The Anyway Clause

This Isn't a Love Story

|A/N: Press play {Over My Head by Alabama Shakes}|

Jane

I used to always hope that when I talked about Hailey and I it would be this funny, weird, and romantic story. It wasn't anymore. This wasn't a love story. It was a tragedy. I don't know what was more tragic; the fact that my heart was breaking so painfully right then or the fact that I always knew it would happen and yet I was still shattered by it. She managed to make my heart feel cheap. I invited her in and allowed her to do so. I was always afraid to fall in love. Afraid to set my heart free from the barriers I'd built. It was never because I thought that loving so fully and completely only to have it fall apart would kill me. That would've been easier. No, I was always afraid that it wouldn't kill me. Death would pass me by once again. I would have to live knowing that a love so powerful had existed and I didn't have it anymore. I was always afraid I would have to live my life knowing that. And I was right.

I can remember every exact detail of how our story started. I knew why we worked. It was as if we came in at the right moment; the witching hour. We didn't need any reasons to converse. We didn't need reasons to enjoy each other's company. We never needed reasons to crave each other as we fell in love; we just did. I knew walking away was just me going through the motions. I could find a million things to fill all the seconds of the days without her but it would never matter. Because for as long as I would live I would love her. I just didn't know how not to and I would never learn.

Loving Hailey was second nature; it was as natural as breathing. Life without her appeared to be a slow suffocating existence in which I would exist but not much more than that. Before her, I was just a survivor. Sure, I loved Scott and Nan and my treasured Lucia boys, but when she came into my world I started to live again. My mom showed me a love letter my dad had written her while he was away at basic training. He was so open and honest I felt like I was invading some intimate private thing. He told her that no matter what he did with his life, or what came of the decisions he would have to make as time went on, he had already done the best thing he could ever possibly do and that was loving her. He talked about the fact that she was the best part of his life and that their kids were just physical evidence of his brilliance in convincing her to give him a chance. I thought it was romantic at the time but had no clue what those types of emotions meant until I felt them for myself. The first time I danced under the stars to no music other than her laughter I knew two very important things: the first being that I was irrevocably in love with Hailey and secondly, it would be the most devastating loss. I hated being right sometimes.

As I sped down the road the gravity of what I lost began to bear down on me. It pressed and pushed and pulled all at the same time. And the more I felt it, the harder I pressed down on the gas. TJ's stupid car wasn't moving fast enough for me. I needed my bike. I wanted to be a blur but it felt like I was moving in slow motion. The pain was beginning to be too much and I was reminded of all the almost poetic professions of love and pain. They couldn't have been more wrong. There was no beauty in the pain I was feeling. It would be another thing that I'd have to survive.

Somehow, I managed to feel anger in place of sorrow. I knew it wouldn't last but I embraced it because it gave me a moment away from the sadness waiting to embrace me and swallow me whole while painting my world in dreary shades of blue or some other very depressing color I wouldn't be able to escape. I slammed into the gas station. I didn't pay attention to anything. I stormed into the store. I ignored the eyes I felt on me. I ignored the way the hairs stood up on my arms. I waited quietly in line with my head down thinking about how I would have to disentangle my life from hers. And when I finally made it to the counter I paid for gas and returned to the car trying to find the line where "my stuff" started and hers stopped. We were so much a part of each other I knew completing the task was going to further unravel me. I stayed in my own world. I didn't even investigate when the feeling in my gut told me the character walking away from the car was suspicious. I was too angry about all the sweet descriptions of what was clearly hell on earth.