“My car wouldn’t start.” She frowns in thought, and I nod sadly. “So… I decided to walk.”
“I asked you not to, begged you to wait for me in fact, but you…” The backs of my eyes begin to burn with all the unshed tears I’ve held onto since a part of my soul died. The sensation of heat rising to the back of my nose as I fight the tears, hurts.
Up until this moment, I’ve never told her what happened… not like this, anyway. I never had the chance to hold her in my arms and feel the calming beat of her heart against mine, or how her lungs expand to take in air. I’ve only ever had to chase her, beg her, plead, and argue with her to let me explain.
I haven’t felt comfort from the love of my life in nearly a year.
“When you didn’t show up, I went out looking for you. Everyone I knew was already at the party, and none of them seemed to know where you were. Finding you by the side of the road two miles away from the Gamma Nu house is an image I’ll never get over. When I woke up the next morning, I thought everything was a fever dream from too much alcohol or something, but it wasn’t. You had no idea who I was. It was as though the last six months never existed. All we had experienced together just… gone in the blink of an eye. In that moment I knew I’d lost everything that mattered to me, and every time I relived that day, I had to try and remind you who I was. It was as though I was living in a nightmare and no matter what I did to try and save you… I always ended up without you somehow.”
“I’m sorry,” she whimpers.
“No.” The word comes out forced but there’s no way I can have her thinking it’s her fault. “Look at me, Heather.” I release herhands and turn her entire body to face me, moving her legs to straddle me. “None of this is your fault.”
Tears build at her lower lash line, sadness written all over her face. “But if I’d just—” Her chin wobbles as she fails to finish her words.
“Baby, stop. Please.” I press my forehead against hers, trying my best to comfort her the only way I know how. “Don’t take the blame for something you didn’t cause. The fault lies merely on the people who took you from me.” I choke back a sob of my own. “Who stole what time we had together. However long it was going to be.”
“That’s why we’re here tonight, isn’t it?” Heather sniffles, wiping her nose on the cuff of her sweater. “Patrick, he was part of it… wasn’t he?”
My hands cup either side of her face as more tears fall over her long black eyelashes, and I clear them quickly from the apples of her cheeks with the pads of each thumb.
“I don’t know why I keep reliving the same day. I don’t know if it’s because when I lost you that night, I died right there with you on the side of the road. But if I had to, I’d live every moment of torture, every crack that cuts through me, every repeated day, if it meant all of it was spent loving you.” I kiss each of her cheeks one by one. “I knew you were mine the moment I saw you walk across the street the first day I moved here. I claimed every inch of you then, and that’s never going to change. Not in death. Not ever.”
Her body trembles as she nods in understanding. As more tears fall down her cheeks, my own follow suit like little drops of pain tracking the lines of my face and reminding me of the suffering losing her has caused me.
I brush my hands over her face, pushing back her soft blonde hair. “These eyes…” My voice quivers as more tears begin to blur my vision. “Fuck, baby, I’ve missed your beautiful eyes.”
Patches of my memory are still forming as I see the tears cascade over Ricky’s beautiful face, and the more they gradually come back to me, the more my feelings and emotions for Ricky only enhance further. The ache in my chest feels as though I’m having a heart attack, my body tremoring at the thought of what he’s been going through. Losing me every single day, going through the pain of it all, then waking up the next morning and having to do it all over again.
How did we end up here?
What happened during our time together that pushed us into this wasteland of repetitive days? What route did either of us take to bring us to a moment where I lost my life, and the love of mine had to be painfully and continuously tortured? Was there something we could have done to prevent it?
I rest my hands on his stomach, feeling the ripples of his abdominal muscles as I continue sliding my hands further up his chest. Trembling at the memory of our first time coming back to me in a flash.
“Kiss me,” I whisper, staring into the cobalt depths of his eyes.
Smiling softly, Ricky tucks a few strands of hair behind my ear, not willing to wipe his own tears away, but wearing all his pain for me to see. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Ricky’s movements are slow, almost like he’s nervous to kiss me in case everything disappears, and he wakes up without me all over again. His hand cups the back of my head, pulling me closer, and I willingly go to him.
I’m eager to feel his lips on mine, to taste him once more, and after so long without him… it can’t come quick enough. I lock my arms around his neck, and with his other arm, he wraps it around my waist as though I’m not close enough.
When our lips connect, everything comes back to me like a flash of lightning. My last moments alive; the pain of his screams when he found me moments from death. The way the black Pontiac Firebird sped away with all four of them inside, leaving my shattered form in the reeds by the lake. How I sobbed and screamed his name as loud as I could. The way I begged for my mother in my last moments. Just for someone, anyone, to save me.
Hot tears stream from my eyes as I try to stifle a more guttural sob from getting lose. I’m terrified of what will happen after this night… swearing to myself that I’ll fight to remember him no matter what.
“I’m here, baby,” he breathes against my lips, kissing me ever so softly.
“Show me how much you’ve missed me, please. I only want to feel you, nothing else. Just you, Ricky.”
Not this pain or anger, just him.
I want him to consume me in ways I’ll never allow another to. For us to slot together so perfectly we become the same person. My soul belonged to him even before I ever knew he existed, and when it saw him, it knew.Iknew.
“If this is all the time we have together… then I’ll give you all the broken pieces of the very heart that still resides in my chest. Because without you, Heather, I’m nothing. Because it was always yours.”
Ricky’s hands grip my ass, and I lock my ankles behind his waist, holding onto him tightly as he carefully stands up from the hardwood floor as best as he can, and carries me towards his bed. Stopping at the edge of the bed, he lowers me to my feet, and we both make quick work of each other’s clothes, tossing them somewhere in the room before falling onto the bed in a heap of jumbled limbs.
