Anneliese Morgan

She couldn’t look at him but despite the show of tears and the sound of her weeping she still tracked the sound the old floorboards creaking as he moved towards the wall. Anna breathed a shuddering breath in as she tried to contain her emotions enough to let him speak, if he was even willing too. Eventually, the calm beats of defeated Irish tones drifted towards her and she began to still. She had no right to the calming effect even though the words stung she needed to hear them for their worth and she couldn’t do that if she sobbed through them. Breathing in and out she eventually looked over to his frame pressed against the wall, his knees up and his curly head bobbed downward looking as defeated as she felt. 

A misplaced memory of when they’d started mirrored in her mind. He’d been broken by his friends and the circumstance they’d found themselves in at that time, and she’d offered him comfort. Now, she was the one causing the pain and she wasn’t certain if comfort was an option. Anna lifted her pink sweater sleeve to her eyes and made a motion to dab the water way from her eyes and cheeks pulling it away to see the light color tainted with eyeliner. In spite of the motion the tears clung to her eyes but they stilled enough to not fall. 

She zeroed in on his final plea before proceeding to retrace over the rest. She had listened to the words he’d written but she hadn’t internalized them as she should have. Anna knew well enough that art was an extension of ones-self and yet she hadn’t taken the time to ingest the struggle painted in the poem. Never had she felt like such a failure to someone she loved. She hung her head in shame once more and stood for a moment in silence mulling over the truths the moment exposed. Without thinking on the motions she moved slowly like one fighting to walk through deep still water, until she made her way to sit beside him. Once on the floor she let her instincts take over, for better or worse, and gently lowered her head to his shoulder, another ‘I’m sorry’ stuck in her throat. It was fine, she realized because she’d said them and a repeat didn’t fix the situation. 

The blonde licked her lips and let out another shuddering breath, “I can do better.” The words caused her throat to close rejecting what could have followed as the composure she’d gained risked breaking once more. She pushed it down, “I didn’t mean to lose sight of you… Of what matters most to me.” She paused as she attempted to navigate her thoughts while she spoke. “I know anything I can say about why I made a choice for you is just an excuse. So I won’t do that.” 

Her throat tightened uncomfortably against the pain of it and a few tears escaped as she watched his back. Never before had she been accused of being selfish. It wasn’t a word that she’d ever been tied to so securely. If anything when people defined her she was securely placed in the opposite side of that spectrum. Sure, she could be forward, perhaps she took things too far when she wanted to help others but it didn’t come from a place of self-gain. Or perhaps, she just missed that it did. 

Anna looked down unable to keep the sound of a sob escaping her lips. Her hands instantly flew to her mouth as though that would help stop the reaction. That she’d be able to be cold and beat it down with her own will when she knew she’d never been that strong when it came to having a handle on her own emotions if they got whipped up. 

But the truth was she hadn’t done it for selfish reasons. She’d played his song to their friends. The hope had been that’d he’d see the reactions as positive and allow him to begin a conversation about it with people that could actually guide him on the right path. She hadn’t even thought of it as it becoming a race to finish, no she’d just wanted to help push the door to the possibility he’d already been mulling over for the last few months. Encouragement. That’s what she’d been going for because he didn’t seem to respond to what she’d already been offering him on her own. 

She didn’t understand how it spurred so far past that in a matter of weeks if he didn’t want it to. She hadn’t gone to his record executives. She’d just shown their close group of friends. But the motives didn’t matter if it’d just managed to hurt and hinder than to help. She’d wounded him and apparently had been for ages. 

Anna dropped her hands back to her side and felt her ring slide down her finger slightly with the motion. It felt heavy on her finger and she twirled it around fighting the thought that if he felt so slanted maybe she didn’t deserve it and what it stood for, at all. She felt woefully awful and couldn’t help but question why on earth he would consider her his “favorite person,” his back turned away from her she felt isolated and untouched by that sentiment. Yet, she also realized that if she couldn’t say anything he was just going to walk out the door and she really would be alone. Potentially, forever. 

Finally, he motioned for her to speak. Anna breathed in a contemplative sigh in an attempt to locate what even to say. She frowned, “We used to talk,” she began after a moment. “When things got hard we talked it out and it would work out but we haven’t been and this,” she moved her hand to gesture between them, “isn’t currently working.” The words hurt to say out loud but she realized once she had said them that it needed to be acknowledged. That it wasn’t a white flag but more a declaration of war that she wasn’t ready to let things die. They had made a commitment and she wanted to do it right. If they couldn’t find the foundation then proceeding would just lead to more grief and neither of them deserved that. Neither of them wanted that. They wanted what they’d had and she knew they could get there but that meant making a few cracks so they could spackle it back together… together. 

She nodded to herself realizing that maybe this was the next right thing to do for them and proceeded, “You barely look at me, and I can’t stand it. I realize I’m not around as much as I should be and when I am, I’m a veritable zombie, and because of those things I am beginning to genuinely doubt what I want for my future, because I am finding it hard to see how we’re supposed to be us if we are always busy. I am always busy… ” Anna paused and licked her lips, “because what I really want is us and I don’t feel like we ever really took the proper time to figure out what the heck that is without schooling being in the way. And I think that’s my fault.”