Choking On Sapphires

51 She's Gone

Alfie walks into his new home after dark the same evening he moves out. To say his words before he left were regrettable would be an understatement. He was always so intentional with his words, how could he have let himself come off to cold and uncaring? This continues to haunt him for weeks to come.

The house is new, it's lovely and pristine and decorated. But it's silent, cold and lifeless. There's fire burning within it, the lack of warmth not coming from anything real, it was more a feeling that had crept into his bones after he drove away from your house that morning.

"Dinner is ready." the maternal older woman, his maid says in his black and white dress and apron as she bows her head and returns to the kitchen after he nods solemnly and grunts. He trudges to his study, throwing papers onto the new dark wood desk. Only half the bookshelves full at this point, a physical manifestation of his emptiness he thought.

He eats, but it isn't made with love and he can now taste the difference. He drags his tired, aching body to bed, the not yet broken in wooden stairs creaking under his feet, interrupting his thoughts. He misses the silence of the stone of your house, it let him wander and think in peace at night. He'd wake his staff up if he tried to wander his own halls, but the much, much smaller townhome, three stories of new wood and stone wouldn't let his misery not be known to anyone but himself now. Even though the gaunt sadness that had sat on his face all day, only masked by the anger, that never wavering expression now fading as the moon rose and he found himself alone was giving his true feelings away. He didn't have to wander and make the house moan and groan with the weight of his heavy feet and even heavier consciousness to let anyone around him know he wasn't happy.

He'd not shared a bed with you in weeks, but it was as if it were the first night he was truly sleeping alone. He lay in bed, heavy blankets up to his chest as he looked around the room. The bed sat in the middle, a desk to one side, an armoire to the other and a fireplace next to the door. The window by the armoire was covered with thick curtains and not a beam of light was making its way in. The red and blue coloring of the room, seemed appropriate for his emotions, running hot and cold simultaneously. He wonders if he should've gotten a smaller bed, his hand reaching out to where your body would've been had he been brave enough to face his own damned principles and just let himself give you both what you wanted. He lays back, the fire dying, rolling to his side and closing his eyes, imagining you were there, hearing your breathing, that warm sensation of being near someone who wanted to be near you he tries to conjure to help him sleep. He thought he missed you at night before, but it was nothing compared to how he felt miles and miles away now.

Your first Friday night apart he works. He works all weekend and tries to drown out his heart calling out for you in piles of paperwork. His men already growing tired of this foul mood that clouded his every word and action. The fast pace, the noise, and smog of the city were his only portrait to stare out blankly as he took the short drive home. He missed watching the stone fade to grass, the quiet and calm of the countryside at night as if nature was telling him to calm down, he'd be where he wanted to be most soon. But there was no escape in the city, lampposts seemed to spotlight couples arm in arm with their happy faces as he sat in his car. Even in the garden at his home you still couldn't fully see the stars at night, the horns and shouts and metallic banging of the city a constant buzz in his ears. He misses the quiet, he misses the breeze on his face, he misses you.

He finally comes home and collapses, waking to an empty bed once again. No smell of lavender that radiated from your skin and no warmth to be had. No soft murmurs or tea by the bed, no veil of hair around your sleeping form like a halo, he feels so depressingly alone. He hadn't realized how alone, and having been on his own so long before you came into his life, he could now feel the gaping wound the absence of such companionship left within him. He can see now the importance you'd held in his life, not believing how he could've grown to take it for granted.