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Pacing around the waiting room of the hospital in which your mother laid, your heart would not stop pounding like it wanted to rip itself out of your chest. Tears brimmed your eyes without you knowing, as the brain inside your big head was only focused on the well-being of your mama who was not in the best condition. Every time you tried to sit down vomit would make its way up your throat, so the only way to keep calm was to keep walking. Your lip quivered as you prayed to a god that you’re not sure you even believe in anymore. Not after everything… but it gave a little comfort knowing that someone you once believed in so strongly was there with you. What didn’t give you comfort was that it was all out of your control. Close to losing it with sweat dripping down your face, the doors swung open to reveal a familiar face of red smeared lipstick and creased eyebrows. “Luke,” she breathed out just a bit louder than a whisper, making her way over to you with open arms.“Penelope.” Your legs met her in the middle of the room, and you wrapped your arms around her as you started to cry. “I- I don’t know if she’s gonna be okay.”“It’s okay…I promise you everything will be okay no matter what.” She rubbed your back and squeezed you closer to her, giving you some sort of stability. She remembered being in this exact situation, with the only exception of both her parents were in emergency surgery for a car accident, and your mom was in for a heart attack. She was sure though that your mom played the roles of both mother and father, so it was just as traumatic for you. Her eyes closed with a few tears escaping, knowing just as you felt and hurting for you. “I’m so sorry, Luke.”Breathing in a deep, shaky breath, she let go of you and led you to a chair. Her presence itself made it bearable to sit down, and as you looked into her eyes, and then down to her lips, you wanted to kiss her so badly. You thought that if you kissed her, the clouds would evacuate the skies and everything would be clear. You would be pulled out of the water you felt you were drowning in, and you would finally be able to breath again, and it wasn’t just the situation of your mother that made you felt this way. It was everything from your partner dying to the lack of light that was in your life after your father left. You felt in your entire body that kissing her would give you some sense of completeness, even if it was just for a few seconds, but there were too many reasons to not. 1. This sort of love is not allowed. You are both too soft, and the world around you is all knives and chipped teeth. Look around, Luke. Do you not see where you are right now? Do you not know the reality of your life? You are a walking target everyday, waiting for the day you die like it could be tomorrow, because it is quite a big possibility it could be. You and her are just too broken for a love like this. You wouldn’t be able to handle anything with her. The world is hard, and you’re just not strong enough. You’re not strong enough for her. You would just let her down.
2. No one ever taught you how to love. Your war paint and scarred hands could never hold her like she deserves. You don’t know how to take care of a family. You would screw things up so badly it would be worth laughing about. She’s so fragile and gentle, her hands of silk would not fit with yours of sandpaper. She deserves more than a broken individual and his messed up life. You would come home in the early hours of morning to her and she would be asleep, not awakening until you have to leave again, and it would be like she didn’t have a husband at all. You would lock her into a decision she made without knowing the consequences, leading her to a life of dullness. She doesn’t deserve the responsibility of comforting you every time you have a nightmare or hear a child scream, she deserves so much more. She deserves someone that’ll take her to a five star restaurant on Fridays, and make sweet love to her all through Saturday morning, and you don’t know how to do that. You would fuck it up by forgetting about the date because of how exhausted you are from work and sleep all Saturday, leaving her with another reason to not trust a man.3. No one has ever loved you this full, surely you would drown in it all. You would kiss her and not be able to stop, getting lost in the lust of everything, forgetting about everything else in life. For a while it would be bliss, but then you would have priorities that you wouldn’t be able to tend to, and your life would fall apart, bringing her down with you. Or, you would just drive her away, whichever came first.4. She belongs in a museum, and you are merely here to gaze. Look around you, all the signs scream ‘Do Not Touch.’ As she waits in the hospital with her elbows on her lap, her thumbnail is brought to her mouth so she can bite it out of anxiety. Her perfectly shaped blond curls have grown so much since you first met her, as they almost reach the bottom of her breasts, laying on her shoulders and falling the rest of the way down. Her big brown eyes alternate from the floor to the clock up on the wall, and every time a minute passes, she gets more nervous. She wears the most articulate dresses everyday, showing her personality merely by wearing what she does. You don’t even think you’ve ever seen her wear pants until today, and even in a pair of jeans she still looks so perfect. You remember yesterday when you made a joke, and the laugh that was emitted from her chest was so big, it made you smile. You don’t deserve someone as beautiful as her. You’d just smear her colors.5. She touches you like you’re fragile, and if you break you won’t be able to put yourself back together again. She hears your breaths getting heavier, and promptly wraps her hand around your forearm, later resting her head on your shoulder. She leans on you like you will break if she touches you with any more force, and as much as you love the gentleness, you also want her shake you back into reality, because at the moment