A Glimpse Of Us

12:47am

She sits on the edge of their bed, head rested in the palms of her hands. Reliving the thoughts that have crept into her mind the past several days as she hears the faint roar of a familiar engine pulling into the rain soaked driveway outside their home. Tears begin to stream down her face as she hears the sound of the front door opening, footsteps she knows all too well echoing in the eerily silent home. “Babe?” He calls out from down the hallway. “In the bedroom.” She replies softly, wiping her tear stained face in a sad attempt to mask the whirlwind of emotions she’s been spiraling inside. “Hello” He says as he walks through the open doorway, his voice calm, relaxed as if nothing has happened. “Where the hell have you been?” She questions with a sigh, her eyes studying the person she was once so madly in love with, now suddenly seeming more like a stranger than the one she’d planned her life with for so many years. “I told you, I had to clear my head.” He says with an eye roll. She scoffs in reply, “It’s been eight days!” She says loudly through gritted teeth. Frustration captures her mind, as rapid flashes of their life play through her heart, knowing the outcome of this won’t be anything she ever envisioned for herself, for her life alongside him. He runs his fingers through his hair, pushing the dark strands backwards, revealing the clear annoyance in his expression. “Don’t start this with me again” He mumbles as he stares at the ground, an irritated smirk beginning to form across his face. “You promised me we weren’t going to play this game again” she tells him with a slight hitch in her voice, struggling to hold back tears that have been hidden for far too long. “I promise a lot of things, don’t I?” He replies sarcastically as he turns to walk out of their bedroom, the one that was once filled with the scent of their love, now a place of turmoil and anxiety. “Don’t fucking walk away from me!” She yells as she runs after him, determined to solve this once and for all. “What the hell do you want from me?” He fires back, quickly turning around in the hallway to face her. “I want you to actually give a fuck again!” She cries, “I want us to be us again! I want the person I fell so deeply in love with to make me feel at home again, I want our love to feel like love again, not this sick fucking game of you disappearing for days on end doing god knows what, and god knows who, while I sit here scraping the bottom of the fucking barrel to try and figure out the best way to save this one-sided romance that we should have let die with our youth.” She finishes, now within inches of a man with a hollow expression, as if he couldn't care less about the situation at hand. “Look, I told you from the start, you never had to wait for me.” He tells her, nearly emotionless, knowing this will get under her skin far more than snapping back at her. “Will you stop trying with that stupid mind game.” She laughs as tears begin to fill her tired eyes again. “I’m so sick of you using that same sentence on me every time you know you’ve fucked up. I’m tired of you thinking that if you tell me this is all my doing I’ll crack beneath you and let it go, there is no more letting this go!” She shouts so loudly it feels as if her lungs might burst, her heart no longer able to hide the pain it’s been enduring for years at this point. “It is your fault! You chose to stay every time, It has been your choice to sit here with me even when I told you I was in no place to give you what you wanted. Stop acting like such a fucking child” His words slice like the sharpest blades on earth, sticking in her like fatal wounds, sealing their love story one final time. “You’re right, I did choose to stay.” She says calmly, almost as if there’s no more heart to give. “I chose to stay because I saw the potential you possess. I saw the man you could be, the one I know you’re capable of being.“ She tells him, her voice cracking like shattered glass. “I’m not that man.” He tells her blankly. She closes her eyes, feeling the tears of defeat flow down her cheeks, knowing this was the breaking point everyone warned her would one day come, that she could no longer run from once her soul grew so exhausted from the pain, it would have no choice but to set itself ablaze. “Don’t you think I know that?” She snaps as she turns away from him, staring at the framed photos of their life lining the walls of the hallway, the echoes of the people they used to be taunting her with no remorse. “I have been in love with the idea of you since I was seventeen. Because seventeen-year-old me, saw the person nineteen-year-old you could become. I saw the layout for a beautiful life in you, I saw everything I had ever dreamt of inside your eyes, but none of that ever existed, because the person I fell in love with was never there, he was never real.” She tells him in the most heartbreaking tone, knowing damn well these words could never be taken back. She turns back around to face him, the shock of her words still sinking into him. Taking in the expression on his face and knowing after months of silence, her words finally got through, but it was far too late for repair. He slowly walks down the remainder of the hallway, following the dim lit light pouring out from the kitchen. She takes a deep breath as she listens to him moving around just a few feet away from her, hearing a drawer open up, followed by the faint sparks of a lighter. She pulls herself together enough to finally follow him, walking down the hallway that now seems a hundred miles long, turning into the kitchen that’s illuminated by nothing more than a light over the stove. His slender figure is resting against the kitchen sink, the smell of cigarette smoke begins to fill the air, as the haze starts to twirl above him. His head is down, face masked behind his long dark hair, as he takes another drag off the newly lit cigarette between his fingers. “Throwing in the towel takes a hell of a lot of effort, you know?” He says quietly, almost tauntingly. She walks up to him slowly, her movements gentle and calm, she embraces him in a way she hasn’t thought of in months, one she wasn’t sure she even had left inside of her. “But breaking myself everyday just to hang on to something that no longer exists takes even more” she tells him as she rests her head against his shoulder, taking in the scent of Newports and his cologne. He sighs at her words as one hand gently rests on her waist. “So this is it?” He questions with an exhalation of smoke. She holds onto him tighter, fighting back tears as she mourns the future she’ll never get to have with the person she believed held her forever. “This was it a long time ago” she tells him as she pulls away, resting one hand on his shoulder, and using the other to push his hair out of his eyes, revealing the green hue that always stole her heart. “I never deserved you.” He tells her as he rests his forehead against hers. “That’s the thing,” She begins with a sigh. “You never did, but I still gave you every chance to become the man who did.” She tells him as she slowly caresses his jawline. He gazes into her eyes, his thumb now resting on her chin, he pulls her into him, giving her the softest kiss she’s ever felt, one she never thought she’d feel from him again.

One final goodbye.

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