While You Were Teaching

Chapter 1- But on a Wednesday in a Cafe, I watched it Begin Again

"People think your soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants.  A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake.  But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave." -Elizabeth Gilbert,  Author of Eat, Pray, Love

Present Time 2017

Dominic Brown was my soul mate.  He was my first true love and you know what they say about first loves.  They are the ones that haunt you forever.  When I think about the moments in which I was truly happiest, he was in every single one of them.  But he was also a part in some of my worst moments, and I can't leave those out as much as I would like too. The sad parts are as much a part of our love story as the happy ones.

My mother always told me that the ending of the story is what was most important.  As an impatient teenager perusing romance novels, I understood what she meant.  If the two main characters didn't end up together, the story had been a waste of my time.  The author was wrong, I was right, and those two characters were meant to be, no matter the obstacles they had to overcome.  This was a story and stories were supposed to end with happily ever afters.  As I got older, I realized that life and love was a lot more complicated than riding off into the sunset.  I learned that sometimes the most beautiful and magical stories have the most tragic and treacherous endings.  That sometimes the beauty is only in the journey and the ugly dark truth is all you end up with when everything is said and done.

Dominic and I had a truly melodic love, but in one brief moment we lost everything, and no matter what I did I couldn't get us back to where we used to be.  He may have only been an arm's length away, but it may as well have been a thousand miles.

 I should have known from the start.  That is what everyone told me. Over and over again until the words became a constant echo chamber in my mind. And they were right. I should have known because we were doomed from the start.  We never had a chance.  But we were too blinded by each other, too busy declaring that no one else would ever understand us, to notice the telling drops of rain.  By the time we did notice, the storm had already begun and we were too weary and he was too scared to put up much of a fight.  The only thing left to do then was to admire the wreckage and reminisce about what once was.

I know that he didn't mean for it to happen, but fate is a tragic thing.  And sometimes even when two people are truly meant to be, fate might decide otherwise.  We fought long and hard, but in the end he was still fire and I was still rain.  No matter how hard we tried we could never get it right.  Our timing was always and forever off.

Maybe if I had been a little older or he had been a little younger.  Maybe if I hadn't been so cynical about life or he hadn't been so afraid of love.  Maybe if he had just said no, or I had arrived a few minutes earlier.  Maybe then our story would have a different ending.

Maybe then I would be in his arms right now, instead of writing this, whatever this is supposed, on dark blue stationary at 2:34 on a Tuesday morning.  I don't know why I'm writing this.  I really don't. It's been three years.  I should be over it by now. Over him by now. I guess I think that if I write it all down on paper, maybe I will stop replaying today over and over in my mind.

It's not that I don't want to remember him.  I wouldn't be able to forget him if I tried; but it's been three years and it's time to move on.  I met him the same way I loved him. With a lie and a smile.

Our story begins three years ago, during my first week in the big, bustling city of Los Angeles.  I had just turned twenty and I was still adjusting to life without my mother's hawk eyes.  I remember it being an excruciatingly hot summer day the first time I laid eyes on Dominic Brown. It feels just like it was yesterday...