one.
take off your shoes
The first time it happens she’s not expecting it at all.
It’s one of the last things she expects: her ex-boyfriend at her door at 3:30 in the morning. She had been asleep, and she usually never wakes up to noises in the night, but this one had her jumping out of bed. There was a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach, but her feet still walked the usual way to her front door.
Rain is knocking on her windows, and she can tell by his faint voice that something has happened, and he had nowhere to go. This was always the place he would come to when it happened, and she knew that she couldn’t be his ex-girlfriend at the moment. No, she had to be a decent human being.
She tries her best to convince herself that the latter is the reason she opens up the door and takes him into her arms, ignoring the fact that he is drenching wet, and that he’s leaving a trail of mud tracks on the floor because he is in no state to take his shoes off.
Their height difference is massive, and she cannot carry him, but she does her best and manages to drag him to the bedroom and onto her bed (that was once their’s). Looking down at him, she can’t help but let out a deep sigh. There are scars and bruises everywhere, and she’s positive that tomorrow he’ll be gone, but she knows that he’ll be thankful for what she did for him tonight.
The female purses her lips together before closing the door behind her, ignoring the muffled sobs.
He’s broken.
( and she’s probably one of the reasons why ).
The second time it happens, it’s not too far after the first, and she can tell who’s at the door just by the way the knock sounds. Once again, it’s early in the morning, something around 1, but she wasn’t sleeping this time, and he probably knew that (she always had a messed up sleeping schedule).
She hesitates for a moment with her hand wrapped around the door knob, but he does his knock once more, and she knows that he needs her although just a few weeks ago, he claimed that he wanted her out of his life.
Her eyes are closed as she takes a deep breath, opening up the door. Without warning he falls on her, and she can smell the alcohol in his breath, and she can tell it’s going to be a long night.
This time, however, she manages to take off his shoes because the last time those tracks were almost impossible to remove. It isn’t raining as hard as the last time, but it’s still lightly drizzling, and it reminds her how much he loved the rain (and how much he loved to kiss her in it), and she can’t help but feel nostalgic.
Unlike the last time when he could actually walk on his own, she can’t do much with her power, leaving him on the couch.
He always slept there anyway after a fight.
It doesn’t take him long to fall asleep, and she knows that once again he’ll be gone in the morning, regretting everything he has done tonight, and she wants to tell him he can stay. That it doesn’t have to be like this anymore, and that they could remain friends.
But then she would be lying to herself because she knows she wants to be more than friends.
The third time it happens, and it’s actually not the next day yet. It’s 10PM, and she’s out in the living room with chicken and beer, watching her favorite television show when she hears the familiar knock, and an unexpected whisper of her name.
The whisper was faint. If the TV was a bit louder, she wouldn’t have been able to hear it, but he knew the volume she watched her television at, and he knew exactly how thick the door was so he spoke at the perfect volume for her to hear him, and she kind of resents him for this, but she knows it’s her fault because she taught him.
Just like the other times, she’s hesitant. Everything about this was ridiculous. They had broken up, and their breakup wasn’t the prettiest. He screamed about how she never trusted him, and then she said something she never should have. Something along the lines of you’ll end up just like your father, and she regretted every single word that left that day, but it’s not like she could turn back time to take them back. All she could do was live with the guilt.
She opens up the door, and she knows he’s himself tonight. Not drunk and not affected by the actions of his father. He’s just him. And that scares her even more.
They stare at each other for a few moments, and she’s about to speak up when he invites himself into the house, taking off his shoes, and he takes her into his arms, embracing her in that warm chest of his that she always loved.
No words are shared. The two of them don’t speak, but their actions spoke louder than any words ever could. His arms were wrapped around her petite figure, and her own are wrapped around his (when did they get there?).
It seems as if they stayed like that forever before he broke the silence.
“I’m sorry.”
He doesn’t show up for a while after that, and she thinks it’s over. That’s probably the last thing he wanted to tell her because he was a kind child, and he needed to get the guilt off his chest. He had always been the one to apologize even if it wasn’t his fault, and this whole incident was never his fault. It had always been her’s, but she was too stubborn to admit that it was.
The fourth time is a complete surprise.
She had already forgotten how his knocks sounded like so she wasn’t expecting him when she opened up the door. Her eyes widened as she took a step back as if she had seen a monster. But he wasn’t a monster (she was closer to a monster than he ever would be).
“What are you doing here?”
This time she’s not afraid to question him. She wanted to know his intentions for coming here; she wanted to know why he never stayed; and, she wanted to know if he even wanted to stay. For the night, in this house, next to her. There were so many questions floating around in her head.
Instead of answering her, he wrapped his hands around her cheeks and planted a soft kiss on her forehead. This had always been his way of apologizing. Without her realizing it, there were tears falling down her face.
She had finally broken just like he had the first time.
The fifth time it happens, the awkward intervention at the door is completely skipped as he walks in and grabs her aggressively, his lips on her lips, on her neck, crouching down lower, and before she knows it he’s wrapped around her in the sheets, and everything just feels so right.
It’s as if everything was falling back to what it should be. He whispers quiet ‘I love you’s’ and before she knew it, they were being whispered back, and there was a smile on his face. That was the first time he’s smiled in a while, and she’s glad to see it back.
His arms are wrapped tightly around her figure, and she shudders slightly at his warm hands. He always had warm hands, and she always had cold ones. As if to prove her point, she wrapped her own hands around his, smiling when he grabbed them tighter.
With his lips placed gently on her neck, and his infinite number of I love you’s being continuously whispered into her ear, she feels as if this is how everything it supposed to be. That what has happened for the past few months was just something that everybody went through, but it didn’t matter now because right now in his arms, she felt safe.
There were still some broken pieces of both of them, but at least now they had each other to glue them together.
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