He hadn't shown up in three days.

Every night, since he'd made that one promise he couldn't keep, I sat against the front door, taking in the sound of abandonment whenever the sun rose and his feet hadn't hit the corridor floors like they used to.

 Everyone gives up eventually, right?

My best friend had called on the fourth day of his absence, her voice soft and gentle, but lacking the love of the boy that I'd desperately needed.

 "He's been calling me, you know." She said, straight to the point, like she'd always been. "Crying, shouting, going on about how you never open the door when he comes by."

"Would you?" I replied, my voice hoarse. I hadn't spoken since the last time he'd called. Maybe I'd finally learned how to appreciate silence.

 "It depends," she muttered, "how much does it hurt?"

Too much to bear.

"I'd rather not answer that."

  "Then we both know you either need to let him in or lock him out for good," she whispered. "And if you don't, you'll rot, and we don't need people like you going to waste."

But, maybe, we did.

*

 His footsteps forced my eyes open, so impossibly loud and bringing out creaks from the wooden floors and real that I choked out a breath that I didn't know I'd held in the first place.

"I know you're there." He whispered, his voice fluffy and cuddly, a hint of fragility and fatigue present. I could almost imagine the dark bags decorating the spaces beneath the eyes that decided my fate. "And I've been dying without you."

 I have, too.

"You don't have to open the door, you know." He went on, his steps halting. A placid weight fell against the door, and a gust of air swarmed into my nostrils, holding itself there until he quietly sidled to the floor. "I've been a dick – it's the only thing I'm consistently good at – and I'm sorry. I don't appreciate you as much as I should," — you don't even look at me — "and I'm always picking fights because I'm always under the assumption that you're just going to deal with me forever, you know? That you'll lose your mind because I let too much of mine loose, and somehow never get tired of me hitting you where I know it'll hurt. Every time I need you, you're there, and this one time, the one time I genuinely feel like I'm going to crash to the ground and never get back up, you aren't."

  "That's because you don't know what it feels like to not have me there," I whispered, cracked lips letting fiery words slip past without so much as a singed gum. "And maybe you should."

xxx

dedicated to taylor because he's amazing and his writing makes me want to be a better person. not even kidding.

- jay.