Everything in life seems so simple, and then you realize how limited your time really is.

He sat on that hill just like any other day, his blonde hair blowing gently about his face, dancing patterns into the air like a ballerina as he ran his fingers through the emerald grass beneath him. Every little thing in life held beauty to him. Every blade of grass was a miracle, every cloud and bud and leaf a gift. However, the greatest gift of all lay beside him.

She wasn't a stunning girl, wasn't perfect in any way, but to him, she was the most amazing thing to ever grace his life. Her ivory skin was mottled with scars, little lines of porcelain, beautiful imperfections. But to him every little freckle was a memory, every scar a friend.

They were best friends, the lesbian and the confused boy.

They spent hours upon hours together, day after day, night after night. Every day she would wake up, get ready and find a way for them to be together, even if that meant spending all of her weed money, even if that meant no dinner tomorrow.

Every morning he would wake up, his dreams of her still reminiscent in his weary mind. He always dreamt of her, with her hazel eyes and long, dark hair. His dreams were painted portraits of his desired future, them happy together, married, enjoying life. His nightmares: a detailed account of all of his worst fears.

Fears such as her death, her never returning his love. Fears that gnawed at his conscious mind to an unhealthy degree. Things that he should have overcome a long time ago, but apparently never had and never will.

And now, on the same hill they had shared so many memories, she lay beside him just as any other day in her old blue jeans and tee shirt, and she was beautiful. Her eyes closed, long dark eyelashes pressed shut behind half-frames of glass. His eyes wandered along her, examining every flaw and yet never thinking of them as such.

Then she opened one eye.

"Luke," she said simply, and he cocked an eyebrow to indicate he was listening, "You're an ugly motherfucker." She said with a smile, giggling as he punched her in the arm.

Her smile was like all the beautiful things in life condensed into one simple curve, one beautiful mark in a world of ugly.

But she sat up, moving over so she was beside him, and he put his arm about her shoulders. She looked up at him, into his blue eyes and said gently to him, with their foreheads pressed together, noses side-by-side, lips so near to touching, "I love you, Lucas." and the smile that erupted on his face could contend with any to ever grace the planet. He was the happiest boy in the world, if only for a second.

How badly he wanted to lean in, wanted to kiss those soft pale lips he had touched with his own on only such a rare occassion, but he was terrified. Scared of being pushed away. Scared of being told he wasn't loved 'like that'. He was horrified.

But then her pale fingers reached up, brushed a peice of hair away from his eyes and she smiled, their faces still close, still embracing each other gently, and he did it.

In the simplest of movements, he gently kissed her lips and she did not close her eyes, she merely looked away, silent.

"I... I'm sorry," Lucas began, but her hazel eyes turned up to meet his.

"Why would you say you were sorry? You aren't. You don't need to be. Now hush, ugly bitch, and tell me you love me." And Lucas smiled gently, turned away so he wasn't looking at her: his love, his life, his universe.

"Mary, you know I love you. Why do you ask me to tell you?" he began, confused as he turned to look at her, but her eyes were preoccupied.

In the sunset above her eyes were fixed, the clouds intermingled beautifully and he contemplated that it was probably damn near impossible to look away. She didn't move, didn't smile. It didn't even seem she was breathing, but then her lips set into motion.

"I ask you to tell me you love me because I don't think any body else who has ever told me that truly meant it... but you do. I think it's safe to say that you're the first person who thought of me as their true love, and I'm flattered and honored, but you leave me in quite a position. I love you, Lucas, but I don't want to be with you. You know I don't like boys, it's just a simple fact of my life that I can't help or alter even if I wanted to..."

And he looked away from her, a frown on his face, tears welling in his eyes. He choked them back, not wanting to look weak in front of her: the strongest girl he'd ever met. He took a moment to regain his strength, and then turned his blonde head to her again, and this time found that she was looking back into his eyes with the gentle acceptance that no matter what was said here, nothing would change.

"Mary... I love you. I love you with all of my being, and I know for a fact I've never loved anybody as much as I love you now."

And she smiled. Beautiful as always, he contemplated, his eyes glancing from her smiling lips to her happy eyes.

"You know, Lucas, I love you too. I wish I could make you happy, but I can't bring myself to be with you." She said, her fingers splitting blades of grass as she stared forward, immune to the world.

And he looked at her, and with all his hopes doused, if only for a moment, he whispered gently to her, "I know..."

He could never tell what she was thinking. Her mind was so complex, so stunningly vast that he never had so much as a hope to decifer what was going on beneath, and the same was true for this moment.

