Standing alone in a crowded room.

And then, when she’s feeling stronger than ever, when she thinks that maybe this won’t be as bad as she had thought, that’s when she spots him – standing in that long green coat on the other side of the room, just staring at her, like nothing in this world could tear his gaze away. Alex’s breath leaves her in a rush and the world seems to tilt on its axis.

For a moment, she doesn’t have the strength to break eye contact. If she looks away now, she just might shatter. They stand a whole room apart – people and set props between them - but it feels like no distance at all; as though if she truly concentrated, she could feel his warm breath on her cheek.

He looks just as wonderful as she remembers. She had expected their time apart to change something, but God, he’s still everything. In that second, all of those things she has been refusing to think about come trickling through the little crack in the wall of her mind.

Her Matt.

The man she loves so much that love doesn’t even feel like a word adequate enough to express what she feels. The man she pushed away. The man whose voice she hasn’t heard in weeks. The man she wants to run across the set to and throw her arms around – damn the consequences.

Shivering with the sudden and volatile intensity of her longing, Alex hurriedly glances away. She had pushed him away for several reasons, and those reasons are still valid, no matter her collapsing defenses. The eye contact hadn’t lasted for more than a few seconds, but it feels like an eternity has passed. An eternity in which her whole world had been torn away, ripped apart and changed forever.

In the span of those few seconds, the carefully-built wall Alex has constructed around her has crumbled, tumbling like a child’s building blocks around her feet. She feels everything, and so much more acutely now. The rush of it almost leaves her gasping, like she’s surfacing from the water after the current had almost drowned her.

It aches. Everywhere. Down to her very bones.

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

Reading this while listening to Lana Del Rey's Dark Paradise didn't help at all.
Bless you people for giving me such heartache.
You, awful lot.