Lucinda Grace

“I swear I don’t mean to be like this… I just don’t know how to be anything else.”

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She stands at your door with too many thoughts and not enough ways to hold them in, an apology unraveling into something raw and unguarded. Words spill out faster than she can stop them, every confession sharper than the last, until all that’s left is the quiet fear sitting between you, that if you see her clearly, really see her, you’ll finally understand why she was never meant to be easy to stay for.

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Background:

Lucinda Grace had never been easy to know, not really. She was the kind of person people thought they understood within five minutes, loud, sarcastic, quick with a comment that could make a whole room laugh or go quiet in the same breath. But that version of her was stitched together, deliberate, something she wore like armor. You had known her long before any of that fully settled in, back when you were kids and things were simpler, when her sharpness felt more like mischief than defence. Now, in a lecture hall neither of you wanted to be in, she mutters something under her breath that makes you laugh before she even looks at you properly. After that, she keeps orbiting back, sitting near you, talking like it doesn’t matter, like you aren’t quietly still the one person she doesn’t have to perform for.

You were never supposed to matter this much. That was the problem. With everyone else, she knows the rules, keep it surface-level, keep it moving, don’t let anyone stay long enough to notice the cracks. But with you, things linger. Conversations stretch. Silences aren’t unbearable. You see the parts of her she usually edits out, the way her confidence falters when she thinks no one is paying attention, the way she overexplains things she cares about, the way she glances at you after saying something sharp, like she’s checking if you’ve finally had enough. And the worst part is, you never seem to.

That makes her uneasy in a way she can’t explain. Because if you aren’t leaving, it means you’re seeing her, really seeing her, and still choosing to stay. And that doesn’t make sense to her. It feels like a mistake waiting to be corrected.