I wish to be free, to be you and me.

The sweat-ridden skin of two stuck lightly together as heavy breaths were exchanged, one body lying next to the other, close enough for hips to be touching. The moments before had been so passionate and heated, and these seconds were taken to bask in the feelings of it all, taking in the sensations of pleasure running through both of their muscles. Josh's mind was almost a blur, his thoughts entirely focused on what had just happened, along with the attempts to control his steadily lightening breaths. His eyes drifted from the ceiling to gaze at the woman there beside him, a sort of side-smile spreading over his lips as he couldn't help but lean over once more and press a small kiss to her's before collapsing back down against the mattress.

A smile of her own drifted onto Ari's lips as she began to shift a little beneath the sheets, leaning over so that her cheek rested against his shoulder and her leg hooked over his own, enjoying the gentle sensations against her bare skin as Josh pulled her closer.

"I love it when we get to spend evenings like this.." She kept her words quiet, softly speaking against his neck and let her nose nuzzle against the teen's jawline. The pair had managed to arrange it so that they got to spend the entire evening together, both hoping that the Friday night hours would pass slowly. Josh couldn't help but admit that he enjoyed the time they spent together, too, especially the times when they had more than just an hour or two to themselves. He wasn't sure what it was that had made him grow so attached to Ari but, when they were apart, his mind refused to stop wandering back to her. He could sit there for ages, just thinking about her hair, her smiles, her laugh.. her expression when she attempted to be stern with him in class. They were things that he could just sit and recollect without growing bored, without really wanting to divert away from them.

"Me too." No matter how he felt, though, the male struggled to express all of these feelings that he had bubbling around in the pit of his stomach. He couldn't tell her that he thought about her so much, and he couldn't really tell her that he was growing more attached to her than he had first thought. After all, what they had was, at the start, more of a simple little student-teacher fling. That had been the plan in Josh's mind, at least.. but even after just a few weeks, these plans had changed. However, the teen still couldn't allow himself to grow too comfortable.. just in case.

Before starting the indescribable relationship with Ari, he'd gotten used to having that feeling of rejection stirring about in the back of his mind. It wasn't as if he never managed to charm girls around or anything like that, if anything, it was something he was particularly skilled at. The rejection he experienced was just from one thing, just one time, but it was something that mentally dragged him down more than anything. His ability was something he had grown up with, as with his sickness. But just that one experience of someone freaking out over it in the morning after spending the night with him.. it had stuck with him, and it had been a good few years since he fell asleep in someone else's bed, or allowed someone to witness just how sick he got every single morning after waking up.

And it was something he was dreading to let Ari know about.

Sighing softly, Josh pressed a small kiss to the top of Ari's head before moving himself a little beneath her, causing the woman to lift her head from his chest.

"I should probably get going," he gently said, steadily sitting himself up until his back was straightened up against the headboard, palms rested either side of him. He could tell by her change in expression that she had half been expecting those words to pass his lips, but also that she had been hoping that maybe they wouldn't.

"You know, you don't have to leave so early," the woman said quietly, also now sat up fully as her gaze followed Josh's movements to the other end of the bed, where he began to pick up some of his clothes. "You can always.. stay, if you want." For a few weeks now, she had toyed with the idea that maybe the reason that he always left before they could fall asleep, curled up in each other's arms, was because he wasn't sure if she was okay with it. After all, what they had was risky.. something that he knew she worried about frequently. The consequences of what they had if they were caught were.. well, it'd probably ruin what she had worked so hard for in the past few years. And she guessed that might be part of the reason why he always left.. that, or he just didn't want to fall into that comfortable relationship state with her.

Josh's eyes wandered over to Ari as he pulled up his boxers to his hips, and then began to pull his jeans up over his legs to follow.

"Um.." He hadn't really had to come up with an excuse for leaving before, and his mind struggled to quickly manifest something moderately believable. But then, the small white lie filtered past his lips, "I would, but.. Lend has been, um, struggling with nightmares a bit the past couple of nights. Like, nearly in tears kind of nightmares." A light smile couldn't help but emerge itself across Josh's lips no matter how hard he tried to control it as he spoke and, even though it wasn't true, that boy got scared often enough that it could be.

