I Walk the Line ♤ (gxg)

chapter 28: picking up the pieces

She laid there on the pavement, shivering from the cold.

Her head pounded from the pain in her forehead, the blood which had flowed down the side of her face finally slowing down. She found some sort of comfort holding herself while crumpled on the ground, even though her entire body was shivering.

She knew she needed to get up, wipe the blood off her forehead, and find somewhere to go, but she couldn't. It was as if she was no match to gravity, and its force was pulling her down against the ground like a magnet to a fridge. She felt stuck, like if the whole planet were to tip upside down, she would still stay hanging on that pavement road.

Her heart ached in her chest, and she could've sworn her ribcages felt like wooden planks groaning while being stepped on, the walker oblivious to how sensitive the wood underneath their feet were. Even the rabbit in her chest made no sound; he simply sat there in the suddenly dark cavity, wondering what had happened to make the lights go out.

She felt so stupid. She felt like a desperate idiot with no sense of wrong or right and no sense of how to just say "no." Strangely enough, though, her mind never went back to all their bad moments in the beginning and their bad moment at the end. The only thing showing in the slideshow in her brain was all the good moments in the middle.

She thought about the day when Willow and she were arguing over what to watch on TV and they ended up on top of each other on the couch with neither of them scrambling away. The closeness felt natural; it felt like it was something that neither of them had known was missing in their lives. She remembered when Willow had walked in on her changing, how her usually cool cheeks turned red for the first time. She remembered at that party that night when the jealousy written across the woman's face was too clear for her to refute. She was possessive of the girl. Her eyes screamed "mine" while her mouth screamed at the man who was being inappropriate towards what was hers. He had crossed a line that August didn't even know had been drawn, and maybe Willow didn't either. But she also remembered their first kiss that night. It felt so right, so amazing, so soft. She remembered the woman pinning her down and sticking her body to hers like they were magnets whose paths crossed on that fridge. She remembered the Christmas dance, how she held onto Willow's arm the whole time and the woman never asked her to let go; she only held onto her just as much, bringing her around to meet people like she was so excited for them to see the girl that she smiled at as if she was the most amazing invention in the whole world. She remembered their Christmas Eve, the feeling of Willow being intimate with her. She didn't want to call it sex—she wanted to call it making love. She didn't comprehend how it could have been anything other than that, with the way Willow gripped her so close as she penetrated her and officially marked her as hers. When the woman came and then collapsed onto her body, she told her she loved her, and August said it back because she meant it. She loved her.

She trailed her hand up to her hot neck where she felt the necklace hanging on her chest. More tears fled from her eyes. She loved her so much. There was no way that Willow couldn't have loved her back.

But then she remembered the time at the cave that seemed so long ago. That's when she had begun to look at Willow in a different light, as someone she didn't need to be afraid of. Little did she know that the woman had been holding a gun behind her head, both literally and figuratively.
 
She felt betrayed. She felt broken. She felt so, so stupid.
 

♠

Pulling her keys out of her pocket, she inserted the key into the doorknob and twisted left, hearing the door unlock. Pulling the key back out, she turned the cold knob and opened the door.

The familiar smell of Peyton's shampoo and her own French vanilla perfume invaded her nostrils as she walked into her dorm. Carrying her heavy bags, she waddled to her bed and set them down on the edge of it. Leaning her body over her bags, she took a big sigh and rested her face against the denim fabric of her duffle bag. When she inhaled, she could faintly smell the scent of the hotel in Utah still lingering on the material. Feeling a sickness rise to her stomach, she sharply stood up and walked away into the bathroom.