Infinities

• CHAPTER F I V E •

"We should leave our lovers, so then we can choose each other."

– Leave Your Lover, Echos.

{EVELYN.}

Dear Den,

Hi, it's been a while right? How was I supposed to tell you what I was feeling?, I don't want to ruin your day. But this is long overdue, and you deserve the best explanation I can give.

I'm sorry that I wasn't ready to love you. It's just that you wore the same cologne that he did and every time you put your arm around my shoulder I wanted to scream. It's just that you had a similar laugh; and the opposite coloured eyes. And every time you looked at me through those sea coloured lenses - it made me want to cry. It's just that I can't kiss your mouth without wanting to breathe his name. It's just that you're not him. You're not him. I think we broke each other's hearts. It went wrong somewhere between not loving each other at all and loving each other too much. You know what they say about meeting an old lover? You can't predict how you're going to react. I met you again last weekend, it did not feel like coming home. But with him? His arms feel like coming home and I couldn't look you in the eyes because I felt tears streaming from mine. You held me tight and told me that you had never missed anyone like you missed me, but still it won't ever be us. I must have listened to your favourite song a thousand times this weekend. I think I have it committed to memory. You aren't here any more but something haunts the walls. I close my eyes and wonder if you think about me, if you think of me with disdain like I do you. There are so many things that I do not understand: for instance how a person can be so kind one moment and so cruel the next. For instance, why we fall in love and why we fall out. For instance, why your hands are so near some days and other days so distant. For instance, why I keep on letting you in, knowing full well that you will never stop leaving. But I learnt that goodbye sometimes means 'I love you, but I need to leave before we tear each other's fucking throats out." But please, remember this. There was a love and it was ours. It was ours.

Do you remember out last conversation Den, the last time we met?

*~*~*~*~*~*~

FLASHBACK, 2 YEARS AGO.

"You fucked up Eve. You chose HIM over me. He's a nobody, a nothing. He'll only hurt you. Playing with fire is no good."

"So what?" she said. "Maybe I wanted to feel love. Maybe I wanted it to burn me. Maybe I wanted to hurt, for once, from a good thing; to feel so much of everything that it hurt me. Maybe I wanted to give in to every emotion that I'd ever felt, let it take me to the woods and shoot me in the chest. Maybe I was tired of fighting to maintain my numbness, tired of fighting against vulnerability. Maybe I was sick of being ambivalent, of being sceptical, of not believing in love - or at least the notion that it could last. Maybe all I wanted, all I really wanted, was for someone to knock me out so I could forget every little piece of cynicism I'd ever swallowed, and allow myself to be consumed by everything kind and good and light."

"We were always going to say goodbye, weren't we?" She breathed.

"Yeah. I think so. I loved you though. I loved you so much."

A pause.