Me Without You

chapter five

4:16 a.m. Sunday, June 4th

I knock on the door to where the love of my life lived. I knock on the door to where my forever died.

Tyler's mother lets me in and beckons for me to sit at the kitchen table. She walks to the counter and then back to where I'm sitting.

I'm blankly staring at a wall and still breathing heavily.

She still has not said a thing.

Neither have I.

She hands me a cup of some kind of tea and sits across from me in the small kitchen. After a few more moments of this violent silence, all she says is two words,

"I'm sorry."

Tears streaming down my face still. "Me too." I say looking down. She stands up and walks to the counter.

She sighed loudly, "It's all my fault." she said to her reflection in the window. "I must be the worst parent in the world," she started to cry again. "I guess I can't even call myself that anymore,"

"A parent."

I stand up and walk over to her. I hug her and let her speak.

"It's not your fault." I say slowly. "It's no ones fault. No one knew he was slipping."

I started thinking more. It wasn't her fault. It was mine. If I just actually thought if anyone else but myself for five minutes maybe I'd be able to see that he wasn't as okay as he said he was.

I can't believe I had lost him.

The one thing I wanted forever was gone.

Taken from me before my eyes.

I'll never be happy without him.

"Mrs. Jacobs?" I ask staring into my mug. "would it be okay if I went upstairs for just a few minutes?"

"Yes of course dear."

I slowly walked up the stairs to Tyler's old room.

It looked as it always had. Only slightly a mess. I walk over to his bed and practically crawl into it.

His smell lingered on the pillow and in his blankets. I stand up and walk over to his closet and pick out three things, the shirt he wore last night, the last time I ever saw him.
The shirt he wore on out first date, it feels like it was a thousand years and 10 minutes ago all at once.
The final thing I take out of his closet is The sweatshirt he was wearing the first time he told me he loved me. It was the first Valentine's Day after we started dating. We went out to eat and afterwords, we walked through the woods in the dark..

//Flashback\\
I shivered as his arm pulled me forward slowly.
"where are we going?" I laughed.
"you'll see."

|his first surprise of our relationship.|

he dragged me along, latched onto his arm, afraid of what was hiding in the dark.

"come on it's okay." he looked at me and smiled.

He pulled me into a clearing and held my hand.

"Look," he pointed to a clearing with a small pond.

"It's so beautiful." we sat at the edge of the water.

After a little while of tasteful silence he looked at me and I looked back at him.

"You're so gorgeous," his hand tipping my chin up to look at him.

He kissed me and it was beautiful.
Branches and leaves moved around us in the wind.
I could feel the cool air around me but with him around me I couldn't possibly be cold.

When we stopped kissing he just looked into my eyes.

"Cassidy, i love you."

------

As I came back to my senses, I realized that I was lying on the floor of Tyler's room holding clothes and crying.

I got up shaking, and stood in front of his mirror.

There were pictures of us taped to his mirror,
I took those.

His wallet had a few pictures of us and I took those too.

I walk back to his bed, and crawl back under his covers.

Sticking out under his pillow is a piece of paper, hidden, but not hidden enough.

The paper read,

"To Cassidy,
I'm sorry angel.
I never intended to leave you.
It's all too much.
Thank you for everything.

with love,
Tyler"

I flip it over.
There has to be more.
Those can't be his final thoughts.

three words are written on the other side of the paper

"under the bed."

I slowly remove the blankets from around me and stand up.

I sit on the floor and use my phone flashlight to look under his bed.

I pull out the foreign object.

It was a box with a bow on the top, on the side it said

'For Cass'

~*~