Isolated (adjective): far away from other places, buildings, or people; remote.

Now

Montana

It's cold as I continue my walk back home. I sat on a bench under a large tree in a park where I knew no one would find me until I could not feel any of the muscles in my body anymore then stood up, a little dizzy like I was drunk when I was sure I didn't have a single drop of alcohol in my body. I look down at my phone screen to see that its almost six in the morning and that there are over fifty missed calls and texts from Sierra asking me where I went. I ignore it because I just cannot think. I have become a walking, breathing, lonely and aimless being.

I walk up the block in the semi darkness, surprised that I was not dead yet even if I was used to the fear that runs through my spine when I hear little noises from down the street or the muffled shouts and thumping music from the apartments way above my head. The distant noises of police sirens are a bit comforting.

I remember wanting to move after graduation but there was always a voice at the back of my mind telling me to stay a while longer—that all the memories were still fresh, thriving and accumulating here. I sniffle, wiping at my sore eyes and pausing under a street light to look for my set of keys.

"It's in the little pocket on the side." A voice says and for a moment I think my soul actually leaves my body as I jump back with a yelp. "What—" the air rushing out of my mouth clouds in front of me as I blink once, twice, too many times—my heart a riot in my chest cavity. Calum.

"You always put your keys in the tiny pocket on the side." Calum points out, sat on top of a step that leads to the entrance of the building. "Oh, yeah, thank you." I feel my lips form a smile despite the scare but then my entire body freezes again. Why the fuck was I smiling?

"Calum..." I say under my breath, pleading at my mind to process this situation. It was as if I knew something was wrong but I was too tired to decipher what it was.

I step away from under the street light so I can see him and I can almost feel the whir inside my body as it comes back to life an atom a time.  "What are you doing here?" I force my throat to move, my lips to do its job. I was so tired.

"I don't know really. I knocked on your door but there was no answer so I was just sitting out here..." he drifts off, looking more tired than I have ever seen him and even more defeated—more than any other human being I have seen. "You shouldn't be knocking on my door." I say, looking up at the sky because it hurts to look at him. It hurt that my thoughts were forming again and that I remembered and that I sat on a bench for hours so I could numb the thoughts but now it was for nothing because here he is, again. I hated that I would rather be dead than remember.

"I know." he whispers and its so quiet around us that I hear it. I hear the crack in his voice, the crack in my heart. This street is never quiet, but it was now. Was the world shutting me out again?

I try to move my mind in another direction so I don't think of how his arms around me could fix me in an instant, how he would move heat into my brittle bones that were so frozen I didn't even feel the six kilometers I walked home.

I look down at my hands—they are shaking slightly and I have to grip at the keys to keep them steady. The sharp edges cut into my skin and I bite at my cheek. "I'm...so tired, Calum. And I just want to sleep..."  The desperation in my own voice makes me sick. I can't seem to even bullshit my way through this pain.

I hear him stand up, his boots scuffing against the brick as he walks down them. His footsteps are so familiar, everything about him is familiar to me. You don't realize how much you really know about someone when you love them. "Yeah, okay. I shouldn't be here...anyway, goodnight." he starts to walk away from me and every step he takes is like a thunderous clap at my brain—telling me that home was getting further away and I could do nothing to pull it closer. I start to shake from the inside out and my knees finally give up on me, refusing to hold up my pain anymore.

---

Calum

I see her walk up the street, her head bent and her shoulders shaking. Was she crying? Why was she walking home alone at six in the morning?

I'm rooted to this step like a dehydrated plant, wilting and dying. She stops under the streetlight and sighs like a war is going on in her lungs. I remember all the times that we have come back to her place and she has stood on that exact spot fishing in her bag for the keys. She was never forgetful but she would be so invested in me that she would forget her own name and I remember that I loved her for it. I hated that I loved her for it. I had always wanted to make her strong, never weak, but I wasn't isolated when she was mine and somewhere deep down I knew I'll never really be sorry for that.

"It's in the little pocket on the side." I clear my throat because she just can't seem to find the damn keys. She jumps back and my heart jumps too because I'm the idiot who is not supposed to be here. I should not be here. 

