A man, overworked and at the end of his rope, surrounded in his loft apartment with artwork he can barely appreciate because he's lost himself somewhere along the way.
He remembers the times before. When he was doing nothing, when... God... when she was still there. She bought it, the artwork. She wanted to be a painter and they got the loft so she'd have a studio to work in. She was so beautiful and when the light from the sunrise would hit her as she practiced this or that on the canvas, while looked on from bed--rumply and frumpy, hair out of place... it was his heaven.
That was before the diagnosis. That was before the long nights. She wouldn't let him stay in the room at the end, there at the hospital. It was the last time he cried. Not because she was gone, so much as because he would live with the shame of not being there when she went. That bitch, not wanting him to remember her that way at the end... that beautiful bitch. How, he would think afterward when by himself in that loft surrounded by the things she loved, can I go on without you?
So he threw himself into his work. Each passing day, more and more, he lost himself. Because going home meant having to choose between packing away the portraits and paintings, some hers, or being haunted by her ghost and the memories of the way her lips tasted after she put on that favourite lip-gloss he loved. In his moment weakness, he couldn't let go of her and took his lashes of nostalgia in the night.
He started dating. It wasn't even to find love, he'd already found her. It was to have another reason to stay away and stay lost. However, it took too much out of him, trying to be some whole person when he was only half of one. Then, while picking up orange juice after work one night, he was approached by a woman... she asked him if he wanted to party and he found it easy to say "yes". Found it easy to let her use him for money. It made him feel worthless and ashamed, and felt like penance for not being there when she passed.
The next week, he sat in his living room--looking at the Escort ad. Dressed, the same dumb and tacky-looking suit he wore on their first real fancy date. He got it from a JC Pennies, all he could afford back then. He wore it because wearing it felt like honesty. It felt like he was wearing his worthlessness, shame, and cheapness in the open. He could put on something stylish, she'd helped him find style later on, but this... this dumb looking suit represented well how awkward he was.
He paid her quickly and they went to the restaurant he first told her "I love you" in. He called the escort by her name. He made the same (now increasingly dated) jokes. Same walk that they'd had their first fight. Same ice-cream place they were sitting in when she had gotten The Call from the doctor.
He took the escort home, to look at art. They would make passionless love quietly, without talking, and she would leave. When it was over, he felt something for the first time since she passed away. A combination of guilt and shame and love and warmth and he sobbed in the shower, naked and wet--he cried deeply for her. His first real time doing so.
So, the next week. He did it again.
And again.
Every time, he could feel the barest hints of her breath on his cheek like she used to do when she'd hug him... embrace, her left hand digging into his shoulder, and her breath on his cheek and she'd sigh so deeply. So much.
This was his life now.
It was hollow. Empty. The parts of him that mattered were buried with her and would always be hers. The rest could only wake every day and go through the choreography of a life. He lived for those few moments, once a week, after this or that prostitute and the Date--when he could almost feel her again.
He waited to join her. He prayed he would soon.
-END-
THANK YOU FOR READING MY STORY. IF THERE IS ANY SUGGESTION OR MISTAKE FEEL FREE TO CONTACT ME OR COMMENT BELOW. I'M AN AMATEUR AND I WRITE FOR FUN.
