Silent Apologies.

You’ve been in bed for a little over an hour. You just don’t know what to do with yourself anymore. Pitiful you think, two hours and already you’re in a mess. Two hours without him and you just can’t bring yourself to do anything but lay in bed.

Sniffling slightly, you use your sleeve to wipe your face dry before bursting out into another round of tears. You’ve got a headache and your stomach hurts from all the crying you’ve done, but you just can’t seem to stop. It seems that every time you do manage to stop, you’ll see something or smell something that reminds you of him and once again you’ll feel the tears welling up in your eyes.

Taking a deep breath, you manage to stop the tears and with a sigh, you manage to make it onto your feet, only shaking slightly from a repressed sob. Slowly and not at all steadily you head into the kitchen, suddenly aware of the fact that it’s 6pm and you haven’t eaten anything. With shaking hands you find the first bit of food you can find…and stare at it.

You’re not getting anywhere. It’s the exact same thing you did before you got into your bed and tried to sleep the time away. It only made things worse. It gave you time to think about things, to realise that he’s gone and is probably never coming back.

Slowly, with the apple still untouched and in your hand you head towards the living room, hoping the television will be able to take your mind off the situation at hand. But then you turn it on and find a girl crying over a lost love and once again you find yourself in tears and for the first time you realise you can actually relate to one of the soppy romance films.

Placing the apple on the floor, your curl up on the couch and hug yourself, silently wishing that they weren’t your arms around you…

After an excruciating fifteen minutes of self-hugging you pick the apple up once again and eat it. Or at least you begin to eat it, but you don’t get far because you hear the sound of a key turning in a lock and the distinct noise of the old and somewhat rusted handle being pushed down.

You suddenly forget how to breathe.

“Corey?”

And it takes the sound of his voice to make you burst into tears for what must be at least the tenth time in the past two hours.

You hear his footsteps heading towards where you’re currently sitting and find yourself wishing not for the first time that you could be invisible. You don’t want him to see you like this. You don’t want him to see just how weak he makes you but he does see and he does know…

“What are you doing here?”

You manage to whisper those words before more tears fall. Silent this time though. But instead of answering you he just stares…his eyes never leaving your still shaking form and from the corner of your eye you see him step towards you, covering the little distance that separated you from him. And suddenly, without warning you find yourself wrapped in his arms, safely,
comfortingly.

“I’m sorry.”

You feel his fingers entwine with yours but this only makes you cry that much more because the ring he’s supposed to be wearing to declare his love isn’t there. And then the words ‘I’m sorry’ suddenly take on a different meaning because you know it’s over…

“Don’t be. You can’t help the way you feel…you can’t help not loving me.”

As you slowly untangle yourself from his grip and make a shaky stand you let out a sigh and take one last look at him before…well you guess before he’s out of your life for good. Funny how just a few months ago you were making plans about where and when you’d like to get married and now…well now it’s over. Hesitantly you slip off the ring that he gave you as a promise of forever and hold it out for him to take. If you can’t have him, then you most certainly don’t want a ring that reminds you of broken promises. Of things that could have been but never will be…

Throughout the time it’s taken you to stand, to take off the ring, to just…look at him, you notice he hasn’t moved. Your cheeks heat at the realisation that he’s just been staring at you. Inwardly you curse at the impact a simple gesture of observation on his behalf has upon you.

“Do you love me?”

He seems hesitant as he asks you this. You know he knows that you love him, after all you were the one begging him to stay with you before he left you a broken shell of a man.

“You know I do. Why are you bringing this up? Haven’t you hurt me enough? Do you want me beg you to stay again? Is that it? Do you like seeing me like this? Do you like watching me fall apart? Or maybe you just like knowing I can’t live without you…”

You didn’t mean to get angry, hysterical…but you did. Once the words started to flow from your mouth you couldn’t stop them. You let everything you’ve been feeling for the past day, no week, maybe even weeks out.

“Is…is that what you think? You think…Oh God…”

And even though you’ve been longing for his presence all day you can’t help but want to be alone right now. You can’t help but want him to leave you alone, to let you wallow in your misery…

“Just go. Please.”

And as he starts to stand from the couch you feel like someone’s pulling at the inside of you because there’s a startling pain in your stomach…heart and you know you don’t want him to go. You love him.

You. Love. Him.

