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The sun is dipping lower and lower into the horizon, making the sky warm and red over the bottom and pink at the very tippy top of her peripheral. They sit side by side, legs criss-cross-applesauce. There's a small gust of wind, which lets a strand of her brown her lap at her face, tickling her skin ever so slightly. She pushes it back, and looks to her side.
"I want to break up."
There really was no other way to put it. Jane could over explain herself, reassure Mike that they'd always still be friends, and that he would always have a special place in her heart as her first love, the first boy she's ever kissed. But there's really just no need for that. This has been a long time coming.
She doesn't even so much as pout when she says it. She does not sigh, nor murmur.
Instead, she smiles. Her teeth seem whiter, though no less perfectly crooked. The roots of her hair are a tad oily, and they gather strangely at the back of her ponytail. Under the fading sun she is a vision.
Mike is all but unaffected. He sniffs up a hearty breath, and crinkles his nose. He should have known better than to hope for the best. Subtly, he starts to sway back and forth, processing, his hands crossing over his chest. She watches him with a soft squinting eyes, curious, but never scrutinizing.
"Okay," he says. He smacks his lips together, kissing his teeth and nodding his head. His voice warbles a little when he says, after an intake of air that leaves his lungs burning just a bit, "Me too. I--Uh, I think."
She tilts her head and quirks a brow. She is glad he feels the same way, and has known for too long a time that he probably wants this more than she does; the relationship and the breakup, all at once. It's pitiful, but she understands, because for a while she felt that too. If anything, out of everything, loneliness has been the only aspect of him she's come to fully understand. The only thing they have in common.
And she wonders, just to implore, a simple inquisitive little, "Why?"
His face, though already as pasty as the bright sun dimming ahead of them, further pales. "Because I'm evil," he says, "and I'm selfish, I'm bad to you--for you, for everyone, and--"
"--This is not about you," she interrupts, but there is nothing vindictive in her tone, or her face, or the way in which she means it. "I am breaking up with you because you cannot love me in a way that does not hurt."
Mike honest to god gasps. His eyes widen, almost comically, like a deer caught in headlights. His lips start to quiver. "What do you mean?"
El shifts where she sits. The concrete brick whatever hard sort of material they sit under is doing no good for her legs. "When we are together," she begins, her eyes darting around his face; his eyes, his freckles, the tight knitted furrow of his brows, "one of us hurts someone. Always."
"I don't understand."
"That is also a concern for me." Jane wipes her nose. It's itchy, but it'd just be too impolite to pick it. She can do that when she's done with this. "You don't understand me, you don't even try to."
Small streaks of condensation gather in the ducts of Mike's eyes. "I'm sorry," he says, "I didn't--I never meant to hurt you, El. You know--" he shudders a small sob, but he's no crying mess. His face remains as calm as it can be, save for small splotches of redness. "I care for you, so, so much. I didn't--"
"It is not just me you hurt." She puts a hand on his shoulder, snapping him out of his self-loathing bit. "Our friends suffer because of us." She pauses, thoughtfully, "Will suffers."
At that Mike's frown seems to deepen with an emotion El can only think it would be best to keep to herself about. It's not her business, whatever forces there are operating behind that, in Mike's brain, though she's got her own thoughts of it. There are only so many breaths of his that can hitch, but they seem to come, and fasten. He rubs at his eyes, and manages a nod. She is nowhere near wrong in her assumptions.
She delivers a final blow, possibly the rudest thing to him she's said so far, but it is the honest truth. "We have a love that cannot grow. You are immature, and I am too, but in ways that are just not the same, a lot like broken magnets."
He looks up at her. His eyes are glossy, which make them shine, even as the sun around them dims. "Broken magnets?" he wonders.
"You are not attracted to me," she deadpans. "You do not pull to me naturally. There is nothing that you like about me that has to do with me. You like me because I am a girl who likes you, and that makes you look good."
"That's not true," he argues, his voice going up a pitch higher. "El, you're so much more than that. You're the strongest, most beautiful girl out there, ever. How can you say that? How can you think that I think that? I am so attracted you. I can kiss you right now, no problem."
"Mike." She takes a breath in, feeling the whispers of frustration swell within her heart. "There is a lot to like about me, and I know that now, but that is not what I am talking about."
"Then," Mike wonders, "what are you trying to say about me?"
"You do not have the..." she pauses for a thoughtful moment, finding the right words. "You don't have the capacity to see me as someone who you do not owe something from. You might have saved me and gave me comfort, and helped me to be an actual human being, but that does not mean that the feelings you have towards me are real. They feel fake--fabricated."
