Footprints on my Heart

Chapter 15 --- Sauté

saute (soh-tay) To jump off the ground on either one or two legs.

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When we fall in love, we don't do it with an endpoint in mind, no expiration date on the horizon. To fall in love is to do the impossible, to promise the one thing you can't really promise. We can't promise the future though — we can only promise what we want the future to be — and so if and when things fall through, all of the promises hang in the air like so many splintered things.

And nothing is worse than knowing you still love someone even months after they left your life. Saddest part is in a way you'll always know you'll love them.

I went through the motions of the morning in a haze and it took me longer than usual to get ready. I pushed the doors open, wiping the sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand whilst glancing at my reflection on the door.

In my early twenties, I had taken good care of myself. Medium height and build I had black hair and dark brown eyes blended nicely with a creamy white complexion. I was wearing a tight floral tube top and long brown maxi skirt with black leather Guess hand bag over my arm. I looked around for some milk tea shop. I had forced myself to the limit today, executing ballet dance stunts until the hot mid-day sun had become unbearable.

But I desperately needed to keep my mind and body occupied. I couldn't let Travis haunt my thoughts anymore. Maybe a cold shower would destroy the veil of the sensual heat he had somehow managed to weave around me. Maybe the water could wash away all the marks he had left on me. If his taste ever left my lips...

I felt uneasy throughout the day as I always did when I didn't hear from Travis but I have to feel the hate. I have to hate him

I should hate him for being the only man who had been able to dominate me, I should him for I had given him my virginity, I should hate him for deluding me that we could make it work despite his own setback. But I should hate him most for making me feel as if my stomach had turned into a knot every time I see him .

"You know I can't leave Mich. That's too much"

I came to the realization that the people we love, linger inside of us long after they've said their last words. Travis' ghost is still lingering there like an unfinished sentence, a waiting prayer. I still feel him there in the shallow waves of sleep each night and beneath warm memories of the past that haunted me just as soon as I swear to myself I've long forgotten about him.

I was willing to see the worst of him and the best of him at the same time. Love both parts equally because I thought it made me stronger, that somewhere in the end it'll be us.

But no. Maybe he was kind and smart and knew all the right things to say at all the right times but eventually that other side of him slipped.

I went back to searching through rows of shirts from Addidas. I knew that I wasn't going to buy anything; I was just going through the motions. I was doing that a lot more than I would like, lately. There was no going through the motions in it.

I didn't know what I was doing in the department store, looking at some workout shirts, but not really interested. After that final goodbye I did on Travis, I needed something to dive into. It wasn't that I didn't have any ideas about what I wanted to do next. I had plenty. It was just something to kill the time before I got back to my lonely home in QC. For some reason, the place that I had called home for the past years, suddenly didn't feel very comfortable. In fact, it was downright stifling.

There was a voice in the background. At first, I didn't acknowledge it because I hadn't expected any strangers to call me by name. As I walked back towards the front of the store I heard a voice. When the sound drifted from my subconscious to the front of my brain, I quickly turned toward the source.
"Monique?" the voice called out.