Oh my god Jeffery

"I...what is... how has... what... what the hell is going on!?"

I'm looking up at him, still covered in blood, but with no wounds to match. What can I even say? It's not something I can just explain as if he'll go "Oh ok, makes sense." This is, well, kind of serious. I pause for a moment, and without choosing my words too carefully say,

"Yeah... this looks pretty weird aye?" followed by an ever so (not really at all) subtle chuckle.

He laughs nervously, clearly struggling to meet my eye with his,

"Mmm a bit, yeah." He steadies his breath and manages to hold eye contact for just long enough to say "Did I black out or something while you were explaining? Or have you just not got around to that part yet?"

"I'm sorry."

Just 'I'm sorry'??? Nothing else? This is so much harder than I ever thought it would be. Usually if it gets to this point I just leave before they get a chance to realise they didn't imagine it. But his face, his big, stupid face and all that stupid, beautiful hair. This big, stupid idiot makes it so hard to just walk away. I just want to tell him everything. But like I said, this is kind of serious.

"Just, give me a minute to think ok? I just need a minute."

He's pulling that face he always pulls when he absolutely does not want to give me a minute, but eventually he agrees "You have one minute."

I crack my knuckles when I'm nervous, sometimes I don't even realise I've done it until I try to crack them again and it doesn't work. Which normally leads to me cracking my neck, which surely isn't very reassuring at this moment. I can't help myself, I'm cracking my neck anyway, I don't care. Okay damn it was way louder that time, it's drawn way more attention than intended. He's looking at me again, has it been a minute already? No, just a couple of seconds surely. Okay now I'm just wasting time, this is stupid. He either hears what I have to say and runs for his life, or he stays, simple. Ok not simple. Whatever, I'm stressed, and I'm choosing in this moment to believe it's that simple.

It's just so hard to think when he's looking at me like that. I mean I get that the look is probably more in relation to the fact that last night I was bleeding everywhere and yelling at him not to call an ambulance, but it's oddly similar to the look he gives me right before he kisses me. Serious, steady eyes, brow slightly furrowed, jaw clenched. Thinking about it now, it's actually pretty amusing how serious he gets about it. Anyway, getting sidetracked again, need to say something...

Okay, I'll just jump in I guess, I'm good at improvising.

"Yeah look, I ahh, I'm weird."

Ok improv has not gone well for me today.

"Are you kidding me??"

It's looking like less of an 'I'm about to kiss you' stare and more of an 'I'm about to have a serious mental breakdown' stare now. He steps towards me, hesitating at first but commits after a second,

"You took a minute to come up with "I'm weird"? That's it? I'm really trying my hardest not to freak out here but I'm gonna need you to go into a little more detail than "weird" ok?"

Oh my god, oh my god, now is such a bad time for my vocabulary to turn to a bunch of useless mumbo jumbo, please for love of everything good, think of something better to say than 'ok',

"Ok."

Wow, excellent. Love this for me. Ok ok I have an idea. A brilliant, completely foolproof idea. I'll go over the entire time I've known him, in my head, in great detail, as if I was, I don't know, writing a story about it for someone who has absolutely no idea who I am or what's going on, and hopefully discover the perfect way to explain all of this to him. All in matter of seconds, obviously, because I am in the middle of a very serious, very time sensitive situation. Shouldn't be too hard.

So, flashback to 9 weeks ago, I'm out, living my life, being completely normal and definitely not hiding a huge, crazy secret from everyone. Except, surprise, I'm hiding a huge, crazy secret from everyone. It's not that crazy honestly, well not to me anyway. It's mostly just convenient really. The secret is, I just kind of, heal...good. Fast, I mean. Like, super fast. I'm kind of like Rapunzel in Tangled, but without the magical glowing hair that's activated by song. And it has no impact on age as far as I'm aware. I really don't know a lot about it because I've just always tried to be as normal as possible. Apart from the brief period of time that I was part of a secret organisation of people with similar abilities and was trained to be an assassin.

But this story isn't about that, it's about me trying to explain to the guy I've been seeing for a couple of months how the huge cuts on my side that he stitched up last night are now completely gone.

So, I'm being normal, working in a coffee shop, all normal and such. A guy walks in. Tall, pretty, very pretty, very tall.

He flirts, and introduces himself, "Hi, I'm Ryan." with the (for no reason at all) sweetest voice I've ever heard.