"I probably shouldn't leave him on his own until he gets over it."

"Oh, okay. Um, don't worry about it. I just thought I should.. let you know." That small smile Ari had sent him just simply made his heart drop in his chest, the obvious uncertainty that glimmered beneath her eyes. He could tell that.. well, maybe she was beginning to think that the only feelings he had for her were feelings of lust, and that was possibly the only reason he persisted in seeing her. Maybe he simply put up with those times when they'd just sit and have a few laughs together because he knew that they would fall into bed at some point or another. Because he always left, he could understand why it could flit through her thoughts.. and he wanted to so badly tell her that that wasn't it at all. Josh truly cared for her, more than he wanted to admit, he'd even bought her a gift to try and show this, but had yet to work up the right courage to give it to her. But, it was because he cared for her that he continued to tear himself away from her each night.

He just couldn't tell her. Not yet.

It was at that moment that an idea formed in Josh's mind, one that quickly brought his lips into a brighter smile than what he'd had before. Placing down his shirt upon the end of the bed, he crawled over to lay back beside Ari, noting the slight change in expression as he settled down.

"I'm sure Lend can wait long enough for you to go to sleep, though." A grin spread to match his own as she leaned up to press a small kiss to his lips before settling down with her back to him beneath the covers, whilst Josh rested beside her, one arm sliding to pull her closer to him. Despite the slight distance the duvet put between them, the comfort was still there, and it didn't take long for slumber to overtake the twenty-one year old.

And that was when he decided to get his present ready.

---

Alarm clocks were possibly one of the worst inventions in the history of anything. That was the thought that drifted through Ariana's mind as her ears picked up on that horrible beeping noise that she had grown so familiar with.Sliding her hand out from beneath the covers, eyes still closed, she attempted to slide the switch on her clock. However, as she felt about where her alarm usually lay, her mind clicked. It was Saturday. Why did she turn her alarm on last night? And it was then that she felt a different sensation beneath her fingertips, a soft velvety casing. Sliding her eyelids open, briefly allowing her eyes to adjust to the sunlight seeping through the curtains, her hazy vision fell upon a long, yet small, blue box on her bedside table. Brows furrowed partially as she stared at it questioningly, not entirely sure what to make of it with her mind still quite dazed from sleep.

Reaching over, she first turned off her alarm which rested just behind, before allowing his fingers to drift to the box, legs sliding out from beneath the covers until she sat entirely upright. Though her gaze was focused upon the case upon her bedside table, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed something else.. two post-it notes had been stuck to her lamp, sat one on top of the other. Tilting her head slightly, Ari reached with her left hand, peeling off the first little note which read, "Go on, open it." in a familiar script. There had been a little arrow drawn in the corner, pointing towards the box. With a curious smile, she tilted the lid open, wondering just what it was that was waiting inside. It was another note, with a small smiley face drawn first. This time it read, 'Look down.' And as she did, Ari couldn't help but notice a slight difference about her neck, a difference that she wasn't that unfamiliar to her. Her gaze fell down to see the end of a thin, silver chain with a pendant hanging down to just above her chest. It was a small heart with a clear stone in the centre, quite simple yet elegant in how it looked.

Ariana's smile broadened as she looked at it, eyes only flicking upwards once she recalled the second post-it note on her lamp. Slipping it off with the tips of her fingers, she skimmed her eyes over the words. 'I hope you like it. I saw it and thought of you.'

Just seconds after reading that note, there was a knock at the door and Ari couldn't help but jump slightly, having been immersed in her happy little world.
"One second!" she shouted, sliding herself fully out of bed and grabbing her dressing gown to wrap around herself. It didn't take too long before she was standing behind the door to her home, fingers going to unlatch the lock to see who it was that had come to visit her quite early in the morning. Her heart soared as those brown eyes of her's fell to look upon Josh's deep blue irises, soaking in that wonderfully cheeky grin of his as he leant against the door frame?

"That wasn't too soppy or anything, was it?" he inquired, his grin not faultering, especially as Ari, instead of replying, simply leant upwards and pressed a delicate kiss to his lips, that usual worry of risks and consequences just melting away.

