my heart is refusing me | loreen

Prologue

Prologue

Carmen remembers the brief silence clogging her every artery. Everything erupts into cheers and laughter and some inevitable tears, and all there is that she wants to do is succumb into the warmth of Lorine's body. She wants to run up to her across the greenroom, she wants to hug her, embrace her, congratulate her, kiss her and do everything, all of it, all over again.

But she doesn't, she can't.

She sits, legs quivering in both the aftermath of the anticipation and the abrupt realisation that her hope to fix this, whatever it was, was short-lived. Only now does Carmen realize she never knew what exactly she wanted to do back then. How she could do anything at all when she never understood why things unfolded this way.

Why, so suddenly, Lorine decided this was it. After preaching through the weeks that this would be eternal.

Before Carmen can tell - she's fuming. Listening to the restlessness of her hotel makes her realize she'd been used. Now she knows Lorine had no rights leaving like that. With nothing to keep Carmen's thoughts at bay. She had no rights to plunge the blade so deep, to make her beg for an explanation that the swede never cared enough to give. For a pathetic second, the Dutch girl hopes that there'd be a knock on her door, Lorine on the other side with an apology on the tip of her tongue and that much needed answer. And kisses, and love, and that closeness they both crave, and that passion that drives them.

When the next morning comes, Carmen doesn't need telling that it's over. If saying that to her face wasn't clear enough.

She doesn't understand, still. Was it something she said, did?

Not a day passes for an entire year that the brunette doesn't think about the older woman. It gets better, time heals, wounds retract into the skin, but scars remain. Carmen pretends they don't. She doesn't care, she doesn't dwell on the past - that's history now -, she doesn't care that she doesn't understand, never will. In fact, she doesn't want to understand.

After all, there's nothing to understand.

It just happened.

Things sometimes just do. She takes it as a part of life, with a grain of salt, and learns from it. It's a lesson. Thinking of it that way helps.

Carmen doesn't think of Lorine at all at the five year mark. Their first date anniversary comes and goes and the brunette doesn't even realise. It's just another Tuesday on the calendar.

She doesn't think about it, doesn't remember, but the universe knows she's healed.

It's only years later that she sees her again, on their anniversary that, this time, Carmen's forced to remember. She breathes for a couple of seconds to remind herself that this shouldn't bother her. Seeing Lorine shouldn't matter anymore. Time heals, she's healed.

Deep wounds don't scar.

She doesn't care. Doesn't want to understand.

But she understands, in the deepest part of her brain, that she's a liar.

They're both liars, playing it off like it doesn't matter.

That time is enough in a something that's long written in history.

It's not.

Still, they think they're good at pretending. They fool each other and themselves.

But there's no fooling the past.