I fail, painfully to flirt back, my voice cracks and I stumble over my words like an idiot, "Ash. My name, that's my, yep, my names Ash"

I'm awkward, he's awkward too, but in a cute, charming kind of way. He waits until my shift ends and buys me a coffee, we go for a walk in the park nearby. It's weird, it's not really even a date, but I've never been on a date, so it's enough for me. He's crazy funny, can make a joke out of anything. He's perfectly perfect in a an awkward, imperfect kind of way. The whole day is perfect, until I spot someone in the park. Jeffery. God damn Jeffery. This guy just. Won't. Die.

I've tried at least five times. I pushed him off the roof of a building, didn't die. He's been shot, a lot, didn't die. He even got set on fire once, still didn't die.

Anyway as you can imagine, this guy isn't my biggest fan. So I cut my perfectly perfect date short and get the hell out of there. Ryan thinks I'm rejecting him and it's awful but he comes back into my coffee shop a week later, with a flower, to win my back. A marigold...something something, it was yellow and pretty. So obviously, I say yes, and everything's back to perfect. For about two months.

A week before the whole 'situation' now. Still having a perfect time. Until one night, we're walking back to his place when I notice we're being followed. And who is it? Why my best friend Jeffery of course. I convince Ryan to take a detour and stop by this ice cream place near his apartment building and once we get there I pop outside for a 'quick phone call'. And by 'phone call' I mean 'going around the alley way over there to beat the hell out of Jeffery real quick'.

So I do that, and go back inside, get Ryan and leave. Everything's fine.

For a week.

Until two nights ago, things aren't going so well.

My usual Wednesday shift, finishing at 9pm, everything's normal, except this time, my man Jeffery is waiting by my car (yay).

This shift has been awful. I'm really just not in the mood to deal with Mr. Immortal Man tonight. So I make the decision, just one last kill, this is it. I said I was done years ago, but Jeffery's really getting on my nerves.

Now I don't know how this happened, but Jeff's really messed me up this time. He's got this swingy blade thing that he's flinging around like an absolute madman. Slicing the hell out of me honestly. I manage to come out on top, finally, and make it home to sleep it off.

Strange thing is though, sleeping it off didn't work. I've just slept for 12 hours and I'm still cut up. I can see it healing, but it's much slower that usual.

After about half an hour I'm mostly healed and I get a text

'I bet he doesn't heal as quickly as you do' followed by a photo of Ryan's building.

So now I'm panicking, like, seriously panicking, and driving like a maniac. Suddenly I've got this pain, this excruciating pain in my side, and there's blood, there's lots of blood. I'm getting all sliced up again.

I manage just barely to get to Ryans building, this time I'm putting an end to Jeffery, no matter how bad these cuts get. I'm so sick of this dude coming back all the time. No one likes you Jeffery, for the love of god.

So I get up to the elevator and he's standing there, all menacing and whatever,

"Oh sweet you made it, wasn't sure if I had the right number. That would've been unfortunate wouldn't it? Anyway, I don't actually know what floor he's on or what apartment he's in, I just thought it'd be fun to scare you a bit lol."

"Did you just say 'lol'? How about you just actually laugh, like a normal person Jeffery."

This part of the story really isn't important, but to sum up, insults were thrown back and fourth, we fought some more, and then I killed him. Well I think I did anyway.

Now I'm in the elevator, bleeding lots, everywhere. I'll be honest, it looks super messed up but I didn't know what else to do.

I knock on Ryans door, he opens it and I, slightly dramatically, fall into his arms.

It's very dramatic, very emotional, he wants to call an ambulance, I'm yelling at him saying he can't, it's a whole 'thing'. But I end up convincing him to just help me stitch it up. We get to sleep at some point, then in the morning, he wakes up first, and pulls up my shirt to check the damage. Only there's no damage, not anymore, just blood. He freaks out and wakes me up.

I look up at him, still covered in blood, but with no wounds to match. A short, almost conversation takes place, then I pause for a while, to go over some things in my head before I try to explain any further.

"Ok before I start I need to tell you something really important..."

I've decided to tell him everything, because, and I know it's fast but, I think...

"I think I love you."

Oh god ok I didn't mean to say that out loud yet.

"Ash, seriously, it's not the time for this. I mean, for the record, I think I might love you too. But really, not the time. Please just tell me if you're some weird alien creature or not."

"Weird alien creature?" Now I'm laughing, I can tell he wants to laugh too. Him being concerned about whether I'm even human makes it easier to explain who I actually am.

So I tell him. I tell him everything, and he doesn't completely freak out. He's actually, kind of, fine. Everything's actually kind of fine.

Until there's a knock on the door...

"Lol, did you actually think you'd killed me this time?"

And taking the words right out of my mouth Ryan says "Oh my god Jeffery stop saying lol, just be normal, no one likes you."

I think I've found my soul mate.