Five Years

1

He left me, he made that choice, he never called, never sent a text, never asked about me through our family, and that was five years ago. If it was five years ago, why does it still feel so recent? I was fine. I had forgotten about him. Except today was our anniversary. I don't want to miss him but I do.
......
"Hun, just go say hi. Just hi and then you can leave." Mom pushed.

"But I don't want to..." I said quietly.

That was a lie. I was itching to meet him. I loved talking to new people, I loved meeting new people but for whatever reason I was nervous. I was suddenly hating being in a room filled with people. That was the only time I had ever hated it. I was a seven year old who usually loved it, loved to talk to everyone. Mom was done trying, she understood.

"Okay." She sighed and stood up. I wasn't going to but then I thought what I was doing was stupid. So I took a breath and marched over to him and extended my hand.

"Hi, I'm Marabelle and you're James." I said with a smile. He took my hand with a little smirk.

"Yup." He answered.
......
That little smirk was the start of everything. From that day we were inseparable, even more so than our mothers. At some point I really thought our mothers regretted pushing us to talk. I wanted to say I did too. I wanted to say that I regret ever meeting him, knowing about him, introducing myself to him but I couldn't. How could I say that? How could I think that? Our anniversary always included some big mastermind idea to cause trouble, along with a little cake for ourselves and spending the whole day laughing and being... being us. Every year that had passed was hard but it was getting easier. I don't know how I went from almost forgetting it, to... well... this. Either way, I was determined to forget about it. To end the night I got myself so drunk I blacked out. Half of that time was at the bar, the other half was at my place. I had a pounding headache when I woke up but it helped me realize that I was done being like this. I had become a full blown introvert. I wanted to not go back to my old self but I definitely wanted a lot of pieces from old me back.

It had been six months and I was finally at a place I wanted to be. I was nowhere near my old self but I was me, the only thing left was to fill this whole in my heart. Who am I kidding, I had been trying for years and I had started to accept it would stay empty but I still wanted to minimize it. I thought about getting a dog. A golden retriever to be specific, or a rottweiler, or an english mastiff. That was a decision I had to wait because I had to be on a flight that night. LA to Virginia was a long flight that I was nowhere near excited for but Abby made it very clear that I needed to be there. I had only been to a few little family reunions and such sense moving and now this was going to be the first one with me back to myself. Not only did I have Abby threatening me in order to get me there, she also had mom, dad, and Lainie doing the same.

"Abby... what if he's there. Is he going to be there?" I asked, randomly changing the subject.

She was quiet for a minute. "I don't think so, Mari. I think he was pretty adamant about not coming. Josh said he had something going on."

"Okay. Good. Thank you." I said quietly.

"You are going to see him soon. It will get to a point where it will be impossible."

"Next topic. Are you really not going to give me a hint?" I pleaded one last time.

"Sorry, nope." She answered and I let out a defeated sigh. "Can't wait to see my sister though!"

"Can't wait to see you too, all of you guys."

With that I said goodbye and hung up.