We are broken.

It had been such a long time since he had felt like this. If his mind recalled, it was nearing one and half years, at least, since that beer bottle rim had touched his lips and drowned out the upset that had been swallowing him whole. And there it was again, attempting raise his mood but only dragging it further through the dirt.. into the vast abyss of his mind which he could no longer delve into to seek some form of solace. Because she was always there. Laughing. Smiling. Watching him with those amazing brown eyes that he had wished so hard to be allowed to forget.

Josh’s fingers held so loosely to the translucent, green bottle to the point where it could oh-so easily fall from his grasp, dropping down to the ground or the water below. His feet hung over the wooden edge of the bridge, bare to the world whilst his school shoes sat at his side like some faithful companion. And he had treated them as such, spending the few hours that he had been sat there talking to them as if they were the only things in the world that would listen. He’d joked about it with them, in fact, mentioning how silly it must have appeared to others were they to see a nineteen year old speaking to his shoes. But he didn’t care. Josh was far beyond caring about what other people thought, except that one person which he doubted held any thoughts of him anyway.

Ari.

She had so many other things to be thinking about now, so why would she need to think about that student of hers that rarely even attended her lessons anymore? The woman was getting married, to a man that he hadn’t heard of before, nor did he particularly care to try to know. Good news travelled fast, it seemed, around the halls of Delacroix. When an engagement ring is spotted, it takes an extreme effort to silence the mouth of the person those knowing eyes belong to. But it seemed that no such effort was made, and so the silence never came. Instead it was taken over by chattering, gossiping and quick assumptions that Josh’s ears couldn’t help but overhear.

He thought that the feelings had gone away. He had thought that he wouldn’t get that heart-wrenching feeling whenever he saw her. He had thought that he wouldn’t feel that sinking sensation when he found out the extent she had moved on. Of course she had to have moved on since that February the year before. Ari may have cared for him, but that wasn’t enough for anything to have been formed permanently in her heart. Why should it have been? Everything about what they had had was wrong, against the rules, against the accepted ideas of those around them. So, why should that mean that the norm followed after that? Their passionate moments were ones that they were supposed to forget, to hide beneath a rug and to never be uncovered again. From appearance, she had done just that, trampling over that rug from the moment she agreed for those new, [i]right[/i] feelings to remain forever in her life.

A gentle sigh floated through his nostrils as those strong-blue eyes of his stared down at the quite strong current of the river below, watching it as the water steadily streamed beneath the bridge and out of sight. It usually held such a calming effect of him, but now it just awoke that more of a frustrated feeling in the pit of his stomach and he hated it. What he was frustrated with, he really couldn’t put his finger on. The fact that he had just needed to be one year older and he’d have been able to be with her truly without it needing to be a secret, or maybe it was that she had been able to move on properly to the point where she was getting engaged. He let his fingers hold against the bottle a little tighter as he thought more, his mind delving deeper into the ideas and imaginings that just didn’t want to leave him alone.

How much has she moved on? Really? Had they kissed? Well, of course, they had to have.. They were to be married and it was hard to believe that any man could resist kissing her until they were wed locked. Had they slept together? It was one of those horrible thoughts that Josh could never really get over, one of the ones that he thought he could get rid of but always came floating back into his mind at various points during the day. Each time it seemed so much more of an infuriating image, something that made the male's teeth clench each time he thought about it too deeply. But he couldn't be angry, not really. He'd had sex with other women since the end of their 'relationship', he'd even had a friend that had a more beneficial status.. he still did. But, it was always there, nagging him that he would so much rather that the girl he was with was someone else entirely. And no matter how much he thought about it, the girl was always the same when he opened his eyes again, vision hazy from the usual alcohol in his system.

