"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."
~1 Corinthians 13
I wake up to my pitch black dorm. I'm still laying in the curled up position I was in earlier. I guess I had been so upset that I put myself to sleep. It must have been a deep sleep because I feel a little disoriented, have a headache, and my mouth is cotton dry. I sit up, surrounded by darkness. I rub my eyes and sigh. I still feel exhausted, emotionally drained. The fight with my parents comes back to me and I shake my head to try and get rid of those thoughts.
I check my phone and it's 8:18pm. I was asleep for almost 5 hours. I have multiple messages from Tre, asking if everything was okay and if I wanted to see him later. I also have a text from Sam that said that she wasn't going to be back to the room until late tonight. No other messages or calls. Nothing from my parents, but I'm not surprised. I message Tre back and tell him that I want to go over to his place tonight. I set my phone down and I get up from my bed.
I turn on the small lamp on my desk, illuminating the room with a soft golden glow. I look in the mirror on the wall next to my book shelf and see dark circles underneath my eyes. My eyes are bloodshot and I have dried tears on my cheeks. I rub my face and then pull my hair back so I can go wash my face. When I get back from the bathroom, Tre messages saying he can pick me up in 15 minutes.
With my face feeling more refreshed and free of any signs of previous tears, I start feeling a little better. I change clothes and put on some black leggings and one of my grey oversized sweaters. I brush my hair and then slip my new ankle boots on that I had just bought last week from a nice thrift store. By the time I finish getting ready, Tre texts me that he's outside.
"Hey babe," he greets when I get into his car.
"Hi," I simply say.
I'm happy to see him, but I don't feel like telling him what happened while we're in the car.
"Are you okay?" He asks during the drive back to his apartment.
"I don't know," I answer. "We can talk about it when we get inside."
He stops on the way to get us fast food since I slept through dinner. The whole time in the car, there's only small talk. Nothing more. Which makes me glad. Tre is never one who pushes hard about talking right away. He lets me talk when I am ready, just like I do the same for him.
"Would you quit stealing my fries?" He asks, playfully swatting at my hand that's reaching for his food bag.
"Let me have some of your fries," I laugh, hand wrestling with his.
"You already have your own fries. Why do you need to take mine?"
"Because food tastes better when it's not yours," I joke, starting to feel happier now that I am around him and not making my head hurt with all of my thoughts.
Tre cackles and I sneakily take one more fry out of his bag, much to his dismay and his eye rolling. We get back to his apartment, both of our food bags now empty and thrown away as we pass by the kitchen. The apartment is quiet since Trell and Sam were going out for evening and wouldn't be back until later.
When I get inside Tre's room, I take off my shoes and jacket and sit on the bed. I hear Tre in the kitchen getting a glass of water and then he comes in.
"You alright?" He asks, sitting the water down on his bedside table.
I shrug. "Not really, honestly."
"What all happened today?" He asks and sits next to me on the bed. "What happened with your parents?"
"Well, it went how'd you probably guess." I fiddle with a loose string on my sweater sleeve and sigh. "I told them about you and they completely lost it. They said really bad things about you."
I frown and he grabs my hand.
"It's okay," he starts to say.
"No it's not okay," I interrupt him and stand up from the bed. "Nothing that they said and did was okay, Tre. They were cruel and judgemental and completely racist and hypocritical. The things they said-" I pause, noticing that I started pacing back and forth in the room, and look at him. "Were so hurtful. I'm mad that they said those things about you and I'm hurt that they told me that I should break up with you."
"They wanted you to break up with me?" Tre repeats my statement and I nod.
"They said I couldn't be with you and when I told them that I was still going to be with you, they basically disowned me and told me to not come back home."
"Wait a minute," Tre says in the middle of my rant with his arm out in front of him. "They disowned you for being with me?"
"They told me that I wasn't welcome in their home anymore if I was going to be 'like this' and if I started getting bad grades then they're not going to pay for my schooling," I explain to him almost word for word what they had said. "And they told me that when you hurt me and I don't have anywhere else to go, I can't go crawling back to them."
"Fucking assholes!" Tre abruptly yells and stands up.
