Our conversation began playfully, as they always did. Your dark hair was shining in the sunlight, and I wondered whether I'd made a mistake.

I wondered what I'd found to dislike in you, with your witty banter and your light, teasing tone.

I wondered why I'd done it. I wondered if I could go back, if I should take the blame for something I'd thought was your fault. We all make mistakes, don't we?

When I was a child, my mother often read me a fable about hobgoblins that lured travellers into the peat bogs during misty nights. They would wave lanterns and promise sweet things, such sweet things, that the travellers would lose the path and follow them. She would kiss me goodnight, and tell me not to listen if they cam calling.

My brother and I would lark around on the mountain ridges with sticks, pretending there were lanterns hanging from the end.
Come over here, it's the safe path, my pretty, just follow my light - All accompanied by ten year old laughter and the sparkling eyes that I just don't have anymore.

You promised me sweet things.
You promised me laughs and lightness and endless summer days. And when you pulled a ring out of nowhere I thought that it was all paying off - I could see my life mapped out.

But safe isn't that same as happy, is it?

Safe means banter that never dips into the darkness that swirls just below the surface. Safe is lying when you asked if I was having second thoughts. Safe means not mentioning the lipstick stains - just trying to coil you in tighter, to make myself that little bit more secure.

Happy didn't play a part.

The silly thing is, I never thought that I might be unhappy.
It only occurred to me when my friends took me out to celebrate my engagement. I saw a couple sitting, only their little fingers linked. I watched them, and realised that we would never do that.
Could never do that. You showered me with over the top, public kisses and affection. You told me you loved me, and that was supposed to be enough. You told me you loved me, you told me you cared - but it wasn't water tight, was it? Because when push came to shove, you were never there.

When Meredith's funeral came, and my face was streaked with tears, you were nowhere to be seen. We were getting married and you couldn't come to my bestfriends funeral? That was heartless. That was so, so heartless.
And I lied for you. "He's ill. He wanted to be here".

I think I realised then. That you were my hobgoblin.

The conversation began playfully, but when I reached for my ring and slid it off my finger - it didn't stay that way for long.

I'd never seen you so angry. Not heartbroken, not sad, not confused - angry.
And you were sick-minded enough to try and make me feel guilty. And it worked. Your face still comes to me, eyes wide and pitiful. "You're not actually going to go through with this, are you?"

And yes. Yes I am.

The floor was cold under my bare feet as I crept down the stairs, listening to the noises that the house was making. The kind of noises it made when it thought everyone was asleep – the hum of the refrigerator, occasional clunks, the creaks as the walls warmed up and cooled down. By all rights, I should have been asleep.
Outside, the night was the impenetrable black that you only ever see in the dead of night, in the middle of winter. My face looked ghostly and pale in the glass of the window as I turned the tap, water sluggishly filling my glass. It was a peculiar feeling – like being disconnected from everything around you. Freefalling.

“Bit late, even for you.” I jumped, when I shouldn’t have. I don’t think you ever slept. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“Couldn’t stop thinking.”

“Ah.” Your shadow moved towards me across the room, and I watched your reflection in the frosty window.  “It’s cold.”

“I know.” This was how we worked, this shorthand. For a guy who never shut up, and a girl who never said anything, I suppose it wasn’t unusual.

“Aren’t you cold?”

“I’m not the one who’s half-naked.”

You chuckled, and I turned to look at you. Sweatpants hugging your hips and nothing else.

“Are you allergic to shirts?” I felt compelled to ask.

“I sleep naked. This is dressed up.” You smirked.

My cheeks flushed, and I was so grateful that the dark hid it. Suddenly, I was conscious of my pyjamas. Which was ridiculous – there was nothing wrong with sleepy sheepy.

You were watching me, that slow smile messing with my head.

“What?” I snapped irritably, uncomfortable with the weight of your gaze. “What?”

“Nothing.” You said, shaking your head. “You just look nice” you reached out, caught a wave of my hair, “with your hair down.”

I tugged away, making an impatient noise, and you dropped your hand to my arm. I looked up at you, wild eyed, and you stared back. I didn’t pull away.

For the first time in your life, your eyes weren’t dancing around, constantly distracted. They were still. We were still. We were trapped in that second.

“Are you cold?” I asked, and a part of me congratulated myself. That sounded almost normal, nice one.

You smiled slowly, your pupils huge and diluted. I wanted to tell them to stop, they were swallowing the green and it wasn’t fair.

“Not anymore.”

You reached your spare arm up and cupped the side of my neck, I watched your eyes, and they watched your hand. You tangled your long, pianist’s fingers in my hair, and looked up, into my eyes.

“Can I kiss you?”

Before, when we were dancing and I was so scared that the music was my drug, that I’d come around and know it had been a mistake, I had said no.

