It's a fact that you can't help who you fall in love with. And for Rosaline Davenport and him, it definitely shouldn't have been each other.
Because, sometimes, love stories have blood on them.
[warning: this is the mother of all slow-burns]
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【 10.
Ten
Bebasi 】
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[ Bebasi • helplessness ]
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THE SUN BEGINS to sink, a few streaks of apricot and plum interrupting the fading blue of the sky even though it’s only half past four. But the nights fall quicker these days, the darkness rushing in to descend over the world—ink black flooding the skies above their heads whilst flakes of winter white dust the ground underneath their feet.
There’s a haunting, melancholic beauty in the beginning of that twilight—in that eventide.
And Rosaline’s heart aches at the sight, something primal in her being capable of appreciating beauty in half-light, in the onset of darkness.
But she rips her gaze away from the view her balcony provides, feeling an odd sensation trickle down her chest at being able to appreciate the world that surrounds her. This world has taken away what it can never give back—how does she find beauty in all its merciless glory? How can she even begin to see the grace in its unforgiving claws that takes and takes without ever asking?
She’s in mourning, isn’t she? If anyone can read her mind right now, she’s sure it is disgust they’ll feel first at her standing there and—and admiring.
She steps back from the closed doors that lead out to the balcony, and draw the heavy curtains tight over the glass, cutting off the sight that her heart wants to thaw a tiny bit for.
Rosaline thinks it’s a good thing that her and Micah’s home in Chicago doesn’t have balconies. She doesn’t have to bother with keeping them bolted and draped forever.
Her lips carry the ghost of a sad smile as she recalls Micah’s preference for housing styles that’s something of a cross between modern and contemporary—all clean and crisp lines, a simple colour palette, metal and steel; just about anything that simply spells ‘sleek’.
It was always such a huge contrast to her love for rustic and airy themes, wooden panels, large bay or awning windows, and balconies with enough floor space to maybe have a spur-of-the-moment midnight waltz to one of her vinyl records.
Something squeezes her chest when she comes to the horrible realisation that she never got to do that with Micah—that her silly, unspoken desire to have him hold her in his arms as they slow-danced under a sky full of stars will forever remain unfulfilled.
A part of her tells her that it’s a regret with no actual cause—for Micah never liked the music from vinyls.
But Rosaline planned on it at the surprise she was putting together for him at the lake house, the one they would have come back to after that annual dinner they attended in Chicago first. She knows he’d have given in to her love for the old albums, that he’d have swayed to Presley’s I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You or Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic by The Police—especially in light of it being their fifth New Year’s Eve together.
