"It's always been that way, it seems

One love begins, one comes undone"

✦

"When's the last time you had the random urge to hold my hand—and not out of emotional condolence but just because I was there with empty palms?"

Matthew didn't reply, having previously asked if I truly did love him and if I should.

"I'm trying—I try everyday to figure out if I should love you. It's a subconscious endeavor and it's greatest inhibition is this silly dream that this isn't immortal,"

"But you stopped holding my hand and began holding someone else's and thats not love—that's mortality. But a lack of reciprocation doesn't invalidate my own feelings."

"Ev—"

"And you know what—I haven't had the urge to hold your hand either," I said. "I don't want to hold your hand."

"Ev—"

"But, Matthew, the difference is that I don't want to hold your's and I also don't want to hold anyone else's. So to answer your question, no I shouldn't love you because of that very difference, because you had the urge to hold hands with another woman and acted on it."

I held my palm up to withhold his feedback.

"Just because you shouldn't do something doesn't mean you won't—which you demonstrated," I stated matter of factly, not bitterly.

"So maybe I do love you because maybe I do still need you despite how inert I've become. As we've become."

The words came out rushed and sagging, coughed up ashes of Harry and I's conversation earlier.

"Ev, I didn't hold her hand," he said in exasperation, "I don't love her." Either way, you don't love me.

"Then why? Why'd you do it?" I couldn't help but repeat asking, unsatisfied by all previous replies.

"I didn't know what to do, I didn't know how to fix or help you and maybe subconsciously I was lonely and upset that emotionally you were just gone. So I sought comfort—not love—in another person and that manifested into a physical relationship."

His gaze was unwavering as he spoke, his brown eyes melting into mine in a sincerity that reminded me not of Matthew but of Matt.

"And—and I think we should leave," he professed.

My eyebrows furrowed. "What?"

"We should move. We can go to New York City, or wherever you want." He gripped my hands. "Let's get out of here, have a fresh start away from this all."

I looked down at my feet and at my dirty boots. They were half a size too small and as I tried to stretch my toes now they couldn't expand against the constriction. "No."

He had just seen Melly again today and now he's ready to pick up and move? It didn't make sense.

"What do you mean?" He yelped.

My lips curled down in a feeling I couldn't place.

"This is what you've been wanting—let me do this for you," he pressed.

My hand fought the sudden urge to slap him. I didn't want to hurt him, and I never would, but his blatant ignorance was unnerving.

"Fuck off," I spat, turning around and running up the stairs.

"We're not getting anywhere like this!" He yelled after me.

I slammed the guest bedroom door shut, plopping down on the bed.

We were in a cycle of separation to conversation to separation again because of said conversation. I couldn't stand much longer than the mere minutes we conversed due to the toll of exhaustion they wrecked.

After a few minutes there was a uncertain knock on the door. I ignored it.

"Ev?"

I didn't move, drilling holes through the door with my eyes. I could see him there on the other side, his head tipped towards the ground, face drooped in shame, shuffling his foot forward and back.

"Ev?"

I got up and crept over to the door, resilient to give in but desperate for things to change. "What?"

"I'm sorry... I know I'm pushing you away."

I stayed silent and twisted the door knob slowly, sliding the door open. Craning his neck up, he was in slight shock.

"Why?" I asked. "Why do you do it?"

"Because I know you."

"What?"

"I know your worth and I know you don't all the time. I'm at a loss with myself because part of me wants to force you to move on to find better and another part of me wants you to stay because I need you,"

"And I'll always love you, even at times when I don't even realize it myself—I do, Ev," he said, his voice fighting the verge of tears he went on.

"But—"

"I love you," he cried. "I love you, I know I do."

"But—"

"You don't ever stop loving you, Ev. I may have needed to fuck everything up to figure it out, but I know now,"

"I know that you saved me six years ago and what I realized these past few days was that you saved yourself then too."

"No—"

"I didn't, Ev, you've got it all mixed up. Your mother taught you how to nurture in the most screwed up way possible. She taught you what it was like to be left, teaching you to do absolutely anything to make someone stay,"

I scrunched my face up, tears compromising my cheeks too. It wasn't true. It wasn't true. It wasn't true.

"You gave me everything because you feared that I'd leave just like she did. And in me loving all the pieces of yourself you handed to me so willingly, you were saving yourself from mental torture—piece by accepted piece,"

"I didn't save you. You saved yourself by proving that you could keep someone around,"

"And now that I'm not treasuring each piece like I should, you've convinced yourself that I don't love you—just like you did with your mom—as a way of isolating yourself and trying to make sense of a situation in which you never get a clear answer,"

"Because there isn't one," he heaved out. "And you need to take all your pieces back and seek acceptance from yourself because this transaction was always a ticking time bomb." Tik, tok.

He finished, "not loving yourself is a ticking time bomb." Tok, tok, tok.

