so this is love

Ava looks at Elle and feels like something’s shaken loose in her chest. Like a box you’re not sure whether it’s empty or not – Schrodinger’s emotions. Is this what it’s like to fall out of love?

Elle doesn’t seem as radiant as she used to, Ava remarks quietly to herself. Perhaps she had been blinded by the sun that had made Elle’s silhouette smoulder at the edges, like a photograph put to a lighter. Elle is burning and Ava doesn’t know what water is. As much as Ava cares, she is cursed to be oil, to be alcohol, perfume – just another thing for Elle to burn through on the way to her end. Ava doesn’t know whether someone like Elle would burn into rebirth or simply crumble to ashes when all is done. Ava thinks Elle doesn’t even know she is burning.

There she goes, kissing all the pretty girls and dancing her fingers on the collars of only the finest boys. But when she comes back, Ava always lets her in. There’s something disarming about the way Elle looks sideways at her, like she’s sharing some big secret about the universe with Ava, and only the two of them know it. The way she waits at Ava’s doorstep, all jean-jacket and confidence, it’s impossible not to love her, isn’t it? But here they are, standing at the kitchen counter drinking orange juice. Ava looks at Elle again and finds something that wasn’t already there when she decided to start loving her. Perhaps, some sick part of Ava thought she could fix her.

Only after Ava tells Elle she wants to break up, only after Ava drives home in her mother’s blue Sedan, only after Ava closes the bathroom door and turns the showerhead on full, only then does Ava allow herself to cry.