reach the cups on the top shelves of the cabinets while I laugh; your arms around my neck before I made it two steps in your front door, hugging me because you knew I needed it without me saying a word. I can’t escape it, even when I’m not here. There’s no closure, there’s no happiness in this. There’s plenty of cowardice, though.

I’m sorry for this. Those nights under the stars, driving around with you at three in the morning, those didn’t mean nothing to me. I need you to know that. I need you to know this isn’t your fault; don’t apologize this time. Not for this, not for what I’m doing. I just can’t bring myself to face you when you get so close without even trying. Everything about you is intertwined with happiness and fear. One of those I can’t get past. You are everywhere, Alice. And I can’t say whether this will work or not, or if I’m just going to hurt both of us while yielding no success whatsoever.

Don’t blame yourself like I know you’re going to. Blame the person who’s fault this really is, blame the one running.

I’m so, so sorry,

Theo

The fire was in my lungs, in my chest, in my eyes. The fire was everywhere, in every vein and bone scorching, charring, turning me to ash. I folded the paper, slipping it back into the envelope before looking towards the rising sun. I knew I was holding myself accountable against his words. I knew doing anything else would be near impossible. If I hadn’t pushed anything, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. That was what I had done, pried him open and slipped in, trying to get his damned walls down without any consideration. I had tried to help him, thinking of the benefits I could receive. And it had backfired so beautifully.

I hadn’t been able to help him get past those fears and wounds on the nights we had spent together; wandering around parks, watching the stars, tackling each other in pools, or even just the times when I had sat beside him as he dropped his head against my shoulder in emotional exhaustion. I had given him a new one; a fear of me, the girl he’d known since first grade when she pushed him off the top of the jungle gym. I had long lost track of the calls since then—day or night—that brought him to my front door. Thirteen years of friendship had vanished from my life with an open window and a note. He may have been a coward, but it was hard not to feel like a fuck-up. I had maintained our friendship so carefully over the years, and thrown it away with a few impulsive actions.

A vibration ripped me out of my thoughts, fingers fumbling in my back pocket as I pulled out my phone, only to realize it was simply an email alert. I quivered a bit as I sighed, tossing the phone down on the table. That was my reaction every time my phone had gone off over those past few days. Not once had it been him, I hoped, I prayed it was. But it wasn’t.

I had tried contacting him; called a few times, text him twice, and sent one email. There had yet to be a reply, and I was beginning to think that there would never be. But no matter how true it may have been, it wasn’t right. The situation as a whole was just wrong; because no matter what he wasn’t supposed to hurt me, and I wasn’t supposed to hurt him. We were supposed to be the one constant in one another’s lives. That was the way it had always been; that was the way it was meant to be.

But he felt otherwise now; I was there, just too much so, to a point where he was petrified of the idea of me. He was scared enough to abandon me, after all those years and nights of late. I could feel the heat growing behind my eyes, blinking quickly to keep the tears at bay as I stood, breathing the morning air from my window deeply. He was scared enough to hurt me; the one thing he promised all those years ago he would never do. And it truly was painful. My oldest friend, gone with the blink of an eye, ripping my heart to bits in the process.

The radio kicked in, alarm clock going of set for nine in the morning. I’d been up since seven. I flinched at the song; it was something we had listened to on our nights driving until dawn.

“Today is gonna be the day that they’re gonna throw it back to you…”

Oasis; nineties; our childhood; our first kiss. I swallowed the lump in my throat, steadily walking over to the iPod dock on the radio to flip through the songs. Every single one had hints of him in it, each one was it’s own little burn on my heart. It was a playlist we had made together, just something we enjoyed no matter what the time, or situation. It was ours, and it hurt. Just like the letter had.

My fingers danced along the small music player momentarily; it had hurt; he had burned me with that letter. And I’ll be damned if I was going to let that go. It wasn’t in my nature, to sit quietly and wait for a reply. He deserved to know what he had done; and if he was going to try to set fire to me with a letter, I was going to return the favor with the focal point of his life; music.

