Hallowed

by Mollie Conn

I’d asked him, “Wanna fuck?”

He’d said, “Yes, when?”

That night, I fell in love with him. 

Maybe it was the way he brushed my leg, my thigh, my hair on the couch. Maybe it was the way he laughed with my friends, gasped when he was supposed to at the reality TV show we had playing in the living room, FloraBama Shore. It could’ve been the manly sensitivity he has, paired with a mysterious quietness that drew one in while keeping them completely at a distance. 

It helped that he was gorgeous, though I was always partial to skinny brunettes. He wasn’t yet plastered in tattoos or covered in piercings, his muscles hadn’t yet reached the peak that they would, but his eyes were still a milky, feminine brown, accentuated by long, dark lashes. He had a cute, boyish smile and unkempt, dark hair that begged to have fingers run through it. Everything about him was adorable and also sexy; I wanted to hug and kiss and fuck him for the rest of my life. All it took was one look. 

Maybe that’s dramatic. Maybe that’s the writer in me romanticizing that moment, that first night when I met him. He and I have both admitted our awkward bumps and bruises over the years, but I can’t deny that instant attraction and connection to him. I can’t forget the comfortable way that he caressed me in front of my friends, the familiar way that he would tell me his stories. 

Preston and I formed an unhealthy attachment. Or maybe that was just me. I could never really presume to know how he felt about me at any given moment, even if he was saying it over and over again. He had a way of never knowing how he truly felt, so, in turn, neither did I. 

Over the years, I let him tear my heart into pieces by accident. I grew to know him so well that it became second nature to forgive him when he’d leave me, when he’d tell me that I wasn’t nurturing or caring enough, that this wasn’t what it was supposed to feel like. The truth is, when we were together, he treated me well. We never truly fought. The only thing he ever really did wrong was not be in love with me, and as fucked up as I was, I could never truly fault him for it. 

After a couple of friends with benefits situations and a month-long actual relationship, Preston finally moved back to my city from his hometown. We started seeing each other again on a friends with benefits basis. 

He always tried to cut me off, let me loose, try to wipe the slate clean, but I’d never let him. We had an unreal sexual connection that neither of us could really understand, and I often used it to manipulate him into seeing me again. He would leave and I’d wait a few months and then ask him to fuck me. Sometimes he’d fight it, but mostly he’d say yes. I think the fact that he actively tried to avoid hurting me again made it that much harder to hate him, something that my friends never really understood. 

The thing about being friends with benefits with Preston was that it was never truly just friends. We didn’t know how to be. We couldn’t have sex without cuddling, couldn’t cuddle without petting, couldn’t pet without kissing. We couldn’t be in each other’s presence without sharing what was going on in our lives, which at the time was usually something bad. We overshared, overindulged, and for me, it formed an unhealthy attachment. Whenever I felt bad or sad or even had a minor inconvenience, I wanted to see him and usually he let me, though he didn’t know that it was for this reason. 

On Halloween night, after we’d been seeing each other for awhile, he called me while I was getting ready for a party with my friends. I knew that he had planned to take mushrooms that night like he did occasionally. 

One thing I should probably mention about Preston was that he never had any friends for the majority of the time that I’d known him. Most of his social time was spent with me, and that’s probably why it was so easy or maybe imperative for him to share things with me that he probably should’ve been telling a friend. Maybe that’s why it was easy for me to feel so close to him. 

When I answered the phone, he was crying. This wasn’t altogether unusual. Preston was a sensitive guy who’d been through some rough stuff, and he wasn’t ashamed to cry in front of me. However, it was odd at this time for him to call crying unprovoked, and I was especially worried with him being on drugs. 

Through shaky breaths, he said, “Can you come over? I need to tell you something in person. It’s important.”

I went into fight or flight mode. This man, over the past two years, had become my whole world. My friends were sick of hearing his name, though I never got tired of saying it. Preston. Preston. Preston. 

I chanted it in my head, no thoughts other than him as I raced to his apartment. He only lived five minutes away, but it felt like a lifetime. I drove as if I was being chased, and ran down the sidewalk to his door. 

He greeted me in his gray comfort hoodie, his brown eyes sad, his cheeks damp. I pulled him into a hug, both of us silent. 

“What’s wrong?” I asked softly. 

I knew it’d take him a minute to answer. One of the many things that I’d learned about him was that he had to think things through, think before he spoke. His thoughts moved faster than his mouth did, and I gave him the time and space to get it together. We walked to his bedroom, holding hands, rubbing thumbs together.

He was still crying. “Why are you so nice to me?”

My heart broke for him. After everything I knew about him, about his past, about his life, this question broke me the most. It implied that he believed that he didn’t deserve it. And many people in my life would agree that he didn’t deserve it from me. But I knew him too well to believe that. And I told him so. 

He just kept repeating the question over and over, desperately, fresh tears falling down his face. I hugged him closer, breathing in the smell of his hoodie against my face. 

“You’re a good person,” I told him. “You deserve for people to be nice to you.”

This only made him cry more. He cried for awhile. I sat there, holding him, listening to him weep. He kept standing while I sat on the edge of his bed. He refused to sit down, trying to psyche himself up for whatever he had to tell me. 

“I…I love you.”

I looked up at him, unable to hide the grin spreading across my face. 

“You’d think after all this time that you’d already know that I love you, too,” I said. 

He was the second person I’d ever said those words to romantically, but the first time that I’d ever meant it. It was the first time anyone had ever said it to me first. This moment was monumental for me. I’d spent my whole life feeling unloved, chasing love, searching, begging for it from people who didn’t deserve me, and I felt like I went through all of that to find him, to be in this moment with him. I held him closer. 

After making sure that he was okay, I went back out with my friends. But I was distracted. I left the party early and went back to Preston’s to be with him.

We started officially dating again. I was over the moon. It was what I wanted. I never wanted to break up with him in the first place. 

But the very next day, when Preston was in his right mind, I told him cautiously, “I love you.”

He said, “Maybe we shouldn’t say that anymore.”

If my heart was made of glass, then it shattered. If it was made of wood, then it splintered. If it was made of cloth, then it tore. 

I said, “Oh, okay.”

Once again, I made excuses for him. Maybe they really were reasons. I know his experience with love and the fear that comes with it. I knew he was scared, and so I let go of those three little words that I loved so much to make the person I loved more comfortable. I thought that if I gave them up then I could keep him. This time, I could keep him. 

A month and a half later, out of nowhere, like always, he said, “I don’t think I ever really liked you.”

Shatter. 

“I think I needed someone to be nice to me and you were.”

Splinter.

“I didn’t know anyone else in Starkville, and you were there.”

Tear. 

His apartment became a haunted house that Halloween, and he wore the costume of someone who loved me. He could’ve been anything in the world – a pale, sheet-covered ghost, a red-horned Devil, but he went as my own personal demons, unconcerned at the fear that it would bring me. On a night where everyone was wearing masks, I never considered that this was one that he was wearing too.

Mollie Conn (she/her) is a 22 year old Creative Writing senior at the Mississippi University for Women. She enjoys reading, writing, hiking, and spending time with her friends. She hopes to one day publish a memoir.