Birds of Paradise

November 3rd, 2015

Birds of Paradise

November 3rd, 2015

  

She heard about their divorce a few weeks after it actually happened.

            “Liam’s been trying to contact you,” Cassandra told her, over the phone. 

            She knew. How he had found her address, all the way to London was a mystery to her. Cassandra had promised she wouldn’t give it to him. She had also promised that she wouldn’t tell him about her feelings though, and obviously that ship had been sailed.

            She hadn’t opened his letters. She knew they were from him—she recognized his hand writing.

            She couldn’t find it in herself to know. A couple of years earlier, the news of their divorce would have been enough to have her hop on the first plane back home. But things were different now—utterly different.

            Elea couldn’t bear to open the letters because she didn’t want to read the lies. If there was one thing she was certain about, it was that whatever Liam would be writing to her in those letters, they were only partial truths. And they were too late. About five years too late.

            But the letters stood there, staring at her, eating at her. She finally opened one. In it, he mentioned how wrong he had been to not follow what his heart had truly wanted five years ago. He was telling her how it could finally be her now that he wasn’t blind anymore and how he wanted to travel and see the world with her and finally be a real part of her life. He talked about fushia and bird of paradise and how much he missed her. No mention of his child or of Marilyn.

            All the while, as she read, she repeated “bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.” It amused greatly the other person in the room with her. She heard a faint “there’s a chance we could make it now, we’ll be rocking ‘til the sun goes down,” being sang. It made her laugh.

            Elea knew exactly what it meant. Liam was alone now and he was turning to the one person he was certain would take him with arms wide open. He wanted to sneak in the life she had made for herself.

            Maybe she never had truly, deeply loved him. She had loved the concept of loving someone, she had been attracted to his good looks. But the feeling she had had for him were nothing more than a misguided teenage crush, because she hadn’t known any better, just like she had been best friend’s with Marilyn because there wasn’t anyone else better around.

            She realized that when they had met, he was the one living while she was waiting for her life to happen, but now the roles had switched. She was living and he was stuck in the bad decisions he had made. Of course he was writing to her now. He was stuck in the same old place. He had never evolved, never changed.

            She had.

            Just like the bird of paradise, kin to the phoenix, from her ashes she had been reborn—from her heartbreak she had become the woman she was now. Her only regret now was that she hadn’t started to live her life sooner.