She can already see it happening, five years from now.

She will wake up at quarter past three in the morning when he finally gets home and collapses into bed, reeking of alcohol and smoke and a myriad of other smells that she does not even want to know where he got from. She will irately more than worriedly ask where he had been but will stop before she even gets the third word out because she knows that it’s useless anyway, while he will try to mutter an answer that not even an Icelandic translator will be able to understand.

She will try to tell herself again that men are just so – they drink and get drunk and do many stupid things, screw her teenage dreams of a prince who adheres to Straight Edge. He will say something about fixing things in the morning before completely passing out, and she won’t know whether she feels more furious about his eternal childishness or sorry for herself that she is in this situation. The absence of that golden band in her fourth finger will just mockingly remind her that it’s all her fault anyway because she answered no to the wrong person, yes to the wrong question and she threw away the wrong ring.

She will try to go back to sleep and ignore everything to oblivion, but she won’t be able to because she knows that no matter what he says, things never get better in the morning anyway. She will think about all the friends she can run to at three in the morning just so she doesn’t feel so alone and frustrated, but she will be too proud to want their pity. And because she won’t know what else to do, she will grab the phone and dial his brother’s number even though she knows that she shouldn’t really be doing this again.

His brother will bolt awake when he hears her on the phone and he will know that things have gone wrong again. But with a piercing feeling in his chest he will slowly tell her that no, he cannot come over and make things fine because he can’t be that anymore. His brother will curse when he hears that distinct beep of an ended call, asking why it always has to end up like this, with him having to choose between her and his brother, and him always having to choose the later because brotherhood is much more than the same blood running in two men’s veins.

She will throw the phone away in even greater frustration and hate herself for not even knowing how her life became like this. She would not know where to go but she knows that she just can’t be there on that same bed, that same room, that same house as the drunken mess whose last name she now uses. So at three thirty in the morning she will take her keys and drive away somewhere, anywhere, anyfuckingwhere - just not there.

And when his brother finally finds her parked in a random street somewhere the next morning, they will look at each other and neither of them will know what to say.

She can already see it happening, five years from now.

So when he asks her if she wants to go see a movie this weekend, she tells him that she can’t.

For now.