A Month To Fall In Love

CHAPTER 4

XAVIER's POV

Song for chapter - I don't wanna be you anymore by Billie Eilish

I feel a lump in my throat as I trace my fingers on our happy faces, reminiscing our happy moments. I drop the picture on the previous one and pick up a silver necklace from the box. The memories of that day I had slapped her so hard that she hit the wall, while I used the necklace to pull her back, cutting it in the process and throwing it to the ground. This necklace meant the world to her, the gift her parents had given her on her 15th birthday. She had never removed it from her neck until the day I cut it. I am such an assh.ole.

Dropping the necklace on the pictures, I take the last thing in the box, a small pink diary with a pen in the rings. Taking it out, I drop the box and unlock the stud. A picture of me falls out of the first page as I open it. She had finally gotten the hang of how to make chocolate cake perfectly for the first time that day and I had it stuffed in my cheeks, with a tight lip smile on my face and my eyes closed. She took a picture of it saying she didn't want to forget that moment. A small chuckle leaves my lips as I stare at my funny expression in the picture. The smile leaves my lips as I turn the back of the book, opening it from the back to see the last things she wrote before she left. I stop turning the pages when I see her beautiful cursive handwriting.

'When I was younger, I used to think that falling in love was the most beautiful thing a person could ever experience. A 16 year old girl and a 19 year old boy. Xavier and Zevia, almost identical names, like we were made for each other. I first ran into him while trying to escape the people who wanted to take me to an orphanage and he helped to hide me in this warehouse we now call home, I thought it was like in those movies and stories where the main leads would meet in an emergency situation and one would help the other. They would fall in love and live happily ever after, little did know that I should not have fallen in love with him. I did not know that what we had then was just childish excitement. Mine was not a childish excitement though, it was real but I guess the feeling is not mutual. Those happy memories are fading away fast and the painful ones are replacing them.

I can't even feel myself anymore. When was the last time I smiled genuinely? That I wasn't putting on a fake smile for someone who is not worth it. I tolerated the bad beating I received, since that is the way his dad related with his mom. I thought he would change with time if I cared for him and showed him love. I thought he would not want to be like his father who made him run away from home. I comforted him whenever he was down but no one comforted me whenever I cried. I regret ever letting him know my weaknesses, he uses them to manipulate me. He uses my secrets to insult me. The things I was ashamed of doing that I told him about, he would always rub them in my face whenever he was angry. Whenever I did something good and was celebrating it, he would turn the attention to himself. He never acknowledged my hard work, never complimented my looks, never fulfilled his promises, never gave me his jacket when I was cold, didn't help me out with those little things I did. Whenever we talk, it is always only about him. When we are talking about me, it always ends up with his name as the topic. He would always tell me he loves me, but his actions don't tell me the same, just empty words.

Would I be called stupid for putting up with so much emotional blackmail and abuse, physical abuse and mental abuse for someone who didn't care about my feelings, someone who did not tend to the wounds he created on my body and in my mind. He has broken me so much, I don't think I can ever trust or love anyone again and I am still here. Am I not a fool?' Marks of teardrops made some of the words fuzzy as I read through it.

"No, you are not a fool. I am the fool for not paying attention to you and your needs. I am the foolish one who created deep cuts on the person that was healing up his own cuts. I am the stupid one who let a precious gem like you slip away while being selfish. I do not deserve to be called human. I don't even deserve your forgiveness, I would understand if you don't want me in your life anymore." I walk up to the mirror on the farthest part of the warehouse that the fire did not really touch.

"I don't want to be this version of me anymore. I would also be saddened by my face if I were you, Zevia. I would never want to remember me, if I were in your shoes. Hell, I disgust myself." I break the mirror with my already bruised fist, not wanting to see my face and the glass shards enter my skin.

I walk back to the bed leaving blood trails. After rearranging the things in her box and locking it back, I take a piece of paper, a ruler and a pen to draft a 30 days chart. The blood keeps staining each paper I take and I angrily throw another piece of paper away before standing up to check if the medkit has been burnt too. Finding it burnt too made me feel more frustrated about life.

"I don't deserve to keep her and I am nothing without her, nothing seems to be working either. This warehouse and all that is in it are my only properties, it has also been badly damaged with fire. Besides, the world doesn't need more assh.oles like me. I should just end it and leave her a letter that she is not the reason I ended my existence." I take another piece of paper with the pen and sit down to write my last words to her.