"Tre!" I exclaim, shocked at his sudden outburst.
"I know they're your parents Evangeline, but I know you were thinking the exact same thing," he says, this time at a lower volume than his yell.
I mean, he's not wrong in saying that.
"That's fucking bullshit for them disowning you because you want to be with me."
I nod in agreement.
He turns to me. "What else did they say about me?"
I swallow hard and shake my head slowly in embarrassment and defeat. "You already know what they said, Tre."
I don't want to repeat what they said, but it's not that hard to figure out the kinds of horrible things they could've said about him.
"Yeah I can guess what kind of shit they said," he scoffs and runs a hand over his face.
"I'm sorry," I whisper and look down to my feet, feeling tears come to my eyes.
Tre sighs and then comes to where I am and stands in front of me. He wraps his arms around me and pulls me close to him. "Baby, it's not your fault. We knew that it was probably gonna be like this."
I bury my face in his chest and feel the tears run down my cheeks. "I know, but it's not fair. It's not fair at all." I grip his t-shirt in my hand, feeling angry and sad. Angry because Tre doesn't deserve to be ridiculed and judged for who he is. Sad because I don't know what to do from here and feel like I have no control over anything anymore.
"Look at me," Tre says and we pull back a little bit so we can see each other's faces. "They don't matter. Nobody else matters here but me and you, okay? Me and you together. That's it."
I nod, wiping a few tears away. "I just don't know what to do now."
I pull away from him and walk a few feet away from him. "I feel like I have no control over anything." I tell him with my back turned to him. "Like I'm slowly drowning in these waves that keep pushing me down. It's exhausting." I turn back to him and he has a frown on his face.
"What are you saying? That you don't want to be with me anymore?"
"No," I try to explain but he interrupts me.
"No? Then what are you meaning, Evangeline?" His eyes are hard and glaring and he crosses his arms across his chest.
"I don't know!" I cry out, fresh tears dripping down my cheeks. "I don't know what I should be feeling right now."
"What do you want to do?" He ask, throwing his hands up in frustration. "Do you want to keep being together or is it too exhausting for you to handle?"
"That's not fair," I tell him, feeling angry at him for throwing my words back at me.
"Life's not fair!" He yells, making me slightly jump from his loud voice. "Hate to break it to you Evangeline, but life is never going to be fair. There's always going to be some shit that happens and you have to either deal with it and move on or let it consume you."
The more he talks, the angrier he gets, but the angrier he gets, the more frustrated I feel because I can't properly explain all of the emotions that are currently running through me.
When I decided to swim, I didn't realize that it was going to take every ounce of my being to keep myself afloat and moving. My muscles ache and cry out in exhaustion, telling me that I should quit and give up the horizonâdrown in defeat and go back to the way things were before.
"So you are either with me in this or you aren't," Tre states, his jaw tightened and the vein in his neck pops out. "You don't get to have it both ways. It's not possible. You either try or you don't."
"You don't think I'm trying?" I yell back at him through my tears, surprising myself since I have never raised my voice at him before.
This argument is a first for both of us. Anger, frustration towards one anotherâit's all new territory.
"I would not be standing here if I did not want to try with you!" My entire body is shaking and all I can see through my blurry vision is Tre's angry expression. "I stood up to my parents and they disowned me." I point to myself and then continue on. "I defended you and I knew that even though my parents hate me right now, it doesn't matter because all I ever wanted was you!"
I hiccup and release a sob that was desperately wanting to come out.
"If you think that I was going to stop trying and give up on us, then you obviously don't me at all. So fuck you for even thinking that!"
I breathe in and out heavily and wipe the warm tears off my face. I look up at him and into his eyes that are now filled with sadness instead of anger at my outburst.
"You don't know how much I want to be with you. Since I first saw you at that party, all I wanted was to be with you. You were all I thought about," I say and move a little bit closer to him. Both of our angers starting to diminish. "When I said this was exhausting, I meant that I don't know how to keep up with these feelings because I've never felt this way before."
