2555 Days Without You || (One-Shot Competition Entry) √

•One•

Kathleen Ryburg lay awake in bed. She had been tossing and turning for most the night, but every time she closed her eyes and willed sleep, she saw a pair of gold-flecked hazel eyes. Fed up of the torment, she had resolved to stay awake.

She turned her face to the double glass doors leading out to the veranda. The night was still dark. An inky blue apart from the twinkles, the pinpricks of light piercing through the blanket of darkness.

She slid the doors open, went outside and leaned on the balcony. She looked out to the horizon, and then made the necessary effort it took to lift her gaze from the horizon to the starry sky above.

She let out a long, slow breath. Her mind went back to the nights she spent looking up at the stars with Arlando Cassa, the man whom the hazel, gold-flecked eyes belonged, the man with whom she'd shared the stars, than man to whom her heart belonged, the man to whom her nights now belonged, the man who left her for home, the man who she thought she was home for.

It's been seven years, Kathleen. Seven whole years. She chided herself inwardly. I mean really, that's almost a decade! How long does it take to get over one guy.

Even if that guy was like no one she'd ever met before him.

She was so tired of her mind going back to him, both absentmindedly, and deliberately. She believed the pain of his deserting her, of his hunt for the permanent, for something better, better than her, would have died by now. Even at the very least it should have been subdued to a small, dull, distant pain. Not the gaping, desperate yearning for him that she always felt.

Looking at the stars, the faraway dots, the balls of gas up in outer space, so high above her, realigned, and shifted, so that they outlined his face, and she wished she could reach out and scatter the image with her hands.

Sometimes she felt the stars had been tainted by him, with him they were so beautiful, always new, and breathtaking. Now, they were painful, so painful to look at, every glance wrenched her heart back to her last night with Arlando. The night he said goodbye. The night her heart was broken when he told her he was going away. Her heart had never recovered. It was like a broken China plate, super-glued back, but all the tiny hairline cracks were still present, and would always be present, and there were chips too, there were pieces that were gone, that perhaps he took with him.

Kathleen wondered if Arlando still thought about her. She wondered if he still looked at the stars. She wondered if the stars realigned to outline her face. She wondered if he missed her like she did him.

He must have found home, because she hadn't heard hide nor hair of him in all the seven years since he left.

Kathleen sighed and looked down. She turned from the starry night, turned her back on it all and faced the open double doors leading into her bedroom.

Reluctantly her mind lingered on another wonder, a recurring one that came back with all the others.

Did Arlando Cassa ever read her book? Was it really possible that after reading their relationship through her eyes, after seeing how much she cared for him, how much he meant, and still means to her, he had still turned his back on her, on the year he had known her, the year of nights watching the stars? Was that possible? If it was that easy for him to do that, then she didn't know him at all, then he was heartless, then the heart he had was cold and black, and everything, every night, had been an illusion, a dream, a figment of her imagination; then Arlando Cassa was cruel, so very cruel.

It was easier to believe, Landon, Arlando's best friend, who was so happy with the relationship because of how happy Arlando was, and because with her he'd given up his player ways, didn't give him her book.

No, Arlando had it. Landon had promised he would give it to him, he was sincere and true. Arlando had it. But, maybe he hadn't read it.

Lord, I pray he hasn't read it, and that that's why he hasn't reached out.

Or maybe he felt it was too late. Maybe he felt too much time had past. Three years short of a decade?

Pretty long time.

Kathleen had kept in touch with Landon Talbert then, but in recent years they hadn't spoken. Which is just as well because then maybe she would have been tempted to send the letters...

Oh yes, the letters. Perhaps it was time to be rid of those. Yes, she wanted to be done with Arlando Cassa, done with thinking about him, done with loving him, done with waiting on him, because they were done.

Yes, she decided the letters had to go.

She stormed back into her room. Leaving the cold, breezy night behind on her balcony. She went to her bed and retrieved the box of keepsakes there.

Kathleen Ryburg sat on the edge of her double bed, box open on her lap. She held the letters in her hand, removed the rubber band around them, and unravelled them.

Her hands shook slightly. These right here, she thought. These are things I will never get to tell him. But, she had to get it out, and so she had done what she had known to and gotten her feelings down on paper.

But here, sitting on her bed, in the bed lamp-lit room, she couldn't get rid of them without glancing through them once more.

She picked up the first one she ever wrote.