For The Love Of Death

    As his lips pressed against mine he slowly used his body to push me down into the bed. I inhaled deeply as his tongue invaded my mouth. He tasted sweet but smelt like his favorite cologne, the one I had bought him for our one year anniversary. Wait what was I doing?

    I pushed on his chest and he stopped kissing me. He pulled his head back and looked deeply into my eyes with longing. Those gorgeous hazel eyes were my weakness and he knew it.

    " Please stop." I said trying to catch my breath. This was wrong but I couldn't figure out why. I tried to look around, we were in his room back at his parents house. I could tell by the smell of the dragons blood incense. Focus, I needed to focus. Why was I here?

   "What's wrong?" He looked concerned.

  "Why are you doing this?" I felt a lump in my throat as I remembered everything.

   "Because I love you." He said confused. I shook my head.

   "No, I'm dreaming. I need to wake up." Fighting the urge to cry. He caressed my cheek.

   "You're not dreaming. This is real, I'm real and I love you." Tears started to sting my eyes and I shook my head. I closed my eyes and when I opened them I became aware of someone calling me and shaking me violently.

    " Letty wake up, come on we're going to be late for class." I sat up blinking slowly. I could smell the musty scent that never left my dorm despite how much my roommate and I tried to get rid of it. I looked up at my roommate, she looked concerned.

     "What time is it?" I asked rubbing my eyes.

    " Eight" She said sitting on my bed next to me.  " I know your class isn't for another three hours but you were crying in your sleep and that was the only thing I could think of to get you to wake up." She looked like she felt bad.

     "It's ok thanks for waking me up. I appreciate it." I swung my legs over the other side of the bed. I tried to forget the dream. Nightmare was more like it.

    "You were dreaming about him again weren't you?" I looked down at the floor and nodded. "Letty are you OK?"

   "Teighlor please don't. I'm fine. I don't really want to talk about the dream or him though. I'm not holding my breath for him. I told you that I told him it was over for good and I meant it." My best friend hugged me.

   "I know, but I know you still love him and miss him." I nodded.

   "I'll always love him, I gave him seven years of my life. I miss the good times not all the arguing and the make up break ups though, I don't have it in me to do that anymore." I felt like I was going to cry.

   "It's normal. You guys broke up a month ago I'm not expecting you to be over him yet. I just wish you would ask to transfer out of your two classes with him."

    "I know but I've told you already we're half way through the semester, it doesn't make sense to try and transfer now. Plus I don't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing I transferred because of him."

   "I know but I feel like you're just torturing yourself." I sighed. She was right I was torturing myself. That dream was living proof of it.

    "I'll be fine but you should go, you don't want to be late." I pointed to my alarm clock that I never really even used. Teighlor hugged me again

    "Alright text me if you need anything. Don't forget I'm getting pizza tonight for our weekly horror movie Friday. " I nodded and continued to stare at the floor. I know she meant well but I just wanted to be alone for awhile. I heard the door shut and decided to get out of bed and get dressed at least. There were two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room and kitchen in our dorm. Our other two roommates shared the second room. They were both really nice and weren't here most of the time. I strained to listen to see if I was completely alone but I couldn't hear much over the sound of the air conditioner.

   Teighlor and I were like night and day. I loved black and dark colors, she loved pink and pretty much all things pastel. We liked all the same foods and movies. We even both loved anime and manga. That was pretty much where our similarities stopped though. We had met in seventh grade and it was instant friendship since the moment she let me sit next to her on the bus.

    I fought to suppress the memory of the dream as I pulled on a black dress. How had I been able to smell and taste him so vividly?  I guess that's just something that's hard to forget. No I needed to focus on making myself not look like I just crawled out of a grave. 

     I couldn't think straight anymore. I wanted to look nice in hopes my ex would see me and regret his decision but at the same time I just wanted to forget him and I couldn't figure out why.

     "You're not going to eat?" I almost jumped as one of my other roommates Amber walked around the corner and noticed me practically glaring at my coffee. I shook my head and forced a smile.