The difference was that she upturned her chin to look into his haunting blue eyes, and she whispered gently in a best-friends-only voice, "I'm sorry, Lucas. If I could bring myself to want you back, I would." And his voice shook in his throat, tears in his eyes as he managed to whisper back, "I know."

And she kissed him.

It was like he could see the light at the end of the tunnel. It was the perfect escape from reality, the perfect delusion to get him to sleep that night. The hope.

And he began to contemplate himself in a third person point of view. He would always be hoping, always wishing, always wanting, he'll always wait for her.

Meanwhile, she'll move on with her life and meet somebody and fall in love. He, however, is quite incapable of loving anyone else because he gave too much of his heart up to hoping and wishing and wanting for her.

She never realized how much she truly loved and needed him until that seemingly ordinary day rolled around when she lost him.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. It was a number she did not know. On the other line was a boy she hated very, very much. She was about to hang up, when suddenly the boy said to her, "Mary... Lucas overdosed on heroin. He's dead."

The reality hit her like a brick wall.

He was gone. Her confidant, her side-kick, her punching-bag, her psychiatrist, her lover, her best friend.

She blinked quietly, unable to accept the reality for a moment, and then she opened up her text messages, as she noticed she had an unread one.

It was from Lucas, sent at 4 that morning, apparently only an hour before he overdosed.

"Goodnight, Mary. I'm not sure if you're still up, but I love you with all of my heart. Sweet dreams, angel. (:"

And the tears flowed freely from her hazel eyes, falling onto her sheets and pillows. The reality hit her with all of the intensity of the universe's wrath and with all of the pain the world had to offer. He would never again hear her say she loved him. The boy who had waited an eternity for something as simple as a chance. Something as miniscule as her overlooking her strictly-female desires to give into the boy's hopes, to give him the opportunity to love her despite her sexuality.

How he had loved her.

She never really noticed how much he loved her, how much she had never given back to him. He died having not heard that she loved him. She closed her palms agaist her cheeks, sobbing into her closed hands like somehow crying could fix it all.

He would never tell her he loved her again.

Two years later, somehow she had managed to clean up some and was no longer on the harder drugs that had taken her only love's life. She hadn't dated anybody since he died: hadn't so much as even wanted to.

His grave was in that cemetary on the hill where they had once laid side-by-side, watching the sunset. The place where she had kissed his lips and his smile had lit up the dimming night like a beacon in the blackness, very much like his love: a beacon in her empty life.

She sat on his grave, a lit joint in her hand, the smoke wafting about them, the boy beneath the grass and the girl wishing she could join him. She took the last hit and put it out, satisfied with her high as she stretched out atop him.

"Lucas, if you can hear me out there, I hope your listening, because I'm finally ready to tell you something I should have told you a long time ago." she began, her long brown hair outstretched amongst the blades of grass that they had whistled with together. Her empty fingers wishing his were there to fill them.

"I was stupid for never giving you a chance to love me. I might not be attracted to you, but you loved me unconditionally. You loved my flaws, my scars and mental imperfections and stubborn personality. You held my hand just because, you never forced your love on me, and let me have my space. You brushed away my tears when I lost the strength to not cry. You held my hand while I slept so I could dream sweetly with you by my side. I'm not sure where you are now, Lucas, but we're both suffering without eachother. This must be the true meaning of 'soul mates'. Somebody who without the other, is incomplete. We were born two halves of a whole, Lucas. You and I were meant to be together, and I never saw that until after you were gone. I regret not telling you I loved you that night, Lucas. How much I wish you were still here, I couldn't even tell you. I'll never be complete without you." And she opened her hazel eyes, filled with tears that had begun to spill out of their corners. She was wearing her old, dirty jeans and stained tee shirt. The one she wore the day they had kissed on this very same hill. The one she wore the day before he died.

"Lucas... I certainly hope we were wrong about the whole heaven and hell not existing thing, because if you're there, I'll be with you soon."

She reached into her pocket, pulled out the twin bottles of codeine and proceeded to take both bottles of 50 pills, ten at a time. She choked, barely able to swallow them even with the swigs of water from her bottle. When she was done, she lay back against the grass, her only love quiet beneath her as he had been for two years now, and with the last of her strength, she opened her eyes and stared out at the sunset, which was fading as quickly as she was.

And as she died, her hazel eyes falling shut so she could finally be together with him again, it was his favorite shirt that she clung to. It had been sealed away for years and still smelled of him. She pressed it to her nose, dying against the scent of her best friend, her confidant, her lover and her soul mate.

They say you never appreciate how much you love somebody until they are gone.

