She was always just words to you.
— Words on a paper, when you printed it, but usually text on a screen, because, after all, this is the twenty-first century. But whatever, right? It all came down to the fact that she was only words. Just words. Meaningless if you didn’t understand the language, if you didn’t read, if you were blind.
And in many ways, that might’ve made your life just so much easier.
You’ve waited three years for this, and the last two days have passed excruciatingly slow as you continue to obsessively check your phone for a message, any message that you might have missed. You know you’re just being silly, and that you’re not acting much like yourself. You can’t seem to stay still long enough to piece your composure back together, it shattered the second this moment became certain, tangible – now looming in the near future, bright as it already was.
You just have to keep moving, doing something to preoccupy your rampant imagination from flying further as you wait on restless wings, perched on edge and ready to fall. Pathetic, you think to yourself. You have a life.
But even so, every other minute, you can’t help but wonder if she was too busy, if she had simply forgotten, or really never meant it at all.
No, you tell yourself, after a second of disturbing contemplation, your stomach churning with unease even though at present it was nothing more than just a thought. She wouldn’t do that, she promised.
You check your phone again, struggling to mobilize your stiff fingers, numb from the cold, and hiss with frustration as they slide over the smooth surface, a bit too quickly than you would have liked. Finally, they find purchase on the icy plastic, and you manage to flip it open deftly.
Two messages, and you want to curse. You should’ve gotten caller ID. Mouth pursed, you snap open your lock with unwonted venom, and the locker door swings gently open as if to greet you. You grab your lunch bag, stuffing it unceremoniously into your battered backpack, and tie your scarf quickly around your neck, the growing bitterness lending speed to the familiar movements. You don’t know why you’re hurrying, and there’s no room in your mind for you to dissect the problems to find the answer that seems to elude you much too effortlessly for your liking. Sure, your mum is going to pick you up in ten minutes, but that’s plenty of time to get ready.
Your phone blares heavy metal. The stringent notes of the guitar and the heavy, constant beat of the drums tinny though your phone’s speakers, even more so as the harsh melody continues to echo down the empty hallway.
You drop everything to answer it, and a voice unlike any other you’ve heard and known comes through across the line.
“Hey.”
“Hello?” you say, faltering as your throat constricts and your muscles tense inevitably. Your mind is going several miles a minute and no where at all. Your blood pulses through your veins and your heartbeat pounds in your ears so loudly, you’re certain they can hear it. Your nerves are all a flutter, and you fumble clumsily with the phone, trying to turn up the volume as you hear murmurs, soft and hazy in the background. You swallow in a desperate attempt to moisten your mouth.
“Um, hello.”
“Hi.”
“It’s me.”
The voice, at once so unfamiliar and everything you expected – you listen hard, wishing that you could jump out the window of the second floor to get a better reception. You silently curse the desolate halls, but you can’t dwell on it for too long.
____
You stare into the mirror, your own gaze boring into you. You were always, in a way, planning to decline. It would be so complicated, explaining it all to your parents, and it was last minute, even though it wasn’t like you hadn’t known beforehand. But even when you first found out, you knew it wasn’t going to work easily, if at all. The same unease you’ve felt all along resurfaces, and you can’t help but imagine all the negative reactions you have or might have caused. Better safe than sorry, right?
You swear silently, feeling desperate as your mind fills with the mantra of obscenities, and you welcome it because it drowns out all other thought. You’ve been waiting so long… so long for something that was never going to happen.
The tap gushes steaming hot water, the flow hits the sink and trickles down the sides, nearly invisible as it’s sucked inexorably down the drain, save for the misty tendrils unfurling from its ever changing surface. You stick your cold hands beneath the torrent, and feel them burn, and sear with slight pain. You move your fingers experimentally as the stiffness melts away and cupping your hands together, you wait expectantly for them to fill.
But you could’ve never kept it all anyway, you realize, as you watch it drip from the small spaces between your fingers.
“I really want you to come…” she says softly, her voice tinged with just the right amount of wistful longing.
It’s etched in your mind, and you can’t scrape it away. It’s set on repeat, like the songs you listen to over and over again until you become so numb it just washes over you. And right now, you want it to – you want it to – so desperately your heart aches.
You want to not think anymore, not to feel.
But you can still hear your hollow reply. “Sorry. I can’t.”
She was always just words to you.
ur no. 1 on-and-off-again (hereby OA2, for short 
)
I absolutely loved the ending. It was fantastic.
