It's difficult to find the way everything fits into place once it's broken, even if a surgeon gives you a pretty significant first push. Alexia's recovery is progressing with hope. Her knee is responding well to rehabilitation, but she doesn't feel...
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The information surprised me. That option hadn't even crossed my mind. I wanted to feel a slight relief at least, knowing that this had nothing to do with me, but her face contorted again, and I was completely unable.
"How long ago?" I asked fearfully.
"A week," she said, her eyes welling up. I wanted to get up and hug her, but I held back. It was her who needed to seek that kind of contact in this situation. "We weren't doing well, and I decided to make more effort. I asked him to come so we could talk and tell him all this, and..." She seemed uncertain about continuing with the story when she looked into my eyes. She avoided eye contact and continued, "and a few other things. And he told me he had grown tired of fighting for it to the point where he no longer wanted to achieve it, that it meant nothing to him anymore."
I pressed my lips together. That was a bit wild of him.
"You were together for a long time..."
She nodded as the first tear fell and her voice broke. It pained me in the chest and I got up.
She looked at me, confused, as I leaned against the armrest of the couch to be closer to her. But once she understood the situation, she leaned her body against mine, and finally, I found myself in the position to press her against my chest and embrace her.
She cried. She cried a lot. She sobbed nonstop against my neck, and I held her even tighter. I ran one hand calmly along her back, trying to comfort her and used the other to brush the hair away from her face. I liked having her head nestled between mine and my clavicle. I felt like I was fully protecting her from anyone who approached, and that's what I needed in this situation, to shield her from harm right here.
I also knew that she, in a way, felt the same. She clung to me more when the pain was stronger and sought refuge in me as much as possible. She was calming down, truly calming down.
She separated from me at least fifteen minutes later. Her eyes were completely red, her face flushed, and her lips dark. Some strands of hair stuck to her face because of the tears. And her vulnerability made her even more beautiful in my eyes, as if the flush and the sparkling eyes made her fragile and precious.
"I guess we just fell out of love," she said once she calmed down completely, although tears continued to accumulate in the corners of her eyes. "I wasn't in love with him anymore. That's why I stopped being excited about moving in together, about progressing in our relationship. And it's okay if it had to end." I nodded at her words and ran my hand along her cheek, wiping away a tear. She wrapped her hand around mine, and I thought she would remove it, but she held it even tighter against her face. "But I feel so guilty thinking that maybe the fault was only mine."
"It's not your fault." I took her face in both hands to make her focus on my words. "Sometimes it's daunting to think about it, but everything in this life is like a butterfly effect, one consequence after another, events that trigger others endlessly. Maybe if you were more distant or less excited about him, that caused Marc to stop loving you; but you should also think about what led you to distance yourself from that love. And the reason that did that to you, in turn, has another reason that is someone else's fault, someone who did it because of a different event in this never-ending cycle. And those are the things of destiny. It wasn't meant to be."
