Two other people follow behind them, and the tall man says something I can’t decipher before the rest of them burst into laughter again. Elena lets go of the girl’s arm, allowing the man next to her to twirl her in circles right there on the sidewalk. She giggles the entire time like a fucking schoolgirl before he tugs her into him, snaking his arm around her waist.
I feel sick.
I hop off the bottom step and duck behind the staircase that leads to her building, listening as she makes conversation with this group of strangers, her voice growing louder with each passing second. My mind reels and my stomach drops because she sounds clear. Happy, even.
For months, she shut herself away from not only me, but from her brothers, her parents—every fucking person who loves her. For months, she didn’t eat, she didn’t sleep, and wouldn’t speak. She missed the goddamn funeral, for fuck’s sake.
According to Everett, she claimed she was falling behind on deadlines, that she needed a fresh place to focus, and what better setting for a writer than New York City? I assumed she was using it as an excuse to rot in silence, because while Elena may be fine falling apart herself, she doesn’t like to watch others worry for her. I assumed it was the mask she always wears, pretending she’s okay when she’s breaking inside. I assumed that she’d tumble into darkness on her own out here, and I’ve laid awake every night in the three months since I discovered she’d boarded that plane, wondering if she was okay.
I put my own grief on the back burner to prioritize hers. Stopped caring for my well-being because I needed her to be okay, and when she wouldn’t let me fix her, I wrecked myself in solidarity, even if she wasn’t there to witness it.
Because when she came back home, I wanted her to know that I waited to heal. Waited for her, because I’ve been determined to do it together.
But as I hide behind a brick wall in the middle of Manhattan, listening to the love of my life laugh with another man, I realize that I’ve been crumbling all on my own.
I bite my fist to quell my scream as I hear her unlock the main door to the building, the shuffle of multiple footsteps leading inside. Clearly, she’s made a pretty new life for herself here in New York, out on a Thursday night with friends while I’ve been waiting for her in California, destroying myself in the process.
When our world burned down around us, I thought she was lost in the flames right beside me. Now that I’m standing in the ashes of the house we built together, I realize I’ve been alone the whole goddamn time.
1
VICE
“LIABILITY” - LORDE
The only thingworse than falling into unrequited love is grieving it.
It is the human condition to romanticize life, even the most far-fetched fantasies. Like unconditional love. We spend our time daydreaming about those who refuse to give us anything, finally offering everything. Greener grass and brighter skies and the grasp of strong hands catching us when we fall.
Even when you’re not loved, you can live in reveries of realities where you are.
Except for the reality of death. Because death can’t be romanticized.
The finality of it is suffocating. Forgetting and forgiveness are no longer options.
Time stands frozen.
Your last words echo through eternity, becoming permanent. Like tattoos upon the soul.
And we’re buried with our ink.
I watch the cursor blink in the blinding brightness of my computer screen. Wiping the exhaustion from my eyes, I reluctantly let them fall onto the clock in the corner of my laptop: 3:46 a.m.
Sighing, I highlight the entirety of what I just wrote and press delete. “Nobody’s going to read a fucking romance book that starts like that,” I mutter to myself in the dead of night. My head falls into my hands, fingers massaging my temples.
I shut off my laptop and turn on the small lamp on my desk, illuminating my room in a warm glow. My body instantly settles at the change in lighting.
I’m not afraid of the dark, but I do fear the calamitous spiral my mind will send me down if I think too long about all the lives I’ll never get to live. An unfortunate side effect of being a romance writer in the harsh, unendingly torturous reality I now find myself inside. Darkness and creative attempts tend to bring out the demons I spent nearly four years burying—the ones so briskly brought back into my life when my twin brother unexpectedly turned up at my Brooklyn apartment and hauled me home to California.
I’d left for a reason.
It’s easier to ignore the ghosts that haunt me when I’m not face-to-face with a childhood of memories those ghosts left behind. Especially on days like today.
I never think of him. Not consciously. It may be his face in my nightmares, his voice screaming when I remind myself of all the parts of me worth hating, his absence that made the place I once called home a barren wasteland. But I don’t think of him.
Except on October second.
October second is the worst day of my life.