Even if he doesn’t love you anymore, you still love him and you were right before when you said you couldn’t live without him. If he leaves you then he may as well kill you. You are nothing without him and suddenly the ring in your hand seems to weigh more than it did before and you’re silently thankful he never took it. At least this way you knew he loved you at some point. It’s something to cling onto…

“I can’t go. Where will I go? This is my home too…”

You hadn’t even thought of that. When he left you earlier on you thought he’d be gone for good, completely forgetting the fact that this apartment was shared even before you became a couple.

You feel sick. You can’t live here with him. You can’t bear to see him on a daily basis but not be able to touch or kiss him. And what happens when he finds someone else? If he doesn’t leave, you guess you’ll have to…

“Then I’ll go.”

You didn’t mean to say that. You have nowhere to go either. And from the look on his face you realise, he knows this too.

“Where will you go? Corey…”

He takes a hesitant step towards you. You take a step back, putting even more distance in between the two of you than there was before. If he comes any closer you know you’ll break, you know you’ll beg and you never want to have to sink that low again.

“…I really am sorry. What I said before, about us not being right together, well…God I was wrong. I’m such a fucking idiot but I can’t handle you pushing me away all the time. Don’t you understand just how much it hurts me to see you locking yourself away from me? From everyone…”

You don’t know when it happened but he’s suddenly standing in front of you with tears rolling down his face. It’s always you that makes him cry.

“I always make you cry. I don’t mean to, I only want you to be happy but I always make you cry. Always. God, I’m so fucked up. I love you but I can’t even get that right.”

His arm slowly lifts from his side and he hesitantly places his hand on your waist. His cheeks show a faint red flush and you’re more nervous than you’ve ever been.

“Can we…can we try again?”

It’s what you’ve been wanting all afternoon. Ever since he walked out on you, out of the relationship. And as much as you still want it, you can’t help but feel betrayed and hurt. Angry that he left you, that he gave up on you, angry that he took the ring off and threw it in your face. Threw your love in your face.

“No.”

And as you step out of his grip you know you’ll regret this for the rest of your life because who else will you ever love this much? But at the same time how can you forgive him when he took your heart and broke it in two?

“Oh God Corey, please. I can’t live without you. I know I’m an idiot. I know I don’t deserve you but I can’t…I just need you so fucking much it hurts.”

Closing your eyes you slowly step forwards towards him and hesitantly place a hand upon his cheek. Feeling the wet marks from his tears, you open your eyes and before you can dissuade yourself, you lean forward and kiss him.

When you pull back after just a few short moments can’t help but hold his hand and you can’t help but slip your ring onto his finger.

“Corey?”

You can see he’s confused. He doesn’t understand what this means.

Or maybe he does, because within seconds you feel a ring being placed on your finger and when you look down at it you see it’s not at all like the one he gave you. It’s not a promise ring…even you can tell that.

“I don’t understand.”

And now you’re the confused one. When you look at his face for the answers though, you’re met with a small hesitant smile and watery eyes. On instinct you capture his lips again, blushing when you pull back, aware that you’re not supposed to be kissing him like this.

“I want us to try again…and…this is an engagement ring. I know we talked about marriage and we never set a date and when I left you before I didn’t mean anything I was just so angry and then I realised what an idiot I was and before I knew what I was doing…well, will you marry me? It’s just that, I’ve already booked us in for a ceremony. It’s in two days.”

It takes quite a while for this to sink in. He loves you, he’s given you an engagement ring and…you can marry him before the end of the week. It all seems so surreal. You know you should be angry with him, but you love him and you realise you were just as much to blame as he was.

And then before you can stop yourself you’ve flung yourself at him, arms around his body and head in the crook of his neck.

“Oh God yes, yes yes…I thought I’d lost you and I don’t want to ever lose you. I love you so much. Please don’t leave me.”

And then you find yourself in his arms and being carried towards your bedroom. He places you gently upon the bed and then lies down next to you, pulling you against him…and he just holds you. Whispering promises and silently saying sorry with every movement he makes.

“So, we’re going to use my surname right when we get married? Because I mean, I am the man of this relationship…”

And when he chuckles at his own humour you smile because you know everything’s going to be all right. Better than all right even. It’s going to be perfect.

A/N. This kind of sucks, but it wouldn’t go away until I wrote it and then I though, hell if I wrote it I’m gonna post it. So here we go and look, one of them has a name!!