I'm Sorry

    "She's late." John mumbled to himself.

    He was sitting in his expensive, green recliner chair watching the clock that hung comfortably above his fireplace. He wasn't the sort of high class man to worry about where his beautiful wife come and go, but that night was different. He could feel it. John rested his head back on to the cushion chair from exhaustion and took the time to remember his younger days.

    John remembered that Margaret, his wife, was brought into his life in his teen years around the age of sixteen. She was the beautiful girl with golden, blonde hair that could curl or straighten whenever she wanted and she had the figure of a coke bottle that all the girls were jealous of and that all the boys wanted. John wasn't the popular teen like Margaret was. He was the poor, nerdy dude with huge, black spectacles that were to big on his pale face. Their meeting together was by chance, a very slim chance. She had to work with him on occasions and with each occasion they were brought together closer and closer, making John believe that this was the only girl that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

    After a few years of their get-togethers, Margaret had to leave out of his life. She was moving with her fiancé, who unfortunately wasn't him. John frowned at the thought of that other man that she was with, but then he smiled because Margaret chose him and not that other man in the end.

    John lifted a finger and moved his black spectacles back on to his nose for the fifth time that hour. John believed that he was always kind to Margaret. Still they had their little fights and after every fight Margaret would leave, but then she'll come back at midnight, feeling guilty. So when she came back, she would always say that she was sorry. But this time she was late.

    John shifted his gaze from the clock to the window that rested next to him. He couldn't see anything through the dimly lit darkness, except for a few shapes here and there that looked like trees and shrubs. John took in a puff of smoke from his pipe that was in his other hand and easily released it out into a single white stream of smoke. He just looked at the smoke as it slowly disappeared from in front of him, mingling in with the other particles in the air.

    John glanced one more time at the clock and noticed that the hour hand rested firmly on the one and the minute hand on the twelve. John let out a tired sigh. His eyes felt heavy from the lack of sleep and his body felt stiff from sitting in his chair for such a long period of time, waiting for Margaret.

    "What if she--" John said, but then quickly shut his mouth.

    He didn't want to think that there was even a slim possibility of her leaving him after all these years. Yes, they fought, but it wasn't as if he didn't love her. He married her after all and he would do anything for her.

    "I would--"

    John paused. He saw a figure cross in front of the window that he was staring at a few minutes ago. Without any form of hesitation, he jumped up, dropping his pipe onto the wooden floor, and rushed out the den area towards the front door.

    'Margaret!" he yelled, opening the front door.

    His once hopeful expression changed into a disappointed one. His hope for his beautiful wife to be there on the front steps was vanished as he met nothing but darkness in the face. John took a shaky hand and ran his fingers through his short, brown locks. He then took his spectacles off his face and rub at his hazel-nut eyes. He wasn't old, only being in his mid thirties, but he felt like he was. His hair even held a few gray streaks, but he had them ever since he was little, because a lack of pigment color in a few parts of his hair.

    John chuckled as he remembered the first meeting with Margaret that she told him that the gray streaks gave him character. John straightened himself up and closed the front door and shuffled his feet back to the den. He was miserable with out Margaret. He needed her. Just as he reached down to pick up his pipe that he dropped, he heard his name being called.