To Keep You

Eighteen: Olive

The world felt dark and so alone. The air that escaped my lungs felt cold and it chilled me. I wondered if this was what it was like to be dead. To feel as if your soul has fled from you; as if your heart no longer beats, and as if your eye's only use now was to house tears.

I wanted to be happy, to laugh, and to love. But happiness felt far off, like land in the middle of a vast ocean. To those who say it is easy to be happy and hard to be sad; you have never been the object in which depression is obsessed with. You may have been his little toy for a day or two; maybe even caught his eye for a month. But you have yet to become the apple of his eye; to be the only thing he thinks of and even the air in his lung's breaths only for you.

I'm his new bride...

I sighed loudly as the taxi turned sharply onto the busy New York Strip. We'd barely been in the state for four hours and already I was growing restless with the desire to return to Holyoke.

But like a muzzled dog, I was unable to bend to those desires for even though I would rather be back in Holyoke cradling my daughter within the protective embrace of my arms and finding my own protection within Seth's presence; I had to be here, I must do this for Chaya.

Jackson was clear, I was to meet Lawrence at Goûter et dévore. I was to dress nice, be polite and bring a payment.

Glancing down at the mahogany red, knee-length dress that cloaked my body, it appeared tasteful enough for this unnaturally odd meeting that will occur far too soon. The dress screamed plain yet refined.

The make-up I hasty applied to my pale and tear-stained face, was unadorned and simple. What little I did was more to cover up the dark patches underneath my eyes. I felt like an artist trying to bring life to their dying portrait.

And my undomesticated hair, was pulled tightly into a half-up and half-down ponytail. Compared to a model, I would blend right in with the wallpaper. Nevertheless, on the private jet here, I'd found no brawn to exceed the outfit I brought together.

However, to say I felt like a worm next to a butterfly, was an understatement as my eyes sliced towards Blanche who sat mumbling to herself in the corner of the taxi.

She appeared to have emerged straight from a fairytale. Her warm ivory skin set off the tones of her white blouse which laid beneath a black button up vest. The black slacks in which sheltered her long and slender legs matched well with her pale peach lipstick.

Her honey blonde hair was styled and cut in a butter-fly method which framed her face well and descended her shoulders as well as her back gracefully.

At the moment, she was the definition of elegant, sophisticated, and beauty.

She truly was a butterfly...

She'd barely spoken on the jet nor in the taxi, yet she mumbled soft prayers in her native tongue. I tried my best to pretend I didn't understand the rushed French that raced from her lips. Nevertheless, as the sentences, 'please allow him to be kind,' and 'please allow him to love me,' slipped off her tongue, I found great difficulty in suppressing the urge to demand that the taxi driver turn the car around and drive us back to the airport.

Clenching my fists together I threw my head to the side and sorrowfully filled my eyes with the busy streets of New York.

Oh, how I wished I could be anyone of them...

To trade my life for just a day, an hour, or even a minute. To breath without feeling like the world rests upon your chest. To think without having to put everyone's needs before your own. And to just run...to escape to the end of the world where nobody knows your name, and where nobody's fates depend on every decision you make.