"You used to care more," I whispered into the dead of the night. Quiet words with a punch carried over the air waves to someone that I used to know. My phone free hand tucked against my side for warmth as the arm it was connected to was crossed protectively over my chest. A stance the receiver of my distant call would have described at defensive if miles didn't separate us. "What changed between us?" A question to haunt the graveyard known as the world surrounding me.
The muffled sound of breathing the only sound of life from her end at first. Followed slowly by the tap of on her manicured nails against the screen of her phone. A noise so familiar that let me know that this conversation was now private as it should have been from the beginning. A trait of hers I had grown accustomed to, but never fond of. Dragged back to a night many moons ago when I first asked her about it. Her voice calming me as she explained that she preferred to not keep secrets from the world; nothing but hollow lies these days.
"Becky, you know I said it wasn't meant to last," the words like ice as they pulled me back to the present. Each one as solid and deliberate as she always was. "Nothing changed, you're blowing it out of proportion like you always do," she said with the same pointed tone as a crackle here and there broke up the monotony coming from her end of the phone line. Small sounds that hinted at her getting out of bed, moving away from whomever she had been with.
I braced my self as bet I could as each frigid word washed over me. A chill worse than the one caused by standing outside taking over my body anyway. "That was a long time ago Eloise," the words coming out in a rush as I scrambled to recall the day we me, the day she said those very words to me. Letting myself drift away into those distant memories for a few too many moments.
It had been years ago now when fate threw us together for the first time. At the time we were both lost, fresh faced freshmen in a new environment vastly different from the one we were used to, that I was used to. Pretending to blend in with the crowd around us as we casually mingled with a large array of our peers. Hollow conversations lingering heavily in the haze filled rooms, on the dimly lit porch. Vaguely I recall being lucky enough to find an empty seat squeezed between her and a fellow who looked as awkward as I felt. Neither him nor I belonged, it was obvious in the way we both clung to the requisite red plastic cups like life lines to a better world.
Somehow she ended up falling backwards on to my lap with a high pitched giggle. Her full cup hitting against my equally full cup causing the questionable content of each to spill over the edges, raining down upon us. The silence between us seemed endless at first, but then we were laughing as our bodies meshed together. A kiss here, a squeeze there; intensity at its finest. Movements child like in their exploration an obvious declaration of our lack of an idea as to what we were doing. We both merely knew that it felt right and that was all that mattered.
It was early the next morning when she told me those words that came to seal our fate down the road. Each one barely making it passed her chapping lips as she whispered huskily in the dark. We untangled ourselves from one another, from those collapsed around us carefully after that. Two daring mice making a peep in the wake of dawn. Not once during our escape from aftermath did I question her. How was I to know that she still clung to that conviction as our worlds collided so effortlessly?
"Time doesn't kill a feeling, it was never meant to be," death to something beautiful done with poetic words; a scene right up her frigid alley. Faintly in the background the hint of a door clicking open a tad and then sliding fully open to the dead of the night. Chattering teeth confirming the door opening while signaling what I already knew to be true. She had embrace the outside world in the form she said felt the most natural, most comfortable. Pale skin prickling over with goosebumps as she tempted the moon with her beauty, her nudity. How many times had I watched this ritual of hers from my bed, still lost and tangled in the bliss she could bring me? Too many times to count these days; troublesome memories that brought with them a long forgotten rosy tint to my olive cheeks.
"Love doesn't disappear in a flash," quiet words straining their way pass my lips as I fought off defeat. This battle similar to ones in our past, wrecking havoc on my broken will time after time. Defeat would come eventually though at the pace we were going. The gut feeling wrenching through my entirety even as I dared to defy it, dared to deny it completely.
"Who said it was love?" A question I should have seen coming. Unrequited love is a force to be reckoned with. I never should have blinded myself to those moments together when I spoke of love and she never reciprocated the words, the free falling feeling. "You were only a good time, a free ride," years of being joined at the hip summarized into an ugly, wilted thing. Beauty between us was truly gone, transformed into an unrecognizable horror.
"This is goodbye then," my final words coming out with not hint of a shake; imaginary courage and confidence taking control. A finger tap of my own and the call was over with, the realization of salty tears on my face piggy back riding in on the end of it. Yet through that flash of regain awareness came a strange aura of peace. I knew now that in time she would fade away into the background of my life, my mind. There would be no such luck for her though. Forever a part of me would be stuck to her; a ghost for life in her shattering world.
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