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Someone’s knocking on the door at an obnoxiously fast pace. It rings in your ears as your eyelids crack open. You twist in your sheets to check the time on your phone.
4:03 am.
Your eyebrows knit together in annoyance as you stuff your face in a pillow, deciding to ignore the knocking.
A couple of minutes go by.
It doesn’t stop.
Sitting up in your bed, you try to rub the sleep out of your eyes as you stumble out of your sheets and shuffle towards the door.
Sleep and tiredness still lingered in thoughts as you looked into the peephole.
A sharp breath of air enters your lungs, you’re wide awake now.
A familiar ache began to return to your chest and you’re unsure if your heart’s heavy with dread or hope. You stare at the closed door in front of you, the knocking has stopped but you didn’t need to check to know that he was still there.
With shaky hands, you reach for the door handle and slowly turn it open. The harsh glow emitting from the white lights in the lobby made you wince as your vision readjusted itself.
He’s standing before you, taller, more defined and skin tanner than you remembered.
You gulp thickly, unsure of what to say or do in this situation. It’s been a little bit over a year since iwaizumi left you for California, leaving you to pick up the remnants of your broken heart, alone. You can’t exactly trace back to when his love for you began to lag behind his love for volleyball.
Nevertheless, you had supported him. Excusing missed dinner after dinner, excusing the lack of ‘i love yous’ and goodnight kisses and excusing the empty space in your bed. You had supported him until you simply couldn’t anymore. The night you had finally announced your grievances was the night he announced that he would be leaving for California and the night he walked out of your door with a tear-stained face.
One year later and here he is again, fists clenched to his sides and chest tight as if he’s holding his breath. You open your mouth to say something but he beats you to it.
“It wasn’t worth it,”
You blink and a couple of beats pass in silence so he continues as if to fill in the blanks.
“California,” he pauses, “it wasn’t worth it,”
Your eyebrows knit together as a result of multiple emotions, primarily anger and confusion.
“What?” it comes out on edge and he winces slightly.
He visibly takes in a deep breath and there’s a slight tremble in his lower lip, “California wasn’t worth leaving you,”
There’s a pause, “volleyball wasn’t worth leaving you.”
Your eyes blow wide and a lump begins to build its way up your throat. The feeling of an old wound reopening consumes you.
You want to ask why but your voice fails you.
You want to ask so many questions but your voice fails you.
Your breathing stutters, he notices as you grit your teeth. You shift your gaze from the floor to him and he visibly swallows.
The look you give him is a pained one. A mix of anger and hurt.
“Why now?” you pause, “why after all this time?”
He doesn’t answer your question though, “I never stopped loving you,”
Your heart drops to your stomach at the time wasted wallowing in heartbreak, at the time wasted sobbing in your bed and at the time wasted missing him.
You bury the face in your hands, “stop,” you whisper and it makes his heart twist horribly in his chest.
He tentatively reaches for the hands hiding your face and gently moves them away.
You let him.
His eyes are glassy when you look at him and that’s when you notice the backpack resting by his feet. He answers your question for you.
“I came here straight from the airport,” he whispers sheepishly.
You blink, “why did you come back?”
Your heartbeat accelerates as the words leave your tongue and as he responds, he looks at ease as if a weight was released off of his shoulders.
“For you,”
Your eyes begin to turn glassy as you nibble at your lower lip, a part of you wants to tell him to get out, to go back to California and spare you the heartache but the wiser part of you knows that deep down that isn’t what you want.
His eyes are soft as he looks at you. Glassy, tired but soft and there’s a familiar glint in his eye.
A glint that meant taking you to brunch and feathering you with kisses, a glint you never thought you’d see again. A glint that meant ‘i love you’.
So you decide to take a leap of faith and move a step closer and so does he.
It’s 4 am in the morning, the sun isn’t out yet and your neighbours are asleep. You have work in a couple of hours and you’re in a crinkled shirt that plops over your entire figure. You’re sure you look like a disaster, hair all over the place but iwaizumi doesn’t seem to care as you pull him in by the collar of his shirt, pressing his lips against yours.
“I never stopped loving you either.”
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