This was not how she imagined that she would spend her adult life. Her old tricks were starting to lose potency and she felt like she was running out of time, Bella knew that everyone at some point wore out their welcome. She felt the clock winding down. Linus still ignored her for the most part, BUT now he was starting to get hostile. He would feign kindness to initiate a conversation and quickly become venomous.

This last row was what made Bella truly become aware of the clock. He told her “You can’t hang out with noses or his family anymore, they are mine!”

Bella’s heart was in her stomach, this was something that she had been quietly panicking about. In her head she was thinking about the loyalty that came with lifetime friendships. She had already assumed that Nose would always be Linus’ friend. But hearing it out loud…. fuck her right?

Afterwards Linus left her alone in the living room. She sat there in uneasy silence until Nose returned from work.

He sat down beside her smoking his cigarette, made a confession.

That he knew more about their whole situation than he cared to. Bella chuckled and apologized. She looked at him and saw an opening, told him what Linus had just said to her. Nose replied

“No fucking way, he can’t tell me who i can and can’t be friends with!”

They were friends? They were friends! It had happened, Bella had been so caught up in her own head that she had missed it. It was true though, in all the months that they had been sitting there dealing with life, they had also been eating together, going to work together, going to the store together. All the things, while Linus had left her there in Nose’s house.

A weight lifted off her chest and with floated away another string in the disentanglement of Bella and Linus