Separate Ways - Byler

XII - Hearts Broken in Two

Mike's POV -

My heart was beating so furiously within my chest that it sent shockwaves throughout my entire body and caused ringing to sound in my ears like church bells on a clear, enticing Sunday morning. I was suddenly feeling electrified and every inch of my skin, that had not long since been connected with the body of the only person I have ever loved, was burning in a way I would forever miss once it had faded. The earth beneath my feet had been sanctified by a momentary resurgence of a love many would consider sinful, and yet remained purer to me than anything I had ever read in any holy text. Will and I stood together upon the most hallowed of ground and I knew I would worship that moment and the soft, regretful yet adoring look on his face forevermore.

Though all hope had been clawed from me and my chest ripped open by the merciless talons of a rejection I had known was coming, the sun seemed as though it was shining brighter than it ever had over the last few years and the air I hadn't been able to breathe for longer than I cared to remember graciously filled my lungs. The life that had evaded me for a villainous, lingering age came back to me in full force the moment that I had kissed him. Together with the boy who had always held my future within his two gentle hands, I was in heaven, and so it was only natural for everything else about the earth to seamlessly slip my mind but him. Was I to blame for forgetting that the question of Will's sweet, passionate love now answered to another? I stand by my argument that the fault lay only with those bewitching hazel eyes I'd been lost in from the first moment they had captured me so many years before. I'd been missing from this earth since I was only a child, held as a willing prisoner by the soul of the one I would always love.

Of course I understood that our story wasn't to receive the happy ending I'd always dreamed we'd have. Will had closed the book and discarded everything that we could have been into the flames mere moments after we had parted. Now came the time for the two of us to watch with broken glances as the pages curled beneath its heat and turned to ash on that bitter, sacred city street. The boy I had loved for as long as time itself has existed had turned me away, but not before he'd professed his love and allowed me to hold him for one last time. It was more than I could have ever asked for and far more than I deserved from him, whom had already bestowed upon me enough cherished memories to live through a thousand lonely lifetimes. Memories which I clung to on the death of each day, as I lay upon my bed and asked myself what it was that I had to live for.

Will had now answered this long-debated and impossible question. He had elucidated what I had believed to be an unsolvable riddle by allowing me to once more bask in the glow of his friendship. The cycle of our entwined lives had retreated, it had finally ceased where it had begun between two innocent children on a late-summer's day with only a swing-set for an audience. Perhaps we were star-crossed lovers, destined to never be more than friends and I should have considered myself lucky for those years, brief in comparison with the remainder of our lives, we had managed to defeat Fate herself and share in everything we would always long for in our wildest daydreams. However, those days were no more and I would have to bid them farewell in order to move on with the boy in question still a part of my life.

Adrift on the stormy seas of my own thoughts, I almost found myself standing alone as I didn't follow my friend once he had started walking. Luckily, my legs had always been longer than Will's and they were able to catch up with him before he had perceived my blunder and so the two of us were strolling together, shoulders brushing as we did so.

"Tell me more about yourself." Will pried with what seemed to be a great deal of interest.

"What do you mean?" I returned, confused as to what his words could possibly be searching for. After all, who knew me better than the other half of my own heart?