STOLEN SMILE

CATERINA

"So the lover must struggle for words."

-T.S. Eliot

†*******†

MY HEARTBEATS SHATTERED ONE BY one, sending a raw ache through my chest.

My vision blurred behind tears and the shimmer of the sun on the marble floors. Once the crying began, it flowed like I'd just opened a dam that had been closed off for years. I stood in the middle of a beautiful apartment and felt nothing but cold and empty. The emptiness expanded until it threatened to eat me alive.

How fitting my belief had been that Jenn was an addiction, because this felt like the worst sort of withdrawal. I was beginning to realize it was more than that—it was love, and this was heartbreak.

I went to the master bathroom, turned on the shower, climbed in, and cried some more. My mind spun with desperate thoughts of how to fix this, but they all ended on a hopeless note when I thought of her coldness today.

Nausea rolled in my stomach.

I'd tried not to fall in love with her, and I'd fallen so hard I was physically sick at her rejection. I could have laughed if I'd had any energy leftover from crying.

I got out of the shower, wrapped myself in a towel, and walked into the bedroom. My bag lay next to the door, and my heart clenched at the sight. A weak sense of vulnerability coasted through me at the thought of Luca hearing me cry. Any other day it would have been humiliating, but as a numbness settled in, the thought drifted away.

Instead of wearing something of mine, I found one of Jenn's plain t-shirts in the dresser and slipped it on. She could be done with me, but I wasn't ready yet. I missed her already, with a physical sense of loss that ached.

It was still midday when I climbed into bed. It felt too large without Jenn. I'd been sleeping with her for a week and now there was a big void on the mattress where she should be.

I wondered if she would let some other woman sleep in her bed. My chest tightened and burned at the thought. I hated any woman who got to touch her, to hear her voice in her ear and have her full attention. I hated her so much and she wasn't even real yet.

If anything, I now understood why women stuck by the men in this world, no matter what they did or said. Love. Why couldn't it work both ways?

I lay there and watched the sun drift behind the horizon until I finally fell asleep.

†**†

Red and yellow lights blurred through the floor-to-ceiling windows and into the dark room. I blinked at the alarm clock that read one a.m. and then rolled onto my back. Fear hit me in the chest, but it was quickly replaced with a relief so strong I felt breathless.

She sat on the side of the bed with her back toward me, her elbows on her knees, and her gaze out the window.

From her mere presence, my heart began to sew itself back together. I knew the stitches would tear once she walked away from me again.

"Start at the beginning," she rasped.

Every cell in my body filled with desperation, longing, and hope.

I sat up. "Of today, or?"

"Last winter, when you ran."

Inhaling a shaky breath, I began to tell her about how and why I left. Everything from Oscar to the carousel to her. How I met her, how I had to watch my uncle kill her, and, wanting to get everything out in the open, that I slept with her.