May 19, 2009.
You weren't the one.
You could've been but you were too busy clinking glasses and lighting up your lungs.
I was the one for you, so you said.
But I wasn't into that lifestyle
and she was.
So you kissed her
with me in your mind and her on your tongue.
The scene, to you, was a living, breathing, writhing animal; masquerade parties exhuming faux classiness, stiff porcelain doll people pretending they belonged within such a parody of excellence, a burlesque of adultery and meaningless binge drinking until their livers gave up or the party did. But to you, it was more than just that. The scene became you - you were just as mysterious as the masquerade ball mask. You were just as mischievous as the corsets under the ballgowns, the lingerié hidden beneath petticoats and the rings slipped off of fingers. You became just as deadly as the spiked champagne, or even the cigarettes laced with nitroglycerin.
You felt like the glamorous events gave you validation; turning you from the child trying to play king to Vegas's golden boy. You were always something, but here you were the kind of something that turned heads and gained attention.
You made my mind feel busier than a New York street; people bustling in and out, each with different tales of love and lust and losing and learning, of piebald freckles on skin that wasn't mine and bruises forming planetary constellations, solar systems, mysterious alien worlds in the form of some girl and her wicked, mysterious mind full of so many thoughts and ideas for you to crack open and indulge in before leaving, like you always do.
My mother called last night.
She wanted to know how I was doing.
Fine.
How you were.
Fine.
If I'd finally moved on and found someone she'd approve of for once.
"Technically single," I told her, although my head was blurrier than the static television screen that you left after you threw your high heel into it. "My heart is just taken by someone I can't have."
You always said I needed to get out of my head.
But to me, my head was a prison, and there wasn't any hope of getting out because the Alcatraz of my mind is impenetrable, even to you.
All I ever wanted was for you to understand. For you not to wrestle with my demons but to slow dance in four-four time with them, to understand they could never flee my broken soul.
I remember one night with you.
We stopped by a hotel, late one night, in the heart of your favorite place, Vegas, of course. You were drunk. I was sad. Things were like normal.
I asked you why people fall in love. You told me it was because they didn't have a choice. Our minds are wired like that, you crooned, we don't get to pick and choose what happens, because life isn't like a magic trick - you can't pick a card, pick a card, and hope your card comes back.
I kissed you.
You didn't kiss back.
You told me your tongue was like a weapon and at first I couldn't believe you. You, you were so beautiful and mysterious, and I craved you, all of you, until I had you and you stopped at nothing to break me down into yet another melted broken toy because I was never enough, was I? I was always too loud or too soft or too drunk or too sober or too me and not enough you.
You god damn narcissist.
I would've destroyed myself for the chance to fix you, to mend your broken soul. I'm sorry I was never good enough for the love you deserved. I'm sorry.
Years ago, we were strangers. We made eye contact, that first time. You smiled. I hid my face, but I laughed.
And now we're still strangers. My ghost, how long will you continue to haunt me? You act like you and I were nothing but a fleeing possibility - did the drugs really go that far to your head?
Don't act like we never happened.
Regretfully,
Ryan.
Brendon held the letter with shaking hands and wet eyes. In his hands sat all the things Ryan couldn't say. Ryan was gone, for real this time, and it hurt - God, it hurt worse than he could ever say.
With broken words he tried to garble out i love yous and apologies but like a bullet through a cloud of dust, he was already gone.
There's no sunshine
This impossible year....