Was it true? I knelt down, sitting on the ground trying to process.

"You've begun to do so in every argument and act of reversion to me. But I've got a few pieces still and they're not mine to hold. They've never been. So take them. Take them, please."

"Matt?" I croaked.

He sunk to the ground at the sound of his name, shoveling me into his chest where I finally fell comfortably. Matt and Ev?

"It's me, my love," he murmured, rocking me in his arms. Matt, Matt, Matt.

⊹ ⊹ ⊹

Not too long after daybreak I walked to the park and plunked down on a bench, surveying the frost bitten grass dotted in frost bitten faces.

Matt and I slept in the guest bedroom together, but when I woke up I slithered from his arms without waking him up. I needed to absorb his ideas of the real foundation of our relationship. Was it true?

Grabbing my phone, I dialed Harry's number. After a ring or two he picked up.

"Hello?" He greeted in a deep, groggy voice.

I cursed to myself. "I forgot how early it was, I didn't mean to wake you."

"It's okay. Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I just, I guess needed your wisdom," I said like a question.

I heard some background noise on the phone along with his rumble of a chuckle. "I'd be more than happy to provide my services."

"Are you sure?" I felt a bit bad, I hoped he had enough sleep.

"Of course. Where are you?"

"The park."

"I'll be there soon."

We said our goodbyes and I began my wait for his arrival.

I stared blankly into the stretch of forest slicing through the horizon. The mass of barren tree branches extended like sharp silver claws towards the sky with an animalistic fervor to grasp at the air, to pocket the freedom of flight they could never understand being rooted to the ground.

You'll never maintain a grip with slender fingers like your's, I wished to tell them, its a silly dream. Liberty slips through any measure of crack and your knuckles weren't made to hold the sky.

Cutting through my vision of the forest, a woman and her daughter walked past me. Due to the woman's proximity, the trees were completely masked for a moment, though after she passed her daughter dragged behind, short enough so that the silver claws at once looked sprouted not from the ground but the girl's head.

In the girl's hand was a disheveled daisy. She was close enough that I could see most of its petals were missing and the stem was crooked and bent. It was flimsy in her hand as she waved, having noticed I was there as she passed by. I waved back but by then she was busy trying to catch up with the fast pace of her mother.

The tree line only deserted crowning her head once she had caught up, the girl immediately grasping her mother's hand. In her distraction, she released the weed and it floated behind her, landing on the cement and tumbling in the wind.

I followed it with my eyes as it scurried away till my subject was disrupted by the collapse of a boot. As the shoe lifted, it revealed the weed now pressed flatly against the path, nothing more than an imprint in the dust of his wake.

My eyes scanned up the destructor who grew more familiar with each item of clothing. Suspicion proved to be correct as I landed on his face. Harry.

He was headed in my direction. Our eyes locked and his lips sagged at the corners. His speed accelerated and he maneuvered his arms to slide off his jacket.

Waiting until he was two feet away to speak, he simultaneously handed the jacket to me. "It's cold."

I shrugged.

"You're shivering, Evdoxia. And your lips are turning blue," he pointed out, his tone loaded with worry.

The rattling of my bones then became evident to me. "I forgot my jacket."

"Put mine on, please," he pleaded, sitting down next to me.

The tips of his nose and ears were already beginning to grow more rosy.

"But then you'll be cold." Was Matt always cold? Was he ever cold?

"We'll take turns," he compromised, so I hung the fabric on my shoulders.

I looked back to the prematurely dormant trees. "I don't feel cold. I feel like I reached the peak of a mountain much greater than a hill and feel nothing because the journey was so cold by the end it was numbing."

It felt as though I had gotten frost bite everywhere and all the dead chunks of frozen body part scatter my trail. Now I was just made up of the bare minimum needed for survival, and the draping veins and vessels and organs all worked counterclockwise.

"Plus the air pressure became so low I can't breathe," I continued. "I don't know how to decide where to go with no sense of the climate and a dysfunctional brain."

Reaching over, he softly grabbed either side of the jacket, bringing the pieces close and maneuvering the zipper to seal them together and encase me inside. He was a mere foot a way to do so, gazing into my eyes as he did.

"Use the sight provided by the light of sunrise and head for the smoke," he said, his breath condensing into a white fog.

"Why?"

"Life."

I bit my lip, glancing at the path where the woman and child could no longer be seen.

"It may look like destruction, the smoke, but think about what it's providing," heat, "and think about how the fire started—why the fire started."

I began picking at my nails. "Harry."

"Evdoxia."

"Matt wants to move to New York City." I whipped my head over to gauge his reaction. Does he want me to stay?

Matt had mentioned it again before we'd fallen asleep last night. "I can't hold you back anymore, it's your turn to chase your dreams, all I could wish for is to watch."

Harry and his face were mute, features flat.