But there is nothing hypnotic about standing in a dark kitchen, skin crawling with the memory of shivers and when the soundtrack is the humming of the fridge.

“Yes.”

Your head dipped slowly towards mine, and I counted every second.

One.

I was falling.

Two.

Your breath touched my face, my eyes were closed.

Three.

Maybe you were falling too.

Four.

Your lips brushed mine, a whisper of a kiss, and then deepened. And suddenly we weren’t two, beautiful, broken teenagers with no way out and who were so, so tired. Suddenly, we were a girl in sheep pyjamas and a boy with smiling eyes. Suddenly, we were inconsequential to the grand scheme of things. Suddenly, we were all that mattered.

And when you pulled away, and my eyes opened reluctantly, I saw that you weren’t going to disappear. There was no pounding bass to hide behind and my hair was brushing my the bottom of my shoulder blades.

“Okay?” You said, and I watched the way your eyes sparked, my mind was humming.

“Okay.” I said, and I knew that, for the first time in a while, there would be no nightmares tonight.

One of these days, he's going to write you a song.

One of these days, he'll be sitting in a pub with the lights husky and his brain muffled, and he'll run his fingers over the battered piano's keys. They'll be slightly sticky - his won't be the only drunk hands that have caressed them.

He'll tentatively start to work at them, a melody will form as if by accident. It'll be nothing spectacular. It won't be awe inspiring. It won't be destructive. It'll be quiet. It'll be gentle. It will haunt you for nights on end. It will remind you of something you've heard before. It will be just like his love for you.

He'll forget about it by the end of the evening. He'll drink himself into oblivion because if he sees you in his mind one more time - your head thrown back, blonde hair around your shoulders, eyes so light and alive, he'll go mad. He wonders if he's mad already. He certainly feels it most days.

In the morning, he'll find himself at the piano again. This will be a different piano. This piano will be a work of art in itself, he'll wonder if he deserves to use it. He does, he does, he does.

He'll flex his fingers, his eyes will go to your bracelet around his wrist. And he'll play. His fingers remember what his mind doesn't.
It might be a long piece, he won't ever be sure if it's finished. He'll call it "In Memoriam" publicly. To himself, he'll title it "An Apology in Motion"

He'll wonder if you'd have liked it, if you had ever heard it.

You would have. You loved everything that he created. You would have told him this, one day.

When I was five, I ran away.
I took my favourite teddy,
Three packets of raisins,
And a blanket.
I climbed the huge old sycamore tree,
In the middle of common,
And I stayed there until it got dark.

When I was seven,
I ran away.
We were in town,
I’d been left outside the bank.
So I simply walked away.
Maybe that was the start of it.
Walking. Not running.
Disappearing. Not fighting.

When I was ten,
I ran away for real.
I took my piggy bank,
My mother’s purse,
A change of socks,
And I left just as it got dark.

When I was fourteen,
I discovered there was a different way out,
How to leave the madhouse?
Join the inmates.

When I was fifteen,
I was sent to see a man with a beard,
He asked me questions, all of them meaningless,
But one.
Why had I jumped?
I smiled. I’d been dead for a while, you see.
“Because I thought I would fly.”

She tells them all that she's fine.

She's told everyone it seems. These days, it's all people want to know. And it's not that all of them ask outright - they ask with their eyes, they ask with that sympathetic frown that makes her want to break something. Several somethings, truth be told.

And God, it makes her furious. She is no longer one of two - she's just one. She's fractured, and she's jagged, but she's one. So if they could stop bringing up that pulsating space in her chest, that would be ideal.
It's never easy - learning to breathe when your lungs are full of ash, your eyes full of the past and your heart still triumphant, but no longer whole.

And God, it makes her lonely.

She's been addicted to him for months, for years, but that was excusable then. They were indestructible. The ideal couple. They were sunlight on her hair, they were his resonating laugh.
It only becomes inexcusable when they stand next to each other, but their gazes are averted. Their hands aren't linked. When her hair falls into her face, it stays there. When his collar falls haphazardly, it stays that way.
It only becomes an addiction when she wants to whisper into his ear but no longer can. It only becomes an addiction when she forgets the touch of his hands.

So when they stumble against each other one night, and she fits against him the way that she's always done, and he holds onto her like a drowning man - she lets go for a moment. Their relationship was never built on stable stones. It was built on fire, and it was built on ice, and it was built on a length of time that made sure that one could never think back without the other being present, somewhere. He was always too old for her friends, she too young for his. But they fit together so well. Her head just under his chin, her hands on his shoulder blades.

It only becomes an addiction when they repeat, time and time again. It only becomes an addiction when his lips on hers taste of sin, and when their shared breaths are secrets to be kept.

She tells them all that she's fine.
She tells him that she's fine.
She tells herself that she's fine.
And one of these days, someone might just believe it.