15 Minute Ficlets

Untitled
Original
G
700 words (sorry if that's too long?)

"Look," I growled, "the point is that you said it, and you knew it would hurt my feelings."

"You were pissing me off!"

"Yeah, okay, but I wasn't doing it on purpose! You got mad at me because I was upset. What kind of sense does that make anyway?"

"I just wish you could take a compliment and just know that that's how I feel." He shook his head. "Nothing is ever good enough for you."

My mouth dropped open. "You don't even try! I mean, I know you try, but you make no attempt to understand how I feel or what is going on in my head. You know I'm crazy-"

"I know! I know you're crazy! I know you don't understand why you think the way you do! But it's hard for me, okay? It's hard for me to put up with this everyday. I don't know how much more I can handle."

I was quiet for a moment. "Am I going to lose you?"

He looked at me. "I don't know. Are you going to get mad at me for not thinking you're the most beautiful girl in the world, or not knowing if I love you or not?"

"Well, yeah! I mean, not like mad at you, but yeah, that's going to upset me! You're telling me I'm not good enough, that I'm not a sure thing. And it sucks that I feel so strongly for you and you hardly feel anything for me. I don't know how to handle that, but I don't give up on you every fight that we have."

Staring at me, he growled, "So you're mad at me for not feeling what you think I should feel?"

"I'm not mad! There's a difference between 'upset' and 'mad'."

"I can't feel whatever you want me to feel, just because you think that's how it should be."

I sat down, sighing. "I know. I'm so tired of this."

He stood there, looking like he didn't quite know what to say. His face was so lovely, but it looked so sad - had I done that? Why do I keep doing these things?

"I love you."

He met my eyes, and asked, "Really?"

I nodded.

"What if that's not good enough for me?"

"What- what do you mean?"

"Maybe I need you to actually act like you love me, instead of just saying it. Maybe I need to know for sure that you love me too much to hurt me. Because you do hurt me."

"You're the one who told your girlfriend to lose some weight and see if you think she's prettier! Am I seriously supposed to just overlook that? God, can't you even try to understand how that made me feel?"

He threw his hands in the air. "Jesus, you can't let that go!"

Outraged, I yelled, "No! I can't just 'let that go'! You took the one thing I'm most insecure about, my least favorite thing about myself, the one thing I would change about my physical appearance, and you threw it in my face! You told me 'change this and I'll love you more'! And I'm supposed to get over it?"

"I don't know. I don't know what you're supposed to do. Okay? I guess I'm just a jerk, and I don't deserve your time."

"I don't know, maybe."

He paused, and looked at me. "Really? Are you going to break up with me?"

I shrugged and said, quietly, "I'm not sure. Everyone says I should. They said it's inexcusable. I don't know what to do - I don't know if I can live without you."

His eyes were sad, but his mouth was set angrily. "I hate that you depend on me so much. Maybe we'd both be better off without each other."

My mouth wobbled. "I don't want to be without you."

"I don't either. But maybe we should."

"But... you're everything."

He looked at me with those eyes, that face that I loved so much. "Can we make this work? Do you really think we can do this?"

"I don't know. I need it. I need you."

He shook his head. "I don't know. What do we do now?"

A tear fell as I shrugged.