The Apple of My Eye

The Beginning Is the End Is the Beginning

This book is dedicated to every man and woman who has loved and lost, and yet presses on and fights the good fight—despite their troubles, their sorrow, and their pain.

The moment I was back in my hotel room on that hot February evening, the sweet scent of her perfume penetrated my nostrils and my thoughts like the fucking plague. I was immediately reminded of what it felt like to miss her, even though she hadn't been gone for more than a few hours. I felt weird all of a sudden. I felt bad, real bad, like I had something in my stomach that was eating me up inside.

I looked around the room and saw all these little notes she had left me, all written in pencil, the hotel complimentary pencil, in hotel stationary, from the hotel complimentary notepad. There were notes on the side of the bed, the ridiculously narrow single bed we had shared. (Corporate had booked me a single room, and the best I could do was sneak her in there, cheap bastard that I was.) There were notes in the bathroom. There were even notes in the soap holder in the shower box. She knew I would find them all. She knew I would read her everywhere. The notes all professed her eternal love for me. They all thanked me for yet another of our memorable sex marathons.

That was it. Now I was officially feeling like shit. Here was this girl, so in love with me, so ardently devoted to me even after we had obviously gone our separate ways, after we had spent almost an entire year away from one another except for the infrequent visits I had paid her—the rate of recurrence of which had been entirely my doing, of course, as she had never sought to split in the first place.

And yet I'd gotten sick of her. How could I have gotten sick of her?

The truth was, I couldn't stand her passivity anymore. She whined and she nagged, but she just could not bring herself to tell me to go fuck myself. And I hated that. I couldn't tolerate her unconditional love for me anymore. Never did the word "unconditional" make more sense, and yet I could not stomach the notion. Because I knew in my heart of hearts that I simply didn't deserve it. I simply wasn't worthy of her love.

She was so damn noble. She was so superior to me in so many ways. It didn't matter that she didn't think so. It didn't make any difference that she thought she was lucky to have had me. The unquestionable truth was, I had been the lucky one all along, and I was a pig, a royal asshole, undeserving of her priceless affection. Or anybody else's, for that matter.

I had made this girl catch a plane out of town and miss work two days in a row—and in the process spend money she didn't even have to begin with—just to come meet me. Just to come to where I was staying on account of some stupid business trip. So she could be with me. I didn't have to make any efforts. I didn't have to lift a fucking finger. I was on a business trip. And she had come to me. Delivered herself to me. So I could have sex with her a good number of times because she was simply so fucking hot, and I hadn't had a taste of her hotness in two months now.

For weeks I had been determined to break up with her once and for all as soon as her two-day stay was over. But not without one for the road. Not without several for the road. Oh no. Not until I had indulged myself to the point that I was sick of it. But I was hellbent on letting her go. I had even convinced myself that it was going to be good for her, that I was being the better person for letting her go, for setting her free, to live, to love, to love another, even. Like those quixotic vampires who let their loved ones go because they love them so bad they don't want to be responsible for imposing an eternity of damnation on them.

Of course, being the coward that I was, I ran away from any sort of confrontation, any resemblance of truth, and didn't tell her a thing. I let her fly back home trusting our little shenanigan had been just one more of many, some sort of prelude to the lifetime of togetherness we had ahead of us. She had no idea it was to be our last. Hell, as I entered the room that evening, even I was entertaining second thoughts already.

And if she had made me sick with her dependency and her smooching and her cuddling and her baby talk and all that juvenile shit, there was one thing I knew I could not live without. And no, it wasn't the sex. The sex, well, it was the best sex I had, and have, ever had. In the words of the late great Zevon, we made mad love, shadow love, random love, and abandoned love. We had the best sex two people can have for as long as humankind sticks around this sad little planet of ours. I knew I would never meet anyone who would make me experience anything remotely close to that again. Ever. But it wasn't that. I'd thought it was, for a while. I would have preferred it to be. But it wasn't. I could not have been more wrong.

It was love, is what it was. Fucking true love, for love's sake, and nothing else. Pure and simple. She fucking loved me, and I fucking loved her. Even if I'd temporarily forgotten how much. It was clear as day. How could I have let myself forget that?

By now, I had already come to terms with what a dumb fuck I had been all along. I missed the sound of her laughter. I missed her southern drawl. I missed her many delectable smells. I missed the touch of her hand on my hair, of all things. I missed her kisses, the best kisses ever. I understood now her mouth had been made to kiss mine, and mine had been made to kiss hers, as corny as that sounds, and I know it does. But our mouths just fit so perfectly well it was almost forbidding, for chrissakes. And I missed her many distinctive flavors, her many textures. I even missed the taste of her tears on my face. That's how fucked up I was. I had purposefully parted with all that, and I had no one to blame but my fucking self.

Goddamn it, was I cursed this time. I had said my last goodbye to the love of my life. And I hadn't even been strong enough to really say it, you know, with words.

I was never to see her again after that day. And I would never fully recover.

The hurt would only get worse.

The heart would only get harder.