Forgive (verb):  stop feeling angry or resentful towards (someone) for an offence, flaw, or mistake.  

Now 

Montana

I lay wide awake, the world spinning around me and around the feel of his heated skin against mine. Back when this wasn't forbidden, I would push him away mindlessly when it got too hot and didn't worry about him not coming back because he always would. Somewhere in the middle of the night our bodies would tangle together like we wanted to share our dreams with each other. 

But now I'm afraid to breathe, if my chest rises too far up, the movement will be too big, and so will the consequences. How low did you have to go in life to be afraid of breathing so that someone would not let go of you?

"Monti?" Calum whispers. Outside the window the city that never sleeps was living up to its name, the sounds of midday drifting in slightly. "My arm is a bit numb..." he chortles. My whole body was numb so I knew his was too. I unwrap my arms and he lifts himself hesitantly away from me, shaking out his arm. The muscles of his bicep glistens with a light sheen of sweat. He always knew when I was awake, he knew my breathing patterns too. It was kind of creepy. 

"I'm sorry." I manage to say for the first time in about seven hours. "No...no its okay...really. We all need a good cuddle sometimes." he raises his eyebrows, shrugging his shoulders. There's a smile on his face and it breaks my heart because I really wanted to kiss him. "You probably have a lot of things to do instead of being holed up in here with me. Do you want some coffee?" The switch flips, the switch of perfect nonchalance and I know he notices it too because his eyebrows knit together in confusion. 

"Yeah, coffee would be good." he looks down at my face, still so close I was barely breathing. "Okay, well, um..." I break the eye contact by looking at the clock and he quickly moves away like he has been stung, getting off the bed like there is a fire somewhere he needs to tend too. God knew he was the only one who could put out the flames that were burning me up alive from the inside a cell at a time. 

I roll over until I'm on the edge of the bed and then sit up with my legs over the side, reminding myself to not forget to breathe in. I really didn't have a lot riding on the whole life thing but carbon dioxide overdose would be an ugly way to die I reckon. "Are you feeling okay? You passed out on the street." 

"I'm fine." I quip, stretching my arms up above my head to shake off the sleep and numbness—walking past him into the kitchen, hoping that he goes and uses the bathroom or something so I had a minute to collect myself and accept that he was here in my damned house having cuddled me through the night and nursed me through one of my breakdowns after six months of being apart. I decide to make breakfast even though it was way past lunch too. Breakfast used to be our favorite, simply because morning sex used to be our favorite. He used to say that it was something about my eggs for breakfast. I think he meant it, pun intended and everything.

The memory makes me smile and I stand there with my arm extended above my head reaching for a pan, smiling at the thought of him butt naked in my kitchen talking about my eggs. "You don't need to make breakfast." Calum interrupts my thoughts of him and I turn, pan in hand like a shield. 

"I don't mind." I suddenly felt the urge to scream at him, to tell him that I had thought I would be making him breakfast for a lifetime. "—besides, its the least I could do after you saved me from being mugged or raped if I had fainted out there alone and you weren't there to see it." Calum cringes. "You shouldn't be out there alone at that time. Maybe back home in Sydney but not here in New York,  It's not safe, especially for you."

"Especially me?" I ask, setting the pan on the stove and cracking some eggs into a bowl as he makes his way slowly to the counter in front of me, placing his elbows on top and leaning against it. "Have you seen yourself in the mirror? You should get an army to guard that beauty of yours." I can see his smile without having to look up, his comment coming out of his lips with no way for him to stop it. 

It makes my chest ache and I really wanted to use a kitchen knife to split my front open and see where this damned ache was coming from. It was like a thriving monster in my chest, stealing parts of my soul every time Calum said a word. It was an ache you only ever get when the ones you love are around. 

The smell of coffee spreads through the kitchen as the timer goes off and I remain silent. "Look, about last night..." Calum starts but I pour the whisked eggs onto the sizzling pan and the sound cuts him off. Last night shouldn't have happened, period. The tension in my little apartment was proof enough. 

"Last night shouldn't have happened." I repeat, this time with my mouth and not just in my head as I chop tomatoes and onions into tiny bits. "What?" he walks around the counter, taking the knife away from my hand so I stop chopping furiously. 

"You weren't supposed to be here, Calum." I look down at the cutting board. His cologne was more intoxicating to me than all the coffee brewed in the world. 

He takes a step back like I have stung him, "So you're putting this on me? Like you always do." 

"Putting what on you?" I take the knife back from him, refusing to look up at his face. This was how it always started. "Don't act like you weren't the one pulling me in last night, hanging onto me and crying out my name. Don't act like you didn't miss me. Don't give me the cold side when the sun comes up." I pause all movement, the words forming on my tongue furiously. Why was is it that the people you loved always said the most toxic things? Was it the power you gave them over you?

