What do you do when you meet someone you love more than life itself and are forced to let them go so they can experience life without attachment?
Two chance encounters set this story in motion and send Nick's introverted soul down a long avoided mem...
I sat on the floor of our fucking little house. I was cold, hungry, and lonely. I still remember thinking and saying it was our house when there was no more our. The fact had been established maybe a month prior. I guess I never got to that. I leaped ahead a little. After Sof completed her first tour, we talked when she came home. The money was good, excellent in fact, because she spent so little of it. Despite that, God help me, and I still didn't want her to sign up again. I was working my ass off, but I made enough to support us until she found something else she wanted to do. I remained neutral while she reasoned it all out. I shouldn't have. I couldn't develop any compelling reasons why she should not re-sign for another tour outside of coming home to me.
Even in Cirque du Soleil, she was succeeding. She was a quick study and a relentless perfectionist when it came to performance. That trait was not going unnoticed. Already she had been tapped for a lead in yet another new show to Europe, Alegria. She beamed, telling me about it. Her spirit was high. There was not a trace of the frightened, panic susceptible beauty that fastened a barbed wire necklace on me. For lack of a better expression, she had grown up.
It was like a missing puzzle piece falling into place when she came home. I took her hand, and she pulled me close and kissed me, and she didn't stop. All was right while she was there, while we were together. We still had the apartment then, but I got tired of being there alone. The city I felt comfortable living in gradually grew cold and lonely when Sofi was gone. Being near crowds or in crowds made no difference to me at all. It was alien without her, and instead of giving comfort and familiarity, all those familiar places only made me miss her more.
We discussed buying a house and even looked at a few near my friend in the burbs, but she wasn't home long enough to help pick one out. I finally found one, a fixer-upper, and purchased it with the most excitement I had felt since going on our first real date. The one fun thing we did when she was home was to trade her rotten little Nissan somethingorother in for a car she wanted, a Convertible Beetle. I had to pry her out of it. She loved it so much. It suited her too. She looked precious in it with the top back, the wind in her hair wearing her cheap dark shades. The car still sat in the garage, her shades still in the center console.
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