Please, Remember Me

Chapter Twenty - The Touch of Your Hand

Two weeks later I was back at work, back to my routine and holding on as best as I could.

I'd finally called the rest of my friends and told them I wasn't dead or dying, at least not literally, and that they wouldn't find my body floating in the Thames anytime soon.

I was back to work the day after I made Adam his burnt eggs and I was... powering through.

Sure, all of them studied me like I was about to blow, all of them knew pretty much what had happened and were worried about me.

That came with the territory I guessed.

But after two weeks of me coming into work, answering my phone and generally behaving like a functioning human being again, albeit a new version of me, the worried glances started coming less and less frequently.

And I was glad.

I was still hurting massively, the pain hadn't lessened at all over the days since it happened.

It only seemed to grow and shape, morph into this constant part of the new me.

The me that was broken, and probably for good this time.

I was starting to figure it would never lessen, that this was going to be my life now.

I woke up and missed him, I worked and I missed him, I came home and I missed him and I fell asleep missing him.

It was always right fucking there.

I had bad moments, insanely bad moments, mostly late at night when I was alone with my thoughts and memories.

The fucking memories.

No matter how hard I tried, my mind strayed back to all those days and moments that I'd catalogued while I was with him. The passion, the comfort, the joy... They were all things that came back to haunt me now.

I couldn't forget it, would probably remember every detail for as long as I lived.

And I desperately hoped that wasn't true.

It sucked.

I analysed every single one of those details, searched through every conversation and moment and looked for clues. I was desperate to find what it was that had gone wrong, where it had begun and what I could have done to stop it all. I wasn't very successful.

The people around me also noticed that I wasn't the cheeky girl I once had been, they saw some of my pain no matter how hard I tried to mask it and shove it into a corner of my being.

But that wasn't something I could control, they'd notice no matter what I did, I only wished for them to stop worrying.

Sure, I'd had my two days of despair.

But I was a strong, grown woman who'd encountered heartbreak before, a different kind sure, but still heartbreak, and I was dealing as best I could.

I was strong, Olga taught me to be, I needed to be strong.

So, I fought and I dealt and I tried my hardest to process and forget.

That was the way these things went. You battled and hoped for victory, no matter how many limbs your army was missing.

All is fair in love and war, right?

I didn't hear from him again.

I didn't get any texts, calls, emails or letters. I erased him as completely as I could from my physical life shortly after I read those last texts from him.