It isn't easier. Not now, when she's felt like a burden to so many, a disappointment to others, selfish and cowardly to herself.
There are so many people who love you. It's all she can do to keep from flinching at that, at her own immediate thought of: but not you. It's unfair, thinking like that, making so little of the love her friends give her, and making so much of what she can't have.
"It's hard. Accepting help," she admits, her grip on Derrica's hands loosening, but not retreating. Instead, she mirrors the way Derrica had traced the lines on her palm before, aimlessly and with less scrutiny. Athessa doesn't know how to read palms at all. What she sees instead is the signs of a life lived; calluses built up from wielding a staff or manning the rigging on a ship. How their hands fit together, which of them has longer fingers, whose hands are colder or warmer. Where she once kissed her wrist when Derrica pressed that palm to Athessa's cheek.
Why did she have to ruin everything by falling in love?
"Back at the bar, you said it felt like we were afraid to know each other." It should be the preamble to asking if that's still true, but she's stuck on how to phrase it. Are you afraid to know me isn't what she wants to ask. Are you afraid of letting me know you sounds too accusatory. Are you afraid to be known?
Surely Derrica can guess what the question is, and choose her own wording of it.
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There are so many people who love you. It's all she can do to keep from flinching at that, at her own immediate thought of: but not you. It's unfair, thinking like that, making so little of the love her friends give her, and making so much of what she can't have.
"It's hard. Accepting help," she admits, her grip on Derrica's hands loosening, but not retreating. Instead, she mirrors the way Derrica had traced the lines on her palm before, aimlessly and with less scrutiny. Athessa doesn't know how to read palms at all. What she sees instead is the signs of a life lived; calluses built up from wielding a staff or manning the rigging on a ship. How their hands fit together, which of them has longer fingers, whose hands are colder or warmer. Where she once kissed her wrist when Derrica pressed that palm to Athessa's cheek.
Why did she have to ruin everything by falling in love?
"Back at the bar, you said it felt like we were afraid to know each other." It should be the preamble to asking if that's still true, but she's stuck on how to phrase it. Are you afraid to know me isn't what she wants to ask. Are you afraid of letting me know you sounds too accusatory. Are you afraid to be known?
Surely Derrica can guess what the question is, and choose her own wording of it.