A Flame From The Past

9: A Tale Of The Past

White sheets were under me, as I tossed and turned. The sheets below me weren't mine, I knew that surely and as I stretched up to look at the room. I knew it wasn't mine.

Panic reached into and over me, as my eyes wandered the room.

It was his room.

I whispered into the cold silence as my eyes focused on the three trophies that lined the black shelf and a framed jersey with dirt stains was hung to the wall.

I couldn't imagine him wearing that again, it must have some reason why it's framed like it's the Mona Lisa. He had a reason for everything, I noticed, some people have reasons, others just do what they want. I have reasons for everything just like him.

He wasn't next to me, I knew the absent silence of him. I had woken up alone that day, tossed in those white sheets after hearing his mouth ramble on about curing our shared loneliness. I knew I had said I wouldn't hold it against him, it was the past. But he had promised to never leave, he took the most vulnerable part of me and he had heard things I had never said in my life to anyone and yet he left. We promised to cure each other's loneliness that we had mustered inside, he was supposed to be everything I had needed. But no one could give me the love I never had, I had learned that now.

Last nights memories played out in my mind as I smelled the sheets beneath me. I remembered hours of drunken conversation and stolen kisses until we both fell asleep cuddled into each other.

His words clung to me fiercely, he spoke words of fear and I swore I saw a tear streak from his eyes but I ignored it as he turned away embarrassedly. He spoke of something so deep, so carefully as if not to say the one thing that would unleash the billions of tears he had pent up. Last night he highlighted and glimpsed across his world, he spoke of his siblings, his grandparents and as soon as I brought up his parents he changed the subject.

As my eyes wandered the room to the wall with the Jersey framed, I saw the picture at the diner and there were many more of his siblings, but not a single one of his parents.

By his tensed fists, I knew to avoid the topic, he made it obviously clear he didn't want to speak about it. He knew I observed him, he knew most of the time we spent together I studied him, and his actions. I wanted to understand him and his actions. Ally didn't know about my over analyzing tendencies she would not approve of it anyways. Especially it being used with Luca, she would say we don't need to understand everything that we do it's just fate, or our destiny or some way of life.

I wished to understand him more, he was this puzzle that couldn't be solved he had this shield that he put up whenever someone got close, or when the questions came his way. That intense stare he gave off, he would detach himself from everyone and look to the wall. He was a good liar, I knew it.

Some people say you can know a man by his room. Does he put reminders to call his mom/family members? Does he have a clean room? Nice smelling sheets? I never believed this statement or stereotype but my professor in college did she said a man can either be a pig or a self righteous good man based on his room. She would rule his room as self righteous, though she would question the overly done pictures of his family, she said it signaled he didn't have sex a lot. Nobody liked their parents and loved ones watching them, but I would excuse it, he's a celebrity nobody cares about that.

Staring and being in his room now, I knew he was good, he was clean, but some reason I still couldn't believe him. That he was here, that he wanted to be something with me, that we would be something to one another. I still couldn't wrap my head around it.