"But I think it might be even colder there," I rushed out.

He rubbed his chin, leaning back onto the bench, staring at the trees claw at the sky as I had before.

Finally he faced me with a solemn expression. "You know I think you should go... and isn't that what you've been wanting too? To go, uh, to go with him?"

"I-I guess so," I hesitated.

"Then do it, angel," he smiled tightly. "You deserve to thrive and now's your chance, right?"

"I wouldn't even know what to do with myself there," I decided to say.

"Art," he chuckled, a more natural smile blooming.

I bit my cheek to resist my own grin. "It's not that easy."

"There's only two steps. Step one: go to the city that never sleeps. Step two: don't sleep, create."

"Step two is more than multi-faceted, Harry." I shook my head.

His face fell into a relaxed, content state. "I know, but I believe in you—in everything. And everything, the sky and the trees and

the dirt beneath our feet, the universe is screeching at you so loudly you probably can't even hear another sound; she's screeching at you to go,"

"To show yourself love through priority. And I wonder what stops you from deciphering that—your own voice,"

"I don't know the circumstances, Evdoxia, but what I do know is that in this city you can't breathe, it's got you in a choke hold. You need to meet a new part of yourself there and breath again. You'll flourish and I'll get to read about you in articles and see your work sold for millions across art galleries worldwide. I just know it."

I turned away from his passionate gaze to squeeze my eyes closed. Tears were threatening to slip. Collecting myself, I said, "I wish you lived there." So I'd have more of a concrete reason to go.

"Then who would be here to lecture you to go in the first place," he laughed airily, tilting his head.

"I don't know." I sniffled, wiping my nose and beneath my eyes. "Come with?"

His smile faltered. "You know I would."

I knew we were speaking jokingly but the premise of exploring the city with Harry excited me. I could imagine him taking me around to his favorite nooks and crannies and introducing me to people I could never dream of meeting here. Even without the sight of stars in the sky, we'd know they were there, Archer and Olenska, shining there just for us. If only the vision could come into fruition.

We gazed happily at each other like fools. I was curious of what he was thinking about. Was he thinking about us in the city? Maybe his memories with Rose there? I couldn't tell, but he seemed so overcome with peace, blinking slowly, dimples snug in his cheeks.

"I'll miss you, Evdoxia."

"I'd miss you, Harry."

He stood up, reaching out a hand to help me. As I got up he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close, mumbling something incoherent into my hair.

I pulled away, escaping the warmth of his that no jacket could ever bring. His entwined hands rested at the small of my back and my arms hung by my sides.

"Remember me?"

"I could never forget," I said, poking his dimple.

He quickly grasped my hand in his own. Ungraciously, he turned my hand around so that my pointer finger was in the direction of my face. He then used my finger to jab me in the nose.

"Society will always fall to the will of the world," jab, "now prove it."

He then returned my wrist to its natural position, kissing the pad of my finger so lightly I almost didn't feel it. Releasing his hold entirely, he took a step back before turning around and walking away with the call of, "don't deceive the smog for smoke."

I didn't interpret the action or final words as an invitation to follow, though I'm not sure where else he had to go in the early a.m.'s. I'm not sure exactly what the smog meant to him either.

Falling back on the bench, I didn't know what to do with Harry's input. He wanted me to move away and as much as I too dreamed of life in the city, it wasn't as simple as his optimistic vision made it out to be.

The opportunity currently lied before me, but there was a force repelling my reach. Matthew might have reembodied Matt but something was still off. Something was different. Was it true?

I looked back to the tree line. As more clouds splotched the sky, the colored claws bled into the milky hues; it seemed as though the branches had melted into the sky in an attempt to transfuse. Yet the stark contrast was still evident, for the transition of tree limb to cloud and then into air was like the dispersion of oil into water. Their new cloudy form cusped and enveloped the air but their weight restrained their homogenization.

I slid my phone out from Harry's jacket pocket, calling him. He picked up immediately.

"Evdoxia?"

"Harry."

"You okay?"

"Tell me I shouldn't go."

"Why would I do that?"

"Because then I won't," I said, pulling my frozen lips into my mouth.

"Then I would never."

I could picture him now, eyes downcast to his shoes with eyebrows burrowed in, making similes out of the rhythm of his feet and metaphors out of the tangle of wind and my voice through the phone.

I looked to my lap, realizing I never gave him his jacket back. We were supposed to take turns.

"Are you cold?" I asked.

"No, the sound of you keeps me warm." And there it is.

Oh shitttt it was a big one :0

not length wise but yk what I mean..

it's been a millennium *sigh* but, but

my winter break starts in a day so I wanna

try to bust out a chapter or two then,

tho idk since I have a few assignments :(

anyways happy holidays! consider this

chapter my present to you..

I hope you have an amazing time

with friends and family

and most importantly: yourself :)

peace out ☺