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HOLDING ONTO MY HEART {LIKE A HAND GRENADE}

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There is a world where it is always Sunday. Where you wake up and have nothing but time and only the dim sense of impending Monday.

(That's every day in the Der Waffle House.)

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She hasn't seen him for a month.

His girlfriend takes up most of his time, and her work takes up most of hers. And while the graph of best-friend-forever time quickly drops to zero, she isn't sweating the difference. Her life is full and her time is hers and if she looks over her shoulder, it isn't as if she's looking for him.

But even with him gone, George can feel the residual hum of his presence, the flicker of his hurt like background radiation.

She isn't worried. She's said worse, afterall. And he loves fiercely and forever, and not for a second does she doubt that he doesn't love her.

(She knows, very well, that it doesn't mean he'll come back).

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He's proven his point, in case anyone was wondering.

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She runs into him quite by accident, a day after Roxy has pinned her with a glare, with the simple message to fix this. Daisy, of course, fills in the blanks and George wants her to stop, wants her to keep going, and thinks maybe she always knew it would end this way.

He's happy. He has someone. (And all she hears is; he never needed her as much as she thought.)

So there he is. Grinning and maniac. Like there wasn't a month between them and more space besides.

He calls to her, her name made sweet, and for a moment she wishes he'd stayed gone. Because she does what she does best, and makes things worse (and doesn't know how to take it all back).

Mason fixes her with a look that breaks the most fragile part of her, like he doesn't know her, never really knew her; as if she hadn't spent all this time showing him her insides.

(And the look on his face, fuck, the look on his face)

She can't watch him walk away.

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(And it was irrational and stupid and too much to ask for, but she bites her lip and thinks again, he could've fought for her)

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It happens like this:

A late reap, an unpaid meter, and a 200 dollar ticket for parking in front of a fire hydrant.

She swears heartily and wants, for just a moment, a life that isn't always this fucking hard.

So really, she shouldn't be so surprised to see Mason.

There's a caution in his eyes. Like the world was too big for him and he's got nobody to cling to. She likes that she can read that in the curve of his shoulder- cause sometimes the world's a little big for her too.

(And really, she doesn't know what she thought, if she wanted, or how to stop.)

Something sticks to the back of her throat-

(she thinks it might be her heart)

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....

The true tragedy of Georgia's life is not that she died young.

(She won't realize this until it's much too late.)

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