Red Blooded

Chapter 10 - I remember...

I remember everything about that day; everything about that moment. It's so real in my head that sometimes I wish I could stop thinking, just turn everything off, even for a minute. Sometimes, when I can't stop thinking, I wonder if leaving home was the best thing for me to do.

Sometimes I wished I had never left home. If I had stayed and subjected myself to just another year of torment, I could've gone to college at 16. That way I never would have met Sam and I never would have broken up with him. I never would have gone to a club and got drunk. I never would have gone to that bench on that pier.

And I never would have met him. Marc.

I wish I could stop myself, stop thinking about him - but I can't. I think about him every single day. Sometimes, he's the one that gets me through; other times, I feel like I should have...I should...

God!

Nine months.

Nine, excruciatingly painful, months.

I stumble on my emotions pretty much every day. Sometimes I find myself laughing and joking...but then pulling myself back because I'm sure that Marc would have said something funnier than I would have.

He was like that - funny. He was kind. He was calm. He was gentle and understanding. He knew that I hated anchovies, and that I had a secret obsession with Barbara Streisand. He found out that I was ticklish only on my left side, so when we slept, he made sure that that was the side he would touch when I woke up. His hands would sneak up around my waist and just rest on my stomach. He had this uncanny ability to figure out that when my hormones would strike chocolate was needed. He always had chocolate ready for me - just in case.

And his smile - God, I missed that smile. The first night I met him, it was the smile that got me hooked. I wanted more of him, so much more than I deserved to have.

He wasn't smiling the last time I saw him.

It's amazing how 26 letters in different variations can have such a devastating effect on a person. It's amazing that no matter what way, what order you put those words in, nothing can give you comfort - nothing can stop the pain.

I'm sorry.

Even now, those words seem to cause me so much more grief than if they had come out and said it.

Marc is dead.

He was gone. And I was alone.

You associate your memories with different things: smells, faces, music...words. Those memories stay with you - they never fade.

I will never forget the day of his funeral.

Of Marc's funeral.

Hilary cried. Everyone comforted her, consoled her, and commented on her loss.

Her loss.

Not mine.

Even at my fiancés funeral, everything was about Hilary and her loss.

And now she was happy again - with Hayden. A man that I had fallen into love with at that moment in the clearing on his birthday.

But you know what? I'm over it.

I got over it the moment Hilary left for her travels without saying a word - a week after we buried our futures. The moment I realized that I was really on my own - that was the moment I stopped caring about some parts of life.

That was why I was cutting her out of my life.

I didn't hate Hilary - I loved her, like the sister I never had. But sometimes, when I looked at her, all I saw was that note she left on kitchen table, saying: I'm sorry.