I wipe more tears away and push some hair back behind my ears. "It's scares me," I whisper. "I feel like I'm losing control and I'm not used to that. This is all new and it's hard for me to keep up, but I'm going to keep trying because I don't want to lose you, Tre. I don't care if I have to fight through a thousands hurricanes just to make it back to you, but I will. And I would do it all over again if it meant I still got to be with you."
Tre's silent, taking in everything I'm saying to him and processing it. He doesn't say anything yet, so I keep going. I need to tell him everything.
"When everything else around me is so blurry and unclear, there's only one thing that I can see clear," I tell him. "You. You're my clarity. Everything makes sense with you."
I step closer to him again. "I'm falling in love with you." I whisper, feeling tears fall again. "No, actually, I'm not falling in love with you. I've already fallen."
I look directly at him, sending this with my whole being. Arms to the wind and sinking underwater. "I love you, Trevante."
Now I'm at the end of the horizon. At the bottom of the bottle. Outside the coloring book lines. Torn apart from the inside out. Now just bare bones, laid out for him to take. There's nothing left of me. I've given him everything of me. Almost everything.
Tre keeps staring at me, his eyes never leaving mine. His face is stoic, but his eyes show that he's thinking about so much. There's so much swirling in his eyes.
"Evangeline," he whispers, his eyes so full of depth. Dark waters that I am swimming in the middle of. I can tell that I surprised him with my declaration.
He opens his mouth a couple times but he doesn't get any words out. He swallows hard and his eyebrows furrow in deep thought, like he's trying to saying something but he can't get anything out.
"I'm swimming towards you," I tell him and close the distance between us, our bodies touching. "I need to know that you're gonna be at the end and help pull me out of the water.
Tre finally breaks our eye contact and looks away for a second before returning to my gaze. My heart is beating fast in anxiety, not knowing what he's going to say. He can break my heart now that I laid it all out for him. He can crush it in his hands and throw the pieces away, leaving me on the floor ripped apart.
I feel a touch and look down to see him grab my hand. Our fingers intertwine, comforting both of us with the physical touch, a connection.
"I can't say it yet," Tre then whispers, a pained look on his face. "I can't say it yet."
He eyes hold a pain that is deep and raw, excruciating for him. His jaw clenches and his mouth twitches like he's wants to say more, but he doesn't. Whatever is going through his head really hurts him deep down, but when his eyes connect with mine, it makes me intake a breath. Tears are filling his eyes, threatening to fall.
Even though he doesn't say it, I can see it in his tear-filled eyes.
I love you.
A single tear drops down his cheek. The first tear I've ever seen him have.
I place my hand on his cheek, wiping away the tear. He closes his eyes and puts his hand on top of mine. He bends his head down to rest his forehead against mine. Both of our breathing uneasy, he rubs his nose against mine before we both angle our faces so our lips connect. I lower my hand from his face and he brings both of his hands up to cup my face, angling my face up to kiss him deeper. I feel like we put all of our emotions into the kiss, able to feel everything that the other is feeling.
Our bodies seem to mold into each other's. Arms wrapped around each other's bodies and I start to feel the warm, fuzzy sensation like from when we were in the pool together. I let go of the control, feeling my body relax more as we kiss. I want to feel everything in this moment. This one moment. I want to drown in Tre, free fall into the unknown with him. I find myself not being afraid of falling or drowning. I only want him as my focus, nothing else around matters. The world can keep moving but in this moment, time stands still. It's just us.
I pull away, breathless from him, and bite my lip. I slowly walk backwards away from him, our eyes not leaving each other's as I back up onto the bed. I sit back on the edge, both of our eyes showing desire.
"I want you," I tell him.
He slowly walks towards me and stands in front of me, my knees touching his legs. He runs his hand down my hair and to my chin, further fueling my warm body with his light touch. He tips my chin up to see him, he eyes dark with lust and his jaw clenched like he's trying to restrain himself.
He runs his finger down the side of my neck, making me take a shaky breath in.
"Can I have you, Evangeline?" He whispers, his deep voice now stimulating my body even more.
I grab his hand and place it on my chest, over my heart so he can feel how fast my heart is racing for him.
"Take me, Trevante."