iMeet Cute | ✓

↺ 004 : serenity & delusions

First he was August, then his image melted away into one I couldn't quite place my finger on.

He lowered himself onto the tiled pool's edge, his messy brown hair in a shrunken pile atop his head. The crooked grin sent my way was nothing short of teasing. In the early morning hue, he looked quite the angel.

Well, I could be an angel, too.

"Hey," I repeated, debating whether or not to get out of the water. I wanted to get as far away from him as possible, but I also didn't. He was right there. There were no witnesses. Would it be so wrong to indulge?

Maybe I couldn't be an angel.

Maybe, he wasn't one, either.

"Do you plan on getting out?" His voice was different, too. So was his complexion. With every passing minute, a bit of his truth was stripped away, leaving a shell I was not at all familiar with.

I wondered if his hand would still fit perfectly in the curve of my lower back. If I could still bury my face in the crook of his neck.

Maybe we were supposed to learn. To know each other as well as we knew ourselves. Maybe us breaking apart was part of the plan all along. Maybe this was what we really needed. Maybe this was our reckoning.

"You know how much I like it here," was my reply. I leaned backwards and let the water take me, eyes daring him to come along. August Wilder didn't like the water. This new version of him, though? He didn't seem to have trouble coming after me. Not even while he had his clothes on.

His movements were more fluid than they'd ever been, and every contour, every crevice of his body I thought I'd once known? They had been altered. I didn't know the man staring so pointedly at me I feared he would see into my soul.

"Why?" His head cocked to the side. He'd stopped advancing towards me, a good distance between us. It was for the best.

"Why?" I chorused, incredulous. Did he forget so soon? Did all our exchanges mean nothing? "Why not?"

Some part of me hoped he would reference one of our past conversations. That he would crack a smile and tell me this was all a big joke. But he did not. Because he was not the August Wilder I knew. And I was not the same Lenny Harlow I had been.

Sure, some things stayed the same, like the feelings I'd spent the past fourteen months trying to suppress, but we were different now.

He looked at me. I stared back.

"What was it I used to call you?" he whispered.

It felt like he was right next to me, like one of the many nights we spent together. He was crushing me with his weight, with the weight of his words. He didn't remember. And I wanted to scream.

Instead, I gathered my emotions. He didn't need to see them. I'd be able to leave this place with some form of dignity if I kept my emotions well hidden.

"Lenore," I told him, tears brimming in my eyes. I swallowed the lump in my throat and began to drift away, but he closed the distance between us and took my arm in his hand. It was then that I knew. Whoever I had been speaking to was definitely not August.

Or maybe it was. Maybe I had been wrong all along. The sparks between us had fizzled out, the electricity no longer existent. The sadness I expected to feel had not come. I