"So." Mike frowns. "You think I'm a liar? That I never cared for you? That I'm some--" he gulps in a way that makes his adams apple look heavy. "--evil pretender, whose using you for his image? So he's palatable, and can be accepted? That's not true. That's--that's..."
"Maybe?" She laughs, unaffected by his projections. She can't help but feel free after speaking her mind. She's held this in for so, so, so long. "I don't think you mean to be evil, but I do think you are lying. Not to me but to yourself."
The air around them is colder, but inside she is warm, buzzing with the adrenaline of setting something in herself free. That stressor of trying to be someone she cannot, someone she has wholly outgrown.
There is a pleasant tingle around the bones of her shoulders. She bows her back just for a second, and rubs at her spine over her shirt. There's a giddy sensation around her stomach, like butterflies but better. It's not tied to kisses, or to hand holding, or the presence of another. This is something that breeds only in the freeing of herself.
"...How," he starts, chewing at his lip, "did you know?"
She turns her head to face his. He looks a wreck with emotions that feel unfit for the current scene playing out. She's reclining a lot like she's at the beach, and he's nearly curled up in himself.
She hums and shrugs her shoulders. "I didn't, for a very long time."
"Did you--" Mike is visibly panicking. His chest rises deep and fast. "Did you look into my mind again?"
She huffs a breath, and chuckles. "I do not think I could if I wanted to."
He laughs, though it's bittersweet. There is nothing more for Mike to say. This is, in one way or another, one of the best things to happen to him in a very, very long time.
There's a long stretch of silence between them, but on Jane's half it is not awkward in the slightest. She basks in it, like a person held captive feeling the sun on their skin for the first time in years. In this action, this conversation, she feels no hurt. She is independent from the title of Mike's girlfriend. She matters to him in a way that cannot breed resentment anymore. He can love her the way he's known since he was little, and have nothing more expected or wanted of him.
He does not have to conform the way she feels he is. There is no reciprocation to be owed. Gone are the debts of unrequited "I love you's," and the weight of expectations set from outside forces Jane still has trouble familiarizing, because she herself has not grown up in them. Mike is not offered the same freedom, and for that she pities him as much as she does envy him.
There is so much more than she can do than just be a part in someone else's story. No longer does she have to fight tooth and nail for attention that would not be hers in any other case than the current.
Under the blades of her shoulders blooms a strange sensation not unlike a caress. Her ears fill with the musings of angels distantly, the thrumming of harp strings at the small baby hands of cherubs. The music is in tune.
She looks at Mike, and Mike looks at her. They share a befuddled look, as if to wordlessly say, "Do you hear that too?"
The sun above is but a hole in the blanket of a setting sky, yet something about it allures her, like a moth to flame. An instinct roars in her veins to go towards it, and she'd be a fool to ignore it.
She stands up, her eyes transfixed on the fading glowing light. It is almost gone. She has to get to it. She must reach the sun before it's too late.
Her feet bring her to the ledge of the rooftop. In the distance Mike shouts, "El, stop it!" but she does not hear him. His voice is drowned out by her instinct.
It has gotten so late that the stars shine, constellations sewn into the realm above like the patterns of the veins of a pale wrist, embroidered by the hands of a creator unseen and dignified. This is the closest she has been to divinity, and the man beside her will not stop her.
She takes a step but she does not fall.
Her back shivers as a cold chill spills over her skin. The backside of her shirt has ridden up, revealing fluffy white wings that span over the sides of her whole body. Two extra limbs. They flutter proudly, and a few feathers fall to the floor, like the petals of white flowers swishing in the wind.
Around her a sparkling could of glitter trails, like swirling ribbons around a gymnast as they leap and jump with the energy of a bird just gone uncaged.
She yelps out a boisterous laugh, and squeals. Without a thought she takes off, leaving nothing with Mike in the wake of her new additions but a small spattering of glitter over his shoulders, and a feeling of gentle admiration.
The corners of his mouth lift, ever so slightly. He wipes the small drippings of tears from his eyes, knowing that everything had been for the better of her and himself. In the place of grief, though grief has most certainly been felt, is relief.
There is a boundless heap of freedom in his own self, though in this moment it will not go addressed even in the deepest innermost voice of his head.
Distantly, he envies her. He will have his own moment one day, though it is yet to come, and at that holy hour he will too transform. But for now he sits and watches as she effortlessly maneuvers about the graying clouds and the darkening sky.
He hopes that, whatever he is, he will be somewhat like her, though he feels its less likely. Maybe a unicorn.