Simple wasn’t my style when it came to such a serious matter, sending him a CD compilation wouldn’t be good enough; it wouldn’t stand out enough to get my point across. I scurried across my room, remembering the time Jake had actually made me a mixed-tape when we were in tenth grade. It was a cassette, plenty of other girls had received CDs from their boyfriends, but I didn’t know a single girl who had laid claim to a cassette complied with their favorite songs. It worked; my car was old and a tape player wasn’t so far-fetched. I had played for months on end; even after the break up. CDs were too simple for this, but a mixed-tape? I couldn’t see Theo overlooking that.

Even from a young age we had both known he would end up doing something with music. He’d joined the orchestra our fifth grade year and never looked back. He had even gotten a scholarship out of it in the long run. Two years left in college, he was a music major; intent on joining a world-class orchestra upon graduation, and no one believed he could do it more than I did. He breathed it, he felt it, and he understood it so deeply I constantly found myself awed. If there was one thing that got him more than I did, it was the melodies he could play and analyze to no end. For some music was an escape, for Theo, music was life. And if I couldn’t get to him any other way, that would be my one chance.

It didn’t take much to realize there would be no such thing as a cassette to be found in my house; my mother was a neat freak. Anything that lacked purpose or use was generally gone before you could blink. I learned that when I was eight and she had thrown away my deck of Pokemon cards without a second glance.

My keys sat on the edge of the desk; I grabbed them, pushing a few strands of short, chestnut hair out of my face before slipping on the nearest pair of shoes. I caught myself humming, shortly glancing back at the iPod on the dock. I saw flashes of black hair and navy eyes in my mind; a smile, a frown, a broken boy; all Theo.

“I swear to god this mix could sink the sun, but it was you I was thinking of,” I sang, fighting off the memory of his hand on mine as I swept out of the room.

***

The cassette was small and black, sitting at the bottom of a brown paper bag next to me. On top of it was the belt he had left, coupled with a small note. My fingers had yet to leave the steering wheel; parked in front of his house I couldn’t bring myself to move. My chest felt tight, fear and anticipation squeezing me like a boa constrictor. It was my final move, after that I would cease my attempts to contact him. It didn’t matter what we had been to each other if he wanted nothing more than out. I wasn’t going to linger, even if he would stay in my thoughts.

“Coward,” I muttered to myself, slipping out of my seatbelt. Shakily I pulled myself from the car, bag in hand as I slowly approached his house. The yard was well kept, clean and neat with a pretty little swing on the porch beside the door. I hesitated, finger barely an inch from the doorbell. Shaking my head I took a deep breath before pressing the button. I heard it resonate inside the house, and then I waited, fidgeting with the handles of the bag.

She came around the corner uncertainly; I could see her through the glass panels on either side of the door. At the sight of me though, she moved a bit quicker, throwing the door open with an awkward smile and confused blue eyes. They hurt a bit; because they were the same shade as his, a deep, beautiful navy. He had her hair too, thick, curly black locks. When we were younger they had always been a frizzy mess, but the older we became, the tamer they were, and the more he grew into them. He had grown into everything though, that ridiculous, gangly height; up until tenth grade his nose had always been too big for his face, but puberty did him a favor; everything started to fit. Strong jaw-line, straight nose, full lips; he had ceased to be coupled with the lower tier of the social ladder at that point. I wasn’t the only one interested in him by then. The beauty I had seen in him all along had come to light after one summer of growth.

“Alice? I wasn’t expecting you. Theo didn’t mention you would be coming over,” she said kindly. “Would you like to come in? He hasn’t gotten up yet, but I’m sure if he knew you were here he would.”

I bit my lip, shaking my head as the pressure in my chest seemed to increase tenfold. “No, Mrs. Oswald. I just… I just came by to drop this off. Would you give it to him for me?”

“You don’t want to give it to him yourself?” She asked. I could feel the tension interlaced with her confusion.

“I’ve got things to do, I can’t really stay. I just wanted to drop it off. Make sure he gets it, okay?” I smiled tightly, holding the bag out. She didn’t reply, lips pulling downward as she gingerly took it from me. “Thank you.”

I turned, quickly fleeing down the steps.

“Alice, wait.”

I stopped slowly, turning to look back at her. There was a heat behind my eyes I had become so well acquainted with the past few days. The tears were there before I even realized it. My gaze immediately met the ground, oh, I couldn’t look at her.