"Forgive me for having a moment, forgive me for wanting to hug someone I love. Forgive me for wanting another human close, I will make sure to never do it again." I say dryly, gripping the granite counter—the handle of the knife digging into my palm painfully. 

"You love me?" he picks out those two words out of all the things I just said. "That is not the point." I huff, throwing the knife into the sink and it clatters around before it settles. 

"Then what is the point?" 

"You don't get to just waltz in here after six months and demand things of me." I jab my hand in his direction. The temperature was rising.

"I'm not demanding anything of you, and if you can't recall, these past six months weren't my fault." He pushes his hair back from his forehead with frustration. Oh, we were on the blaming-each-other basis even after being apart. God really must be laughing now, hey bastard! 

"It never is your fault is it? It's always fucking Montana who is at fault—" I clap at my own chest with my fist. "—it's always me who doesn't love enough, always me who doesn't speak enough. Everything is my fucking fault! That's why I broke it off, don't you see? It's why I let you go! Because everything is my fault!" 

Calum flinches back, his form blurring with the tears in my eyes. "I don't love you! Okay?" I lie and he flinches again. I might as well push the knife into his heart and end this torture. "Are you happy? Is that what you came here for? To get an absolution so you can go ahead and fuck another clueless girl who is desperate for love? Go on!" I move closer, shoving at his chest with all the energy I have left.  

"Get out! Leave me alone! Leave me alone!" I yell hysterically until he is gone and my front door is banged close and the eggs burn and the world burns around me and I claw at my chest so I can stop feeling this pain. I wanted to punish myself for never being able to tell the people I love that I loved them. I wanted to claw at my mind for the words I will never say. He is gone, once again. I can still feel his arms, still smell his skin. 

The smoke alarm goes off and my screams die off and the world has never been so silent. 

---

Calum 

This was how it always started. The weakness in my legs, the refusal in my head to hold her while she breaks because my mind screams at me, telling me that she wanted me gone. So I walk out, leaving her in a fit of rage as she screams at me to leave her alone. Deep down I knew it was the opposite I was supposed to be doing. 

I wanted to believe that six months apart would have cured us, that I would finally stop blaming her for the things I say and do. I was weak and this was all pointless. 

I didn't deserve her. I know it, she knows it, the world knows it. And I was glad that she didn't love me. 

"I don't love you! Okay? Get out! Leave me alone!"

I can still hear her shouts, ringing in my ears. She never raised her voice, not before me. She never said she didn't love someone, not before me. Was she right? was that what I had come for? To hear her say that she no longer loved me. Why did she want me to stay last night? Why did her limbs squeeze at my body mercilessly as she wept into my shoulder and then finally drifted off to a deep sleep. I watched her the whole night, my eyes not daring to close even when my body was screaming at me with fatigue because I thought this was it, I had her back, she would forgive me finally.

But instead she said she doesn't love me anymore. Six months was a long time, I was stupid to think she would still be thinking of me. Maybe it was never love to begin with. 

My feet carry me forward, aimless. I keep walking until the thought that I have nothing left without her, comes into my head like a venomous snake, slithering and salivating over the little bits of hope it sees in its path. I walk onto a bridge and see garbage floating in the water that flows underneath it. I lean against the cement railing, looking over. I watch the grey water ebb and flow and a tune I remember from my childhood drifts into my mind. A rebellious anthem of lost hope.

I hum the tune under my breath, thinking about how I wish the imagery that came along with it was of a good childhood. How I wish I had memories of playing soccer with my dad and not of me kicking at metal cans against a wall outside emergency rooms while doctors tried to revive my mother. I climb up the ledge and sit on it, humming louder. I ignore the vertigo. 

After awhile I had gotten used to hospitals, the nurses feeding me junk food from the vending machines and the doctors ruffling my hair with pity in their eyes and telling me my mommy was okay.

"I don't love you!"

If I shut my eyes really tight, I can pretend to cut out the don't. But I wasn't up for manipulating other peoples words, not even in my own head. They say once you say something out loud, you never get to take the words back. They are out in the universe and in the air—suffocating you. I was sure it was what people called karma. 

You would think that a language made by humans for humans wouldn't make you want to end your life but it does. That is how much power we have given ourselves. Our own evolution has become our weakness. The pointless couple of words I said because my brain couldn't catch up to my tongue has left everything in tatters again. I can picture her, leaning against the counter now with tears flowing down her cheeks. All because of a couple of words. 

The laugh starts in my stomach, and then deep at the back of my throat and before I can help it my whole body is shaking with laughter. I clutch at my stomach, laughing at all the ways I have fucked up in life, laughing so that I don't cry. But apparently, Karma must have heard my insults because my leg slips when for a second I forget that I'm sitting on a ledge. My hands don't grasp onto anything but air and the laughter along with the oxygen in my lungs slips out of me with a jerk as I fall into the water below. 

"I don't love you!"

A/N:

Don't hate me, please.