Someday

“The person you are going to marry is walking the Earth at this very second. That thought alone should give you hope to continue each and every day.”

___

The crisp autumn leaves crunched under her brown leather boots as she strode along the sidewalk to her apartment building. She pushed open the iron gate, the flaking hinges squeaking ever so slightly against the background of the buzzing neon sign in the window of the laundromat next door. She rode the elevator up to the twenty-eighth floor alone and in silence, watching the numbers counting up each year of her life.

Light flooded the apartment as she walked in, and she felt that little quiver of hope like she always did, even though she knew the system was automatic. She unraveled the red woolen scarf from around her neck and peeled off her gray jacket, hanging them carefully on the coat rack by the door. It was nine o’clock, too late for dinner, and she wasn’t hungry anyways. Work had mentally exhausted her, but the gnawing feeling in her stomach only craved for the company of another human being. For yet another night, the kitchen would remain unused.

She stepped out onto the balcony and leaned forward against the railing, a metal pole that separated her from the other eight million people living in New York City. The city lights were just beginning to appear. Her eyes followed their path as they flickered on one by one across the horizon, as if they led to a secret place where she longed to be. The wind whipped past her like a lover’s parting embrace, wrapping her in the smell of fresh linens and the breath of cool air, and she felt the first small droplets from the darkening clouds above.

The sky let go, water pelting down, blurring her view and saturating her bare skin. She stayed. The yellow taxis merged into golden smudges dotting the rain-slicked streets. The reds, greens, and yellows of the traffic lights seemed to blink more rapidly, catching the rhythm of a musical ballad. Droplets of rain landed on her curled eyelashes like the early morning dew drops in Central Park, and she blinked them away slowly so that they left glistening streaks on her rosy cheeks. With the surging sounds of traffic crescendoing in her ears, she thought of the thousands of people rushing home at this very moment, drenched and shivering as they passed through the door until they landed in the arms of someone they loved. She had no one.

Hair matted to her forehead and fingers trembling, she turned around and stepped back inside, shutting the sliding door. The noise disappeared and she was faced with an unwelcome silence that she had long been used to. She stared out through the window and past the rain, focusing on a beacon of light far away. Someday, she hoped, will be here soon.

He looked up from the tear-stained letters he held in his hands and stared at the light bulb above him. Images flashed through his mind as the light flickered on and off mercurially, and he cursed himself for everything that had happened in the past hour. She was gone.

Two years of happiness, two years of building a foundation that he had thought would last a lifetime until she began tearing it down, brick by brick. It was his fault, she had told him before she left. It was his fault for letting her go to her best friend’s bachelorette party, where she lost herself in the eyes of another man. He could remember her blue eyes clearly, but he longed to forget them and the way they smiled when he told her he loved her.

He tossed aside the letters clutched so tightly in his hands and stood up abruptly, fighting his way against the keepsakes that blocked his path out of the closet. The light bulb continued to flicker behind him. On, off. On, off. She was here. She had gone.

His footsteps thundered down the stairs, passing by the framed photographs of their own laughing faces, which now seemed to mock him with a happiness that once was and never would be. He tore through the garage door and plunged his hands into the cardboard box, digging around until he finally found it – a tiny black satin box. He had hidden it weeks ago, waiting for the right moment. The “what ifs” swirled in his mind until he couldn’t take it any longer and he grabbed the ring box in his shaking hands, hurling it against the wall. He knew that in a few days time, he would have the strength to pick it back up again.

He glanced down into the cardboard depths again, now noticing the rectangular white box that had been lying underneath. His fingers reached inside and pulled out a translucent light bulb, smooth and cool to his touch. He cradled it gently in his hands, unmoving. 

Slowly, his feet found their way to the door again and up the stairs to the closet, where he was once more surrounded by memories of a torn past. He unscrewed the broken light bulb, setting it down on top of the pile of letters at his feet. As he turned the new bulb into the socket, something inside him clicked. He flicked the switch on again and the light spread though him, illuminating all things with the promise of new life. He felt the pain leaving him, just as she had before. Someday, he hoped, will be here soon.