    "Nah I'm trying to loose weight so only coffee this morning." Her smile disappeared.

    "Letitia there is nothing wrong with being a plus size girl. You're gorgeous." I didn't feel that way but I didn't say anything to her.

    "I'm not saying I'm not. It's just weighing three hundred pounds almost isn't really that good on my asthma." 

    "I know but I don't want you thinking you aren't beautiful." Amber was just a few pounds less then me and believed everyone was beautiful in their own way. For the most part I agreed with her that everyone is beautiful in their own way, except for me.

    "I don't, like I said it's just to help my asthma some." I always lied about my self esteem, I just didn't want to be a burden to anyone.

    "I believe you. Skipping meals though isn't a healthy or efficient way to lose weight though." She handed me a banana as she spoke.

    "I guess a banana won't kill me if it makes you feel better." She stuck her tongue out at me and grabbed her back pack to leave. I placed the banana back in the fruit bowl and decided to head to the campus library to preoccupy the two hours I had before class. 

    Once in the library I headed to my usual corner where I liked to sit. Only my ex fiancé knew about it and it was the perfect hiding spot where we had on more then one occasion had one steamy make out session. No stop I needed to forget him I reminded myself. As I rounded the corner though I didn't think that would be possible. My heart plummeted into my stomach and my blood froze in my veins as I saw my ex fiancé Mark lip locked with another girl....It had only been a month... 

    I turned around and covered my mouth to suppress the urge to cry. I started to walk away quickly but in the process tripped over something and fell. I thanked the gods silently that this part of the library was normally empty.

     "Are you alright?" A deep voice asked. Looking up I saw a guy I had never seen in the library before. I sat back on my knees quickly trying to hide the fact I was embarrassed.

     "Yeah, just lost my footing." I said with a grin. He stretched his hand out to help me up but I ignored it and got up on my own picking up my books I had dropped in the process.

     "I saw. I'm sorry to bother you but it's my first day could you show me where the administration offices are?" I looked at him confused.

    "Uhm I'm kind of in a hurry but it's On my way so follow me." 

    "Thank you, I honestly never realized how huge this place was." I didn't look at him as we walked. I stopped outside of a door and smiled my best smile.

    "Here you go. See you around." I quickly walked away before he could say anything. I decided classes today were not going to be a thing so I emailed my teachers on my way back to the dorm. I lied and told them I was sick to my stomach. Well maybe it wasn't a complete lie because I did. 

    Once back in the safety of mine and Teighlor's room I wiped off the makeup I had worked hard to carefully put on and changed back into my pjs. This was not a good way to start my weekend. I knew the minuet Teighlor didn't see me in our math class later she would know something was wrong. I didn't care though.

     One month. He already had a new woman after one month. How could he? Was I so easily replaceable to him? I knew this wasn't the first time he started seeing someone after we broke up. Once when we broke up for two days the day he dumped me he went and fucked another woman then came back to me the next day saying he was sorry. Another time we broke up he tried to hook up with Teighlor. She denied him and he came running back to me. That's all I was to him. The girl he would go back to when he couldn't get anything else. He didn't love me. I was the idiot. I loved him with every fiber of my existence. I always forgave him and took him back. I always believed his sweet talk and lies. Now that things were over for good I was the one hurting and missing him while he seemed to completely forget I existed. That's how it's always been with him. He would never change and I needed to stop holding my breath and wishing he would.

    I still defended him to everyone though. I would always tell everyone that when things were good they were great and he never once laid a hand on me to hurt me. As Teighlor always pointed out though it didn't mean he didn't hurt me in other ways. Whenever we broke up he always blamed it on me. It was always somehow my fault, never his. Even if he was leaving me for another woman it was still my fault and he found a way to make me believe I really was was worthless and like everything was wrong with me. I truly believed I had been a crappy fiancé to him. At least he was happy now and he had no difficulty moving on and forgetting me. I couldn't forget him and move on though and repeating what I had seen in the library in my head just made my heart sink in to my stomach and my blood turn to ice again. This time though I didn't fight the tears.