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Trembling fingers latched onto your coat, an alcohol-laced breath filling the cold night air as a head of blonde curls settled on your shoulder. Like every midnight before, you wrapped your arms around Navia just as tight, hoping that one day it might be enough to keep her cracks from splintering. Her slurred whispers echoed in your ears – mentions of companions long gone watching her, of people bearing their faces. What horrors await her when she closes her eyes, and what creeping guilt reigns over her psyche.
What leads her back to this dreary bar and your number.
Her fingers would morph to fists as she half-heartedly beat your chest – cries only deepening as old heartbreak seeped in.
You would love her to the grave and realms beyond, she knew that. You just had to finally choose yourself over her for once. It didn’t mean that you would avoid her, or run off and abandon her. She was far too precious to you for that fate. Yet, her self-destruction’s crosshairs had settled on you one too many times, and you had to add some distance. That seemingly sent her further into the spiral, and guilt of your own had kept you awake plenty.
Enough that you often picked up on the first or second ring, the balance between your sanity and hers warring through your body.
Carefully, you covered her hands with yours; pocket warmth mending frigid cold. Crystalline blue gazed to your soul, lost and fractal yet certain all the same.
“Let’s get you home…”
She acquiesced.
Golden street lights flashed in and out of your car like a sick paparazzi, triggering Navia’s red-rimmed eyes to seek secure darkness behind her hands. Her exhausted voice permeated your ears with denial and empty justifications. The same tone that used to fill your mind with choruses of promises now broken.
“You know none of that is true, Nav.”
She bristled, sighed in hesitant clarity, then continued on.
When you reached her front door, she refused to let go of your hand. Tears began filling her eyes once more as she fumbled for her keys, several trains of thought brawling to keep her moving. Frustratedly, she released you, jamming the metal into its lock as she rambled.
“I hate being alone.”
“I hate looking at myself now. I hate what’s happening to me.”
“I don’t know what to do… it feels like I’m hardly even living anymore.”
“Why, __? Why did you leave me too?”
Despite every deepening chip in your chest, you helped her clean up. You placed her haphazardly thrown heels on her small closet stand. Readied makeup remover and face wash. Set aside a pair of pajamas for her to change into as you tidied her bed. Waited by the door as she settled in with a sigh, her brain finally silencing its tormenting barrage.
In an act of kindness and self-soothing, you left a bottle of water and ibuprofen on her bedside table. A mug, kettle, and her favorite tea by the stove. Set up blankets and a pillow or two on the couch. And finally, organized some snacks from the pantry on the stove’s other side.
You left a single lamp on before reaching the front door, shutting it as silent as possible. Your old, copied key slid into it like always. Navia never had the heart to ask for it back, and you worried far too much over her to return it. Perhaps, even deeper, you knew you’d always crawl back to the other.