what you can't have (b.e.)

i know the end (part one)

inspo: i know the end, phoebe bridgers

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Somewhere in Germany, but I can't place it, man I hate this part of Texas, close my eyes , fantasize, three clicks and I'm home...

Billie's POV:

I've been thinking about what it means to be home. It's something familiar, something that feels safe inside of it, which is why the place you live doesn't always mean home. And I'm just trying to think, when and where was the last place I felt something more than just familiar, but safe. I don't feel safe with Mila anymore. I don't trust her, and I don't think I ever did. Maybe I said I did, but then I didn't know that I didn't mean it.

Or maybe I do trust her, but not the way I trust my parents or my brother. I trust their actions and their motives, trust that they're rooted in love. But what I know that I wish I didn't, is that Mila is selfish. And I don't think that's her fault, because in order for her to survive all of her life, she had to be selfish, or she wouldn't have made it. It doesn't change the fact that when it comes down to it, it will always be her doing what she wants, and me trying to accommodate whatever that is into my life. If there's a compromise that needs to be made, I am the one that makes it. Sometimes it works out, because if I'm the thing she wants, she would do anything. But in the moments when she wants something more, I'm cast aside into nothingness. I don't know how to be with someone that changes what she wants out of the world every week. And for so long, I thought it would be okay, because I'm in a position where I could give her almost everything, but I give, and she takes away.

Relationships almost never last forever because we've trained ourselves to believe that we have a soulmate, someone that we were destined to meet that would fulfill all our needs. And you can live in that state of pretending your person is everything you've ever needed, because, yes, love is blind. But, I've been thinking, what if love comes in phases? We grow at different rates, and this one person might make you happy for years, but that doesn't mean you're meant to last forever. It could mean, you're meant to last for that phase of your life, but eventually you outgrow each other, and what if that's how love's really meant to be?

My trust has become, do anything you want to me, as long as you don't leave, I will take it. But I don't even have that with Mila, I don't even know that she won't leave.

When I leave everyone I know for a while, that trust builds up like water in a reservoir. I know I can be alive on my own, I start to fall in love with myself and all my sprung leaks. When another comes along and tapes over those leaks, I start to believe that being alone makes me lonely, and that I need this one person more than I've ever needed anyone before. When they go, they rip off the tape like band-aids, the leaks run once again, and I'm fooled into thinking they were keeping me together. I forget that I need to leak, I need to leave a trail of water wherever I walk. I forget how it felt to be that little girl in the backseat of the car, watching water droplets race down the window, how complete I felt when two of them became one.

I drive closer to the house, and look at Mila, resting her head against the window. I slow down, ready to pull into the driveway, but it doesn't feel like home. It's just a house. I speed up, and drive past.

"What's wrong, Billie?"

I don't know what isn't wrong.

"Everything."

When I get back I'll lay around, then I'll get up and lay back down, romanticize a quiet life, there's no place like my room...

Mila's POV:

"Everything," she whispers.

I don't speak, I just let her drive.

I've been thinking, about all the chaos leaking like water from the ceiling. If there was just one thing I could do, one move I could make that would plug that leak. I would do it. She's all I want, all I have. I know she's scared, and I am too, but if I could do this thing, she could trust me.