I want to cry at the irony. At how on the first date we had sex and I should have left after but I convinced myself to stay and now, I can never really leave again or smooth out her hunched shoulders ever again and I fucking hate that because she is ethereal when she stands straight and I'm depriving the world of seeing her beauty. "What—" her eyes don't widen like they should and I can tell she is not entirely present. It's crazy how much you notice when you really look at the ones you love.

Love. Love. Love.

She smiles when I tell her she always puts them there but then I can see her come back from that distant place, I can see her body stop shaking as she realizes that I am the one who sent her away. Its like a devastating movie on replay and the courage Hannah talked into me leaves my body like a deflating balloon.

Her lips move to say something again and I catch the word "tired" and I think I apologize for existing and then my feet are moving, moving me forward and I hope I never stop because right next to her was the only place I wanted to be and if I couldn't be there—I didn't want to be anywhere else.

I suddenly remember my mother who use to sit at a corner of our house and rock back and forth when I was young, screaming like a caged animal when there was no visible cage around her and all I did was love her but it was not quite enough. "Calum..." I hear from a distant place and then a thump.

I spin on my heel, looking back over my shoulder. My ethereal being, the one who actually made me into something and made me believe that love could heal someone even if it didn't work for my mother, is no longer on her feet but collapsed on the ground. "Montana?" Everything is back in focus again and it hits me like a moving train and I'm dizzy for a second before I'm moving—running towards her again. "Monti!"

---

Montana

I feel like I've been stepped on by a hundred elephants and been dragged along the Sahara desert by my hair alone. My eyes open a sliver and I stare at the beige curtains covering the windows of my apartment. My body aches but I'm weirdly comfortable and warm. The hand under my head is a bit numb so I turn onto my back. I try to move the arm that is on my stomach but it doesn't move. I stare at the ceiling with wide eyes, wondering if I have paralyzed my own arm.

There's light puffs of air at my cheek and I turn my head away from the ceiling and to the side to see Calum, fast asleep. His eyes are moving behind his lids and I want so badly to crawl into his mind and see what he is dreaming about. There's a faint sense of relief as I come to the conclusion that I haven't paralyzed my own arm and that its his one laying over my stomach.

I turn my body gently to the side to face him, pushing back with all my might at the thoughts that are coming back to me as my mind wakes. I put up a wall to block it all from coming back so I can just look at him at this moment. He is not supposed to be here, one sneaky thought slips through. I close my eyes, concentrating on the familiar weight of his arm around me and the heat radiating from his body.

I pretend that we never broke up, I pretend that nothing went wrong, that he is still mine and that we were never isolated. He makes a soft sound and my eyes open again to look at his lips. They are pouted even in his sleep, slightly parted as he breathes in and out. My hand rests between us, my fingers inching towards his skin. I just want to touch him, even if I have forbidden myself from doing so.

His eyelashes fan over his cheeks, so long and beautiful that it use to make me envious. Now I only wish to look at them for as long as I could. If I was to be granted one wish it would be to be frozen in this moment with him forever.

My fingers reach their destination and trace the dark circles just under his eyes and above his cheekbones. His skin is warm and sends tingles down my spine and I can no longer bare the inches of distance between our bodies. The ugly thoughts behind the wall I put up starts to pound furiously but my need is stronger. Need was an ugly thing too.

You fainted last night

I take my fingers away and look down to see that I'm in a white t-shirt. One of his that I took and never got to return. My legs are bare and his are only inches away from mine. The pain quickly gets overwhelming, "Calum..." my voice strains, tears springing into my eyes and in an instant, all my limbs are wrapped around him and I'm moving his head from the pillow and onto my chest. "Calum..." I sob and his eyes open, his arms tightening around me instinctively.

"Monti?" he whispers, sleep till heavy in his voice. The heat from his body starts to seep into mine and I wrap my limbs tighter around him, pulling him closer to me. "Just hold me, please." I beg and he doesn't say a word to refuse.

He moves the arm that he is using to hold all his weight and slips it under my waist, aligning his body with mine the way we use to do when everything in the world was right. The weight of him on me calms me more than anything in the world ever will and the brewing storms cease. "I'll hold you for as long as you want me too." his head nestles onto the crook of my neck and his lips leave a kiss there, gentle as ever.

I was safe again, he was safe again. It is all I think of as we drift off to sleep again. 

A/N:

I don't recommend for you to ever do that with your ex.