McDonalds

Why did you leave?

The bell rung as the last class that he had in his schedule finished and he was finally free. He poured out of the exam hall with the rest of his peers, and checked with Siri if the traffic was alright for his weekly ritual. Biking through the route they had taken together for 2 years; the painfully bittersweet memories flooded into his head. Yet almost as quickly as they had come in, the flood gates closed and instantly he suppressed them and pushed them back down into the pit where he keeps the rest of them. But today, they came back up rising as he pushed them back, as a nagging fact entered his head; it was her birthday today, and he had forgotten. He should be on his way to the cemetery to put flowers on her grave, like any normal person would and should, but instead he was going to the McDonalds where they had spent 204 days in. He stopped, his calculating mind whirring for the first time in 197 days. Sleep is for the weak he decided, as the sun was setting, and pedaled full speed towards the last place that help happy memories of her.

The was sun bleeding across the sky as it sunk into the horizon when he was going across the mile of crappy road that they were most fond of complaining about. The unfinished sidewalk and the gravelly like texture was hell for the tires of their high speed road bikes, yet the memory of her tire shredding once didn’t enter his head, only the destination was in mind. The pink streaks had changed to red as he biked across the two mile stretch of road that she once called “Fuck you God, stop tempting me damn it”. Yet the memory of how close they had been to pulling over to one of the many McDonalds here, instead of at the mall, on a winter evening like this one didn’t enter his head, only the destination was in mind. Snow began to fall and the orange turned to light blue however the memory of their kiss in the middle of a snowstorm didn’t enter his head, only the destination was in mind

When he finally did arrive at the destination he’d been focusing on, all of those memories came flooding back in once more, this time floodgates couldn’t close. He was blasted by a torrent of memories and he relived it all within a fraction of a minute. What first seemed as a nostalgic trip to a happy place they’d shared had opened up an old wound that gushed out more pain than the original infliction. Welling up tears he locked up his bike while snow gathered up in his hair, making a white crystalline crown that she would have ruffled out or teased him about; if she hadn’t cut that deep on that fateful night. Then the monster rose up from the depths of the ocean in his mind, the ocean where he threw things into, hoping they’d never come back to haunt him. The picture of her body in the hospital as they desperately transfused her, the deep gashes that she had on her wrists, the picture of her in a coma and the picture of her heart beat going flat. It was all too much. Stumbling into a wall, he collapsed into a heaving mess too exhausted emotionally to go on. He couldn’t go on. It was right there, their treasured spot, but it takes two to make a “they” doesn’t it?