❀
This is going well, he thinks. This is going well, and she likes me. She’s beautiful, and she likes me, and this is going well. He is so giddy he is hardly listening; the hope is louder than her words, pounding in his ears like blood - or is it his blood, and not hope - and she laughs, and he’s not sure that she said something nice to him or not. He hopes he’s winning her over, now, with all his description. He thinks he is. But she says:
“No.”
Every part of him wilts like a sunflower (if, perhaps, the sun were beneath one’s feet, at the center of the earth, unreachable, obscured by miles and miles of dark, impenetrable stone and magma) but he pulls his smile up with all the strength left in him, which is not much. She reiterates: “I can’t.” Can’t as in, too busy? He hopes, but it’s - it’s an I don’t want to. “I’m sorry.” If you get hurt, find me. Well, you’re here now, is what he might say, if he knew how to recover from these sorts of things. And he did know. He used to do it all the time. But he’s too lonely now; every flirtation, every subtle look carries the weight of the world on its shoulders and every rejection feels like that world, the only world, has been dropped on his toes. He can’t return her mischief, her grin, and even as she kisses him on the cheek he thinks: alone. It’s a bee sting, not an apology.
“I’m going to run again, and this time, don’t catch me.” No, he thinks. I was a fool for thinking I could the first time.
He watches her go, and says nothing, and Hajduk says nothing, and together, they say nothing and watch her go. And when she is gone, which takes a long time, when the world is so flat, they stand there still, until Hajduk nudges him in the direction of the setting sun.
@
how violent the hope of love can be
