evermore: a short story collection

happiness

C,

It was hard to know what to say to you when we were still right down in it all, but I'm on the plane now, above the trees, and the words come a little easier. I feel that if I don't get it all down in writing, I won't believe my own memory when I think back on this years from now.

Do you remember the scene in Gatsby where Jay is throwing his beautiful shirts around and Daisy is laughing like a fool as they float down? It's how I felt the first full year I knew you. Bright colors, soft silks caressing my skin, cradling my head, surrounding me and drowning out everything else. I felt the obsessive need to catch each floating shirt you threw, at the expense of all else. They say that the word for that is limerence. Everything about you drew me in and I lapped it up, no questions asked.

The experience of you is overwhelming. I know now that you know that about yourself and use it to your advantage. I can't say that you manipulate or have bad intentions because I honestly don't think you do, even now. You behave as if the world revolves around you and how can I begrudge you that, even after I lost myself in the black hole that is you? Nothing in life has ever contradicted this phenomenon, and so you continue on, oblivious to your own gravitational pull that clears every obstacle in your path.

But now each silken shirt is packed up in boxes, just shit from the life we built together divided up and stored away like it never happened. To pretend this never happened requires that I become someone new. Become a new woman and adopt a different life. You know that I've reinvented myself so many times I've lost count, but with you, I always felt the most like myself. When I used to look into your eyes, when we first met, those early, happy years, I saw myself reflected back there in the pools of blue. I don't mean in the Narcissus, vain kind of way; I mean that your soul mirrored mine, twin flames. But now, ever since that night, all I see in your face is her mangled body. Bruises blossoming under the parts of her that weren't gashed open and bloody. And what scares me the most is not what I did, not what I allowed you to convince me to do, what scares me the most isn't being found out. No, it's the fear that now that I don't recognize myself in you anymore, I don't know who I will become.

I'm haunted by that night, Chris. You wouldn't know, you weren't there in those first few nights after the accident, but I couldn't sleep. Night would fall, and all I could see when I closed my eyes was pure terror. I'd lie awake for hours, tears rolling over my ears, into my hair, onto the pillow where you should have been beside me, comforting me. I might have been driving the car, Chris, but both of us were there that night, both of us made the decision to drive away, to not call for help. We should have stayed. And you should have stayed with me. I needed you then. How could you not see that?

I am trying to remember what we were like before that night. We made each other happy, didn't we? Well, maybe we did at some point, but not anytime recently. If we were a different couple, a happier couple when all this went down, wouldn't we still be together? Wouldn't this tragedy have brought us closer together? I keep thinking that if I'd hit that girl in those first few years, the secret would have entangled us together even more than we already were, wrapped us up tight in barbed wire. But whatever held us together back then was already hanging on by a thread, stretched almost to the breaking point. It's no wonder that we snapped instead of sinking deeper into each other.

What did you see when we hit her, Chris? Did your life flash before your eyes? Isn't that what's supposed to happen, a highlight reel of your life flickering by in what might be your last moments. Did that happen for you? You've got so much that might show up for you, I wonder if I would even make the cut. Do you want to know what I saw, Chris? I'm almost embarrassed to say, but what's one more humiliation between friends? I saw you. Of course I saw you. But it wasn't fast and it didn't flash the whole timeline of our relationship. No, time slowed down. I saw her body rolling slowly over the windshield and I was powerless to stop her. I know we stopped fast because of the bruises we had, but I felt my toes curling onto the brake one by one and my body waving forward like seaweed in a gentle current. And in that last long moment, before my head hit the steering wheel and everything went black, I saw you. And I don't mean I saw you in the car beside me, face twisted in shock. I saw you. From that very first day. Your golden curls falling into place on your shimmering forehead. The first time I ever laid eyes on you, your blue eyes twinkling into mine. It was your face I saw in that moment, like one last gasp of air before diving into black water.

Is this what Cinderella felt like after midnight? When her dress turned back to rags, with one glass slipper left behind, did the other break into shards that cut her bare feet as she fled? I was still dancing when the music stopped, Chris. There's no prince coming to save me this time, but I suppose sunrise still came the next day for Cinderella, as it does for all of us. As it will for me again.

I don't know if I can forgive you, Chris. Maybe in time. It's not like I can make it go away by making you the villain. It's been both of us all along and this is no different.

Until then,

Thea