The Art of Never Letting Go (Book 2)

of storms and straws

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She never knew.

She never knew how he would return her gaze with the same amount of longing it took her. She never knew how he slowly died inside, like the entirety of Earth's gravity was pulling his own soul six feet underneath the warm soil by knowing he was the cause of her misery.

In all honesty, there was a tiny fire inside his chest, which kept on living, like his steady love for her, because that's what he said: he will always love her in a way. And that tiny fire was given a rebirth, a second chance, a longer moment to exist. She was sitting on one of those plastic chairs, he knew, because as dramatic as it may seem, he looked at her back when he knew she wasn't looking, or when she's innocently asleep somewhere public. This time, she had fallen asleep quietly, and as he imagines image sequences for his films in his head, her face slowly fell, frame by frame, probably while she waited for the scene to finish filming.

He hated how her face grew more radiant over the years when they were supposed to age, like she was the one responsible why the sun was shining or why the stars are still glowing. She had her arms crossed firmly over her chest though, but slowly getting loose, and he wondered why her fingers were still bare. She could have married someone nicer overseas, someone whose words weren't too clumsy, too hurtful, too shameless, like his.

He had read all of her books, and he knew her magic. How every line screamed his name, how every chapter depicted how they used to be, and how all of her books were just desperate pleas, weaved beautifully, like how poetry and prose should be, for rescue.

But Maine Mendoza doesn't know or write poetry.

Maine Mendoza only knew and wrote Alden Richards.

He looked away, as she jolted back to consciousness, and felt ashamed how a mind so gifted could only write about him, a trash. She was his garden of Eden, by the way - at least she used to be - where all the trees were fruitful, and the grass blades themselves were even softer than his bed, and at the same time, she was the apple, the apple who kept on luring him to just take a single innocent bite.

But it wasn't just a fruit, anyway, because her lips actually tasted like dangerous whisky, or thick blood, he never knew, he shouldn't know - though sometimes he wanted to know. Again.

She was nothing but frightening; a calm, walking storm who was slowly heading towards his heart, guarded by neatly woven straw, and he gripped his finger again, for the metal, for the reminder, for the promise.

It wasn't enough.

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