“Did something happen between you and Theo?”

The silence was stale, no breeze, no rustling of the leaves to disturb it. It was just her and I, with an answer that didn’t require words slipping between us. Of course something had happened; I didn’t have to vocalize it for it to be known, or true.

“Just, tell him something for me, please?” I asked, looking up. She looked tired, features laced with concern, but after a moment she offered up a short nod. “Tell him I’m not sorry for it, at all. But tell him I’m sorry it turned out like this.”

I didn’t wait for a reply, walking quickly back to my car. The tears started there, and for quite a while they didn’t stop. At home I curled up in a blanket, falling asleep with puffy eyes and a stuffed up nose.

***

I woke up in the dark of the night; the soft lull of my iPod still attached to the dock the only sound in the late evening. I rubbed my eyes as I tried not to think too much about the song, or any of the others that may pop up. It was everything I loved; Oasis to Queen; Jason Mraz to Civil Twilight. They had been beautiful before, but once they became something we had shared it had become that much more captivating. But it was also dangerous; much like the letter. If he gave me fire; I had given him the sun.

Night was the hardest time for me next to early morning. It was heavy with memories of the time we had spent together of late. But there was nothing for that, I could hope and pray that eventually the memories would fade, and the pain would vanish.

I looked at the clock, half-past midnight. I had slept roughly twelve hours without even waking. Sitting up I caught sight of the moonlight slipping through the open window, illuminating the floor and the corner of my desk in a silver glow. My gaze didn’t shift; something wasn’t quite right. The note was gone, the one with my name scrawled messily across the back. I fumbled my way off my bed, looking under the dark wooden surface before opening and closing all of the drawers. My heart rate picked up, eyes darting back and forth as I pushed my messy hair out of my line of sight. It wasn’t there.

There was a brief rustling behind me, soft, but just audible enough to catch my attention. I turned quickly, coming to a sudden halt as all my senses took a sudden jolt. I saw nothing else in that moment; not the flashing of the digits on my alarm clock, not the spinning blades of my fan, not the disarrayed state of the clothing strewn about my room. It was just a pair of deep, dark eyes, watching me from the chair before the vanity. It was a boy with jet-black locks and full lips; high cheekbones and a weight in his gaze the likes of which I had never seen.

“You apologized,” he stated, voice weary.

“I’m—“

“Don’t say sorry, Alice, please.” He cut me off. “We both know you have nothing to apologize for. I told you that, didn’t I?”

“I was looking for the note,” I muttered, unable to tear my eyes off of him.

His face softened a bit. “You won’t find it.”

The slow sizzling pain was starting again. He was the catalyst for everything, not two yards from me in the dark of my room. He reached out, small, folded piece of paper in his hand. I recognize it; it was the one I had left in the bag, with the cassette tape and his belt.

“This one seems more appropriate. I want you to take it.”

“Why?” I spat. “You made it pretty clear what you wanted with that letter.”

“And you made it clear you know how to break through my walls with that mixed tape, Alice,” He replied quickly. “I want to be happy, and sometimes you have to take risks to do that. I am afraid of you, still. But you know what? That’s something I need to get over because you make me happy. Just you. All these years, everything, it’s always been you. And I’m sorry, I’m sorry for what I did, god, Alice, I really am.”

He was on his feet then, stepping around the bed, to my side. Only a few slim rays of moonlight separated us. He held out his hand again as my heart maintained it’s double-time. It was the note again.

“You meant that in reference to compiling those songs. I mean it in reference to hearing them. The entire time, every second. Even without it, it’s just been you on my mind, constantly. Please, Alice, please,” he begged. Looking up at him, into those dark blue eyes I couldn’t bring myself to say no. Gently, with trembling fingers, I took it. I already knew what the words there were, I knew, but seeing them. I caught them in the moonlight, black on silver. They were enough to change the flames, turn the pain into a spreading, gradual warmth. It wasn’t the words themselves, it was the simple fact he meant it the same as I did. Maybe things wouldn’t be okay just then, but they were a comfort, a welcome revelation.

It was you I was thinking of.