Two of Everything | louis tomlinson

.12

Not edited

Louis pulls the bucket of paints inside and lets out a loud groan when he places them on the floor. "How did you carry these? I almost died." He asks, and I respond with flexing my none-existent muscles.  The sound of his laughs enters into my ears and land right into my heart. I made him laugh, and it made my night.

I notice newspapers all over the floor, covering most of it. I accidentally rip some with the heels of my boots, but he doesn't seem to notice. He's opening the lids of the buckets. I take that as a chance to look through the glass and notice how the snow sparkles in the night. I will never stop saying this is a beautiful place.

I stand there for a minute, and notice his reflection. He's behind me. Our eyes meet each other's reflection. He puts his hands on my shoulders and slowly takes my coat off. I gulp and turn around, crossing my arms against my chest, freezing.

"I'm sorry. I will turn the heater now."

"You keep this place neat, Louis." I say with honesty, following as he approaches to turn on the heater. "This could be a perfect place to live in."

I don't know why he didn't help me keep our house as neat as this one or move here instead.

"I steal my neighbors' cleaning supplies, morning newspapers and money." He says, shamelessly. My face falls on my hands. I never knew he steals stuff. Why did he never tell me? I guess we weren't honest in our marriage after all.

"So, you bought that heater with the money you stole." I guess.

"Wrong." He says a minute later after turning the heater on, and proceeds to take my coat over to the coat holder. He takes off his denim jacket and puts it on top of mine. "I stole this heater."

"From your neighbors."

"Yeah, it was in their garage. They're fucking rich mate! They have many things in their house, I don't think they would notice if they're missing something. Do you know what I hate about them? It's not that they're utterly annoying, but they didn't do anything to help me out in the house with my wife. They watched us go down. Maybe even laughed. They did help taking my daughter to school and now they're letting me stay in their house, but I feel that... they feel... forced to do this as if they don't really want to help me. They just do it because they don't want to look bad." He shakes his head, "After I got back from taking my daughter to the park I heard them talking in the kitchen."

"What were they saying?"

"I was the reason for Laneece's death."

He meets my eyes with glittery-watery eyes and I don't know if it was the right moment, but I felt like I was supposed to hug him, but I didn't.

"That's not the true." I say, sounding mad.

"But it is." His voice breaks, shrugging and looking up, "She was so young and her heart started failing because of me. I was stressing her out. We used to fight. Instead of being the husband she dreamed of, I only gave her bad times which killed her."

"She died during her heart transplant."

"This would've not happened if..."

"Stop blaming yourself." I interrupt. I take the blame. I would've done something too, but we were both lazy. Both self-centered. Both dumb. He's not the only one who messed up.

"I just want her to know that I'm so sorry, but it's obviously too late. Do you know what I think? She died thinking I didn't love her. That she deserved better which is true." He shakes his head. "Now I sleep alone, regretting not holding her every night and hating that I didn't replace our arguments with kisses."