of forevers and evers

They haven't been working out. She thinks maybe it's time for other people, and he thinks they just need more time. She spends the night staring up at shadowy ceilings, and he falls into the sweet embrace of dreams about futures where they can afford an ice cream cone without having to work overtime. She's a realist, and he's a romantic.

And maybe that's why they had felt so drawn to each other at the beginning. She was twenty years old and busting her ass in community college, hoping to attract some passing interest from a private college, anything better than the run down cesspit she's trapped in right now. He was eighteen years old and fresh out of high school. She thought he looked too young, he thought she looked too old. But they fell in love anyways.

And maybe they're falling out of love now. 

The once carefree afternoons that had been filled with pillow fights and wild laughter are coiled tightly, both of them too afraid to break the tension. She wants to be anywhere but here. He wants to hold her in his arms and never let go. She's too afraid of what will happen to the starry-eyed, too naive little boy she had almost run over when they first met. He's too afraid of how she'll react if he buries his nose into her hair and pretends like nothing has changed.

She clacks away on the keyboard of her battered computer, bought from four pairs of hands. She's working on her thesis, and stress has reached an all time high. She'll be graduating community college in the next month, and it's a constant question that neither of them dare voice aloud for fear of acknowledging its reality.

They'll have to someday. 

He scratches out vague answers to his seminar questions, knowing that he can do better, knowing that no one will really care. He's two years younger than her, and he's already been offered a scholarship to a university halfway across the country. He still hasn't told her, because he knows that she'll tell him to go, and he wants to believe that she still loves him the way she has since she first appeared, offering to pay for his hospital fees off the skin of her back.

There's a knock on the door, and his head snaps up. Before he can say anything, she has stood up and climbed over the couch that doubles as a bed. Her hand is on the doorknob, and it slowly opens. There's a gasp, and her legs give out from underneath her.

He worries his bottom lip with his teeth as he slowly comes up behind her kneeling form and wraps his arms around her shoulder.

"I'm sorry," he offers, a paltry substitution for what he just took from her, but he loves her too much to let her go. He doesn't even care that his friend stands off to the side, watching silently as she shakes with silent sobs in his arms. "I'm so sorry."

She holds the velvet box in her hand, the simple silver band winking up at her. He was only able to afford the one jewelry piece. Her shoulders are shaking, and he rests his cheek against her hair, closing his eyes.

And as much as their love is stagnating, she has to choke, "I will, I will, I will," as the foundations of her world crumble beneath her feet and the only anchor she can touch is the boy who cannot stop this toxic love just as much as she herself cannot.