you don’t know where you are. She looks at you once, your eyes meeting hers and you’re brought back down to Earth. Then you realize how glad you were that she touched you so gently, because if you broke any further, you would stay in a thousand pieces forever, and there were people that needed you in one. She knew what you needed, and you didn’t even know her middle name (which Matt would tell you later that it’s Grace).6. She is all bubblegum skies and chapped stick kisses, and you cannot watch the love run out of another person’s eyes. More than a myriad of people have died in front of you, if not in your arms. You’ve seen their bodies physically die, and the worst sight to see is always their eyes. The eyes always go dark, and lose all hope possible. They lose all the love they could ever hold, as their lives are ripped from them, and if you caused that to someone, there would be no way that you could ever forgive yourself. Though, she wouldn’t be dying, if you ever saw the light being drawn out of Penelope’s eyes, you would lose all hope in humanity because she is the purest, most loving persons you’ve ever met, with the exception of your mama of course. If you knew that you were the one to suck the love out of her innocent eyes, you would die inside and out. You couldn’t bare the thought of the love being taken away from someone who deserves it so much.7. If you jump, she might catch you, and then you’d have to watch as she tumbled through the dark. If she did catch you her life would become as broken as yours, and you couldn’t do that to her. You don’t want her to pick up your pieces at the expense of her sanity. You’ d rather just stay away, mind your own business, and not ruin more than you have to. If she did catch you, you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself.8. Her gaze is too gentle. You will not be the one to tell her that not everything can be fixed with a smile. You’re pretty sure she knows that life can be a bitch, but if you didn’t know her, you’d think she’s a walking piece of naivete. She walks around like perfect painting without a smudge, and you didn’t want to be the one to ruin her vibes. You didn’t want to destroy her happiness, and if you were with her, you most definitely would. You would say something or rub off on her so she becomes everything she’s ever tried to stray from: sadness. You didn’t want to be the one to take away her softness and you didn’t want to break the person she’s built up to be herself.9. She is so good. She is so good, and you cannot ruin one more good thing. It’s like that story that you can’t remember where you think everything the guy touches turns to gold, which is great until his wife turns to gold, except everything you touch does not turn to gold. Everything you touch crumbles under your hands, and if you ruin another good thing, especially something like her, you will be so mad at yourself. “She’s too good for you, Luke,” you tell yourself, “She’s way too good for you, Luke.” 10. You will not watch her crumble under the weight of your sins. She is too light, too breathless, to be caught up in the dizziness of your heart. You tell yourself that you have too much baggage, because it’s true. You carry enough baggage to share with the whole world. With so much, you’ll just destroy everything in your path, including her, which breaks your heart because you really do love her so much. She is like a dove, and if you dropped a bunch of bricks on a dove, it would most definitely die, much like what would happen to her if you entered her life in the way you wanted to. She is too pretty and colorful to be marred with streaks of black paint and more hard memories to worry about. Your heart, and the way it works is too complicated to keep her happy, or satisfied at all, as you expects that when she loves, its crazy, passionate, and clean all at once. And while when you loves it is always crazy, it is sometimes boring, and never clean, but maybe, you come to realize, it is just the type of women you’ve been dating all along, because you’re sure that loving her would be all consuming and most definitely passionate.You’re shaken out of your thoughts once more, as the woman besides you shakes your arm when a doctor appears in the door. “Lucy Alvez?” She looked around the room, and you shot right up, followed by Penelope a few feet behind, wondering whether you want her there when you finds out if your mom is okay.“Yes, yes, I’m her son? Is she okay?” The doctor wasted no time to nod her head, signaling that she is alive. “She’s okay. There were few complications, everything went well, and she should be ready to go home by tomorrow night. We just want to keep her to assure that she’s okay. The details are on the paperwork, but we found that her medication caused the heart attack, so we’re going to need to fix that.”“Thank God, okay, okay, thank you so much!” You breathed out, looking back at Penelope, and turning to walk over her and hug her.You felt electricity course through your veins when you hugged her, and as you looked up into her eyes, you knew you needed to kiss her. You leaned in and both pairs of eyes closed, but for a split second, you second guessed yourself. There were so many reasons to not kiss her, but you couldn’t help yourself from focusing on the one reason (among others that he didn’t know yet) to kiss her.1. She loves you, and her eyes are closed, and didn’t your mother ever tell you not to leave a good thing waiting?You pressed your lips to hers, and they moved in synchrony for the seconds that felt like forever. You needed to see your mother, but you didn’t want to let go. Your hands pulled her waist into yours, and with one last push, you separated your body from hers. Your predictions were right, for the few seconds your lips were together, you finally felt whole again, and that is a feeling you never wanted to let go. Suddenly, all the reasons why you shouldn’t kiss her became irrelevant, and you could think of so many new reasons why kissing her was one of the best decisions you’ve ever made.