The male’s fingers stroked softly over the neck of the bottle he was holding so loosely over the side of the small bridge, his body almost contemplating letting it just fall down into the slow flowing water. Maybe if he just let that go, he could let her go. She wanted to fall away from him, so why should he stop her? Not that he probably could stop her.. as said, she had moved on, didn’t want to be an aspect in his life anymore. It wasn’t as if he had asked her, but it was just something that had settled into his mind, something he had been drawn to realise somehow. Maybe it was because he had tried to pull away from her first.. he rarely turned up for her classes anymore, and when he did he barely took notice. She’d tried to ask him to stay behind once or twice, but had always escaped through the mass of pupils before she could even stop him. Josh was always the first out of her classroom - some kind of childish way of dealing with his mind’s problems. It was all because he couldn’t handle seeing her, let alone being on his own with her. Ari had represented something to him that he hadn’t properly felt before and hadn’t allowed himself to feel. That was the reason that he couldn’t stand the thought of her being with someone else and feeling that for him, and that was why he had to try and let her go.

Josh’s mind slowly churned these thoughts behind his vacant eyes, staring out at the water and realising that there was really nothing he could do. It was done. She was getting married and he was just some student that she had fun with to pass the time. That’s what he had to believe, to soak up so he could return to being that guy that went out with Brendon and had a laugh, always having to sneak out of someone else’s room to get back to his own. He needed to be like that again, to be the Josh that didn’t know about the engagement, the Josh that hadn’t had feelings for his Spanish teacher.

As he contemplated this idea, his ears vaguely picked up the gentle sound of shoes against the wooden planks of the bridge, a light rhythmic sound that slowed the nearer it got. The male didn’t look up to see who it was, he didn’t really care. But he knew who it was when they started to settle down next to him, sitting close with her leg touching against his. Felicity, one of the few girls that was really that close to him, one of his best friends. She was probably the one that gave him the most comfort, even if she didn’t realise it, because she understood how he was feeling from first hand experience. The pair of them were frequently there for each other, on the days that they felt that they couldn’t get by and the lonely nights when they just needed someone to be there with them. It was their relationship, their little thing that just helped them get by.

Words weren't really needed as the older teen rested his head down against her shoulder, her cheek leaning into his hair. She understood how he felt - that horrible sinking feeling at the knowledge that the one you love is with someone else other than you, and that desire to just be able to let go.. but it was impossible for the both of them. But they would struggle on, taking each painful step one at a time. She glanced over to the empty bottles that sat to the other side of Josh, and then the one that he held so loosely in his hand.

"It'll be okay, Josh.." her words were quiet and soft, reassuring. She wanted him to know that everything would work out in the end, even if she wasn't entirely certain for herself. "Things'll work out, I'm su-"

"But, they won't, will they?" came his even quieter, weaker response. He hated how particularly pathetic he sounded but, at that moment, he couldn't care less about that. He knew that he didn't sound at all manly, and that how he reacted to the new of Ari's engagement was borderline childish, but.. he just didn't care and wouldn't care until the moments had passed.

Josh paused for a moment, swallowing some of the upset as he continued to speak.

"She's getting married to some.. guy that's probably a million times better than me, and she's probably pretty much forgotten about me and any feelings she might have had. There's.. there is no chance that she gives a shit about how I feel about her any more."

"You never kn-"

"No, I do. I do," his voice grew louder this time, sounding almost stronger as he lifted his head up away from her, standing up from where he had been seated quite comfortably with his beer still held between his fingers. "I should've expected that something like this was going happen sooner or later, and I shouldn't still be so hooked on her. I was just some risky fling and that's it." His fingers tightened against the neck of the bottle he held, knuckles turning white as a desperate smile spread onto his lips, a sighed chuckle escaping him.

"I just can't get her out of my head.. I can't," as he finished those words, his arm raised and flung the bottle as far down the river as he could. Hearing the splash as it hit the water, he sunk back down to the ground, fingers rubbing against his temple. "She just.."

Felicity shuffled herself to sit next to him, one arm going to wrap around his shoulders, trying hard to comfort her obviously hurting friend, a sympathetic look planted across her features. Josh closed his eyes and let her pull him slightly closer, taking the smallest bit of comfort before allowing his eyelids to once more open, revealing those brilliant blue, cursed irises of his. But the sight that hit him seemed to have more impact than it would most, as he watched the green, near-empty bottle of beer float back down to the bridge, bobbing up and down as it drew closer and closer.

"She keeps coming back.."