What do I have to do to make you understand this? To make you understand that the love we have is so much stronger than simple best-friendship could ever hold. Maybe you'll never get it until I'm gone. Maybe I'll have to wait until death do us part for you to see that we are soul mates if there ever were any.

I hope I don't have to wait that long, Tony, but if need be, I'll wait until the end of time.

Who's to say time matters, anyway? Especially when the love we share will stretch on throughout all measures of eternity.

Hello, muse. Your name is Tony Schultz.

You are my best friend. You are my source of inspiration, the fire in my eyes. Every performance that I give, you are the smile on my lips, the romance in my eyes, the clarity in my perception.

You are the only person I can trust at times, and yet there are things with which I'm afraid to trust you.

So let me tell you, my best friend, my muse. You're a killer. A murderer. You like to taunt me relentlessly, hold me close by daylight and hold my hand while we sleep side-by-side, and I'm not sure why. You, who has no romantic feelings towards me, seems to love me so much.

I'm so lucky to have you, but I'm so selfish. I always crave more.

You, there.

You, the boy with the hopelessly lost hazel eyes, the boy who stands on the outskirts of the crowd, watching, waiting, observing.

I see you, boy.

You think nobody is watching, but I'm watching right through you.

In every one of your flaws I see strength. In ever scar I see courage. Courage that I never had. Strength that I'll always envy.

You are the fire beneath my feet. The passion in my eyes. You are the something that keeps me moving.

You are who I think of as I close my eyes at night

-----------------------------------------------------

I only write about you.

For months now, everything I've written has had a common theme, and I'm sure you can guess it. It's pathetic, how I sit here now at three in the morning, exhausted from practice only a few hours ago, but restless because my brain is writhing, wanting to let something out some how.

I talk about you so much because I'm afraid to talk about you to other people.

You are the only person I trust my secrets with, but when the secret's about you, I have nobody to turn to. So instead of making things awkward, instead of being stupid, I let the feelings roll over and over in my head until they ball up into a size that's good enough to spew onto paper or, at least, virtual paper, and then I simply let it go.

I hate myself for every day I spend thinking about you. Every single night for months now, I've laid in my bed in the pitch-black darkness with only the quiet hum of my laptop's fan to keep me company as my mind concocted sick, torturous dreams.

It really is torture, when you think about it. How my brain creates these happy little dreams where I'll be laying in your bed, my face against your chest, your chin on my head. You would close your eyes, and I would close mine, and we would forget about anything that mattered.

I have horrible dreams about you, kid.

Dreams that I shouldn't be having about my best friend. Dreams in which I'm happy to tears, holding hands with you, us simply being the happiest people in the world. We would dance together, in perfect, uncorrupted unison.

 I will never forget the feel of your lips against mine, so wrong and so disgraceful in your eyes. I still lay in bed some nights with my face pressed into the familiar smell of my pillow, with my eyes closed tightly, eyelashes curled between my skin and the fabric, and tears would break free of my eye's stranglehold as I thought of it. The pure bliss of it, how you break my heart with how much you love me, and yet how blind you are to loving me.

You aren't interested. We're incompatible. It kills me.

I'm not good enough. I'm not a boy. It all goes back to that, as it always has and always will. I'm not a boy. If I were a boy, things would have worked out with Justin. If I were a boy, things would have worked out with Colleen. If I were a boy, Tony would hold my hand and kiss my lips and we would be the happiest couple in the world.

Even as a girl, we would be the happiest couple in the world if he would let me.

However, as it always seems to be in my relationships, his preferences get the in the way. I'm incapable of making him love me, because his brain isn't wired to even consider me a possibility. I wish I could change that, because if I could, I would. I would fix it with kisses, I would run your homosexuality away with my fingers on your cheekbones, your jawline. With the hauntingly familiar memory of every kiss you've teased me with. With every moment we've spent holding hands, hugging, sleeping together, loving each other, simply being together.

I've always called you a cock tease, but you should know how much more you are to me.

Because I can't sleep, and I'm laying here in my bed with my laptop open, contemplating how soon I'll be able to lay down and think about you, because you're all that's on my head.

You: my best friend.

Why does life have to be so cruel? Love can never be as simple as boy meets girl, they fall in love with each other and die together. Not when the boy doesn't love the girl back. Not when the boy is only interested in other boys. Not when boy and girl are best friend and closer than is probably healthy. Not when the girl loves the boy with a passion so sickeningly intense that it leads her to tears at night.

Not when I was born a girl.

If I could change this all, I would. Anything to kiss you even once more. Goodnight, my public diary.

(( And it's true, love. I need you more than you could ever know. ))