My aching heart... Sincerely, Juliet...

"Please don't go...." she whispered into her cell phone. Cramped in what little space there was in the closet, Juliet did her best not to raise her voice as she pleaded into the receiver.

It was approximately two in the morning and she had spent the last hour and a half crying silently. She had been able to sleep for maybe three hours before that, but then she was suddenly awake again, trembling in her warm bed. She'd had a dream about...about... something.... Something that frightened her even more than what she was dealing with right now.

"I'm sorry, Juli. It's just not going to work for us," the voice on the other end of the phone was meant to soothe, but it only made Juliet panic more. She squeezed her eyes shut and covered her mouth with her free hand. This couldn't be happening. Not now. Things had just started to look up for her.

"Why?" she whimpered for the dozenth time. She kept asking the same question for two reasons. One: so she could hear his voice again... Two: because she still didn't understand what was happening between them...or what wasn't happening between them...

He sighed over the phone and she could almost hear him pinching the bridge of his nose. She cringed at the thought of him being annoyed with her. "I'm sorry," he said again. It was all he said to her these days.

Juliet let her head fall back and hit the wall. Her cheek brushed the fake fur on one of the hanging coats. She wanted to nuzzle the sleeve, but didn't because she was beginning to learn that if you snuggle something that shows no emotion, then it won't snuggle back. Seemed like a given, she knew, but everyone deludes themselves at times.

There was silence on the other side of the phone. Juliet knew it was her turn to say something, but she was focusing all her energy on not sobbing while he was on the other end. Another five minutes went by, and then he yawned. He actually yawned in her ear.

"Juli, I have to go. I have work in seven hours...I'm sorry," he repeated, but none of it sounded sincere. She knew what was coming next and she felt like she was about to choke. Juliet struggled to stand up and had to cling to the coat rack for support. Her mouth was opening and closing as she tried again and again to say something, but as usual, nothing happened...except this...

He was quiet for several seconds, seeming to wait for her to say something, but when nothing happened, he sighed and whispered, "Goodbye." The line went dead and Juliet was left standing alone in the dark, both hands pressing the phone to her ear. Her mouth slack, she didn't realize tears were yet again streaming down her cheeks until she tasted salt on the tip of her tongue. She blinked for the first time in what seemed like hours, though it was only minutes, and that's when she lost all control.

She let the phone drop out of her hand and followed right behind it, ending up laying on the floor with her entire body shaking as she expressed all the grief she had been harnessing for this exact moment, though she didn't know it until now. He was gone. It had happened; the one thing she was too blind to see coming...

They would come for her any minute. Her mother was a light sleeper, hence the reason Juliet had been hiding out in the hall closet. But now that she was whimpering without control, there was no hope for her sneaky escape, not that she was really going to escape in the first place. She'd never planned that far ahead. He had stopped any thoughts she'd had that were headed in that direction. How did he do that to her?

Juliet closed her eyes and rolled onto her back. She covered her face with her hands in an attempt to block out reality, but it didn't work. Go figure. She had nothing to do now, but wait.

The heart break of my dearest Juliet...

He fell silent as he lay on his bed with his phone to his ear. He wasn't really tired, but he made his voice take on the characteristic of exhaustion as he talked to her. He guessed he could just say "I don't wanna talk about this anymore. Good night,"....but then she would've felt worse....and so would he.

The whole idea was to break it off with her...make her believe everything he said. Knowing how she felt about him, it shouldn't've been too hard, and it wasn't. He could hear her strangled breathing on the other end of the phone, and as much as he wanted to take it all back and comfort her, he forced himself not to; it wasn't part of the plan.

She's too quiet... he thought. But then again, she always does this. It's like tradition for...us... he closed his eyes at that last word. Us. It'd meant so much at one time. Now, it was like a curse; a reminder of what he'd had just...and was about to lose. Damn it! This wasn't his fault; his parents were to blame.

How long had it been? He'd lost track of time, but it couldn't have been more than ten minutes. When he glanced over at his clock and read 2:13 am, he squeezed his eyes shut and hesitated before saying, "Juli, I have to go. I have work in seven hours...I'm sorry." And then he hung up as fast as he could. Ick. I hate calling her Juli... It feels so wrong... he complained to himself. Juliet had always been what he'd called her whenever they were together. Everyone else called her Juli, but he and she were more intimate than that. Calling her by her real name made him feel a sense of ownership somehow....

For half an hour, he lay there staring up at the shadows on his ceiling. How interesting they were... At one moment, they took on the shape of a weeping willow floating through spaghetti...and then everything was just a blur of lines. Was he hallucintating from stress? Nah. Not him. It wasn't physically possible.

He flinched when his clock beeped three times fast, signaling the hour of three in the morning. Work was going to be hell, he was sure. He sat up slowly and pulled himself out of bed with a grunt. After staggering to his door and down the hallway, he was able to make it into the kitchen. The bread box was still open from when his mother had taken her meds. Good thing Lucy didn't get ahold of anything.

He felt around for the smallest bottle and finally got the cap off after the sixth try. He popped the sleeping pill in his mouth, put the bottle back, and shuffled back towards his room. That should do the trick, he thought as he closed his door a little too loudly and rolled on top of his covers.

He fell asleep in precisely thirteen minutes and forty-seven seconds, but just before he lost all consciousness, he imagined Juliet in his arms one last time.