A Mistake from the Start:

Marie stared at the screen at the response Samantha wrote back, telling her "Joseph and I are just friends. Nothing more." A feeling of uneasiness, and regret swallowed her stomach into the rage of the storm blowing in her mind. She had hoped for something more: a confession, a reason as to why Joseph acted this way, but she was left with nothing but an emotionless response. 

As hours turned into days, she watched him saunter around her, avoiding the ammo she had collected in her thoughts, ready to fire at the slightest touch of the trigger. Even her mother seemed drawn back, avoiding problems swelling in and under the conversations they held momentarily after school. A simple hello, a hug and kiss, swirling around, then she was off to hide the dullness that had conquered her.

Every day during school, she'd see Samantha lean on him, walk with him, smile at him like she thought everything that he said was the best joke ever -- she couldn't help but burst out laughing because he said "butt." What he said to Marie made her insides twist and turn, as they cracked into oblivion. 

He said, "I don't understand your problem with her, she's just a friend. It's not like you don't have friends. It's not like you don't laugh with them." He defended her, took her side in the war. Marie knew he was slipping, she knew she was losing grip. 

Curling into a ball, wrapped into a blanket of tears laid a bruised, scarred, and lost girl. Nearly four days had gone by, without a wink of sleep or a bite to eat. Marie knew what was happening, but she held on, she gripped onto him. As if he'd run away like her father had when she was three. He would fall in "love" -- he would find someone younger, prettier, more gullible. He would do what her father had done to her mother. He'd bring heartache to her life… and leave it there.

He spent his time texting Samantha. Marie and Joseph bickered, argued, fought deep down inside themselves, but a word was never spoken. She started pushing herself away, so far away that if he left, it'd only be a numbing sensation. No matter how far she got, he always showed the smallest amount of love, and it pulled her back into his arms. Her thoughts were fogged over, like the mirror of her freshly steamed bathroom. Her heart felt so hollow, like a woodpecker leaving its hole for the winter. She felt dead. 

    Samantha would look over at Marie every day, making sure Marie wasn't looking. But Marie could see Samantha in the corner of her bright sea green blue eyes,deeper than the Atlantic itself, eyes that cried saltier water than the Atlantic had in its enormous body. The envy was building up in her. The anger, the hatred, all of which held back by the emotional wall in Joseph. So many people watched her break, watched her envy, watched her brim with tears -- but they only watched. Marie was so fed up. So angry, so done with everything. She ignored Joseph, avoided his calls, if he were to notice something wrong. She did everything that would break his heart, as he did to her. 

He stopped her in the hall, grabbed her by her arm gently, and asked "What's wrong? Why have you become so distant? Why have you changed?" 

She stared into his dark brown eyes. Marie slowly pulled her arm out of his, and said, "I'm fine, I've just been dealing with stuff. I don't understand my own feelings, or anyones else's. I haven't left, I'm still here. You're the one who has adopted a new role somewhere else." 

As she stared into the eyes she fell in love with, she saw someone different. He pulled her close, held her and said to her, "There is nothing that I've adopted. I know I've been distant, I know I've been busy, I know that you don't feel loved anymore. But I'm always here for you. I will never leave you, I will always love you." 

She looked deeper, and saw a hint of love. She kept looking. She believed him, she took his word.

Things were good on the outside, but everything on the inside was confused, scrambled to no avail. She felt the little spark once, and it was enough to keep her going, to fuel her slowly dying affection. To burn her hopes brighter than they had in the last month, he had made her feel so alive, so real… yet he had tricked her. Just to keep Marie -- the girl he could have sex with -- but also to keep Samantha -- the girl he dreamed about.

It was almost their anniversary. He had gotten depressed, he was falling apart. Why? Marie never knew. One night as Marie slept, he was up late at night. He sent her a text, of all the words he could've used, he chose, "I'm not happy anymore." She died inside. She muffled a quiet groan. A noise of desperation, she'd felt this burning hot sensation start from the bottom of her feet, and rise to her throat, making it hard to breathe. As tears built up in her eyes her heart dropped and felt like a dead weight. She asked him, "Okay. So what you're saying is we are over?" Before he had the chance to reply, she had started crying. He told her they could be just friends, that everyone was always starting drama between them, that it wasn't worth it. 

When she went to school that morning, he tried to talk to her, asking her what was wrong. He looked at her and asked, "Are you that angry?" 

She stared at him and said, "You don't understand what you have done to me." She continued walking away, breaking with every click of her shoe against the floor. 

For days she wandered those halls, looking but not seeing, as she cried dry tears. A cold winter morning, the bell had just rung for the end of third period, as she motivated herself to walk out the doors and into the crowd. She saw him grabbing Samantha's ass as he honked loudly like an oncoming truck on the freeway. He knew she was watching, he knew it was killing her. 

Marie walked with her head held high and her dignity still in one piece. As she sat there in fourth period, staring at the blurred words in her book, her mind ran blank. As two tears slid from her eyes, she picked her books up, and slid into the bathroom for the rest of the period.

He tried to text her, talk to her, to even be her friend. But she had moved on. He looked at her with pleading eyes in school; she walked the other way. He called for her; she pretended that it wasn't her name. He walked up to her; she scooted around him and walked with her best   friend, who had seen Joseph slobbering over Samantha. He had been caught lying to her. So Marie forgot his love, his taste, his touch. She forgot him.

He slowly slipped away, as he had pushed the most and only important thing out of his life. The woman he wanted to marry, the girl of his life. Samantha wasn't worth it, barely even lasted a week. He couldn't believe how he could do that to Marie. How he could just break her heart in two for a fling. He couldn't even do it quickly, killing her slowly everyday. He began to go to parties, getting drunk, having intercourse with random strippers. All the faces of women he had met made him miss Marie; he could never get her off of his mind. She had burned to his skull, it was like his brain was persistent on never forgetting her.

He pulled himself off the sticky, black, leathered couch, and left the house where the owners had just thrown a raging party. He headed for the door leading to the pool house and sat under the canopy. As he stared into the water, he heard a girl ask if he wanted any, as she held up a needle full of brown liquid. Joseph looked around deep into thought, as he stared out from the patio at his car just parked 10 yards away. He debated with his mind, to forget her for a little while or just drive home. He thought about everything he did, all of what he gave up, and looked to the girl one last time. He reached to pull up his sleeve and tie the elastic tightly like the girl had. He reflected if this is the path he wanted to take, but it was far too late to undo any mistakes he made. The girl slipped the needle in his skin, letting the substance spread throughout his body. Joseph laid back, and looked at the sky. He momentarily closed and opened his eyes seeing Marie; she stared back and smiled. He saw her jumping into the washer reaching for the clothes at the very bottom of it, and just barely able to get out. He laughed and watched her as the memory faded to another, laying in his shirt holding her stuffed teddy. He saw her crying and breaking down alone… he began crying, looked into her eyes and said, "I really mean it. I love you, I made a mistake, and you've moved on… I don't hate you for it." He closed his eyes and said, "I am sorry." Marie looked at him, and gave him a kiss as she faded away into the cold of the night. Everything they ever created together was disappearing, as he slowly succumbed to the darkness his heart desired.