His voice is so low it’s almost a whisper.
“You’re the best person I have ever met. Even if you feel like I don’t know you, it’s not true. I know more than you think. It physically hurts knowing you’ve been carrying this alone. You don’t deserve that pain. But nothing,nothing, could ever change how much you matter to me, Tilly.”
I start crying again.
I wish movie crying was real, but I’m proof it isn’t.
I don’t feel pretty right now.
I feel sick.
Sick in the head.
Sick in the heart.
Sick to the stomach.
I make a small, broken sound and press my face into his chest like a kid hiding from the dark.
“No, Luca, you don’t understand. This is not a silly little overthinking. These thoughts are destructive. They impact my physical health. They impact every part of my life, and I’m tired. I’m sick in the head. Mentally ill. You look at me and see a blond girl who is crying for the first time in years. The reality is you’re looking at a pale silhouette of someone who has deep, dark bruises on her heart. I’m not normal, Luca.”
My voice is shaky, and I’m pretty sure I’m shaking just as badly.
“T?” he says gently.
His hand brushes the back of my head, and he lets me sit there.
“Yeah?”
“You’re enough.”
He says it like it’s a fact. Like gravity.
Not an opinion. Not something I have to earn.
It makes my heart ache in the best way — like it’s splitting and stitching back together at the same time.
I keep crying.
And crying.
And crying.
Time slips sideways.
Luca just sits there holding me like it’s the most normal thing in the world.
His hoodie smells faintly of laundry detergent and sea air, like the beach clung to him.
His heartbeat is steady against my ear, like a metronome keeping me from unraveling completely.
“You’re not any of what you just told me, and I’m one hundred percent positive you are none of what you tell yourself every night.”
“How can you be sure? You don’t know me. No one does, because the real me is the one who stays up while everyone sleeps. No one has ever seen me the way I am truly built. How can you tell I’m none of that when you don’t even know me?”
My voice sounds wrong, and I hate myself for it.
He tilts my head, forcing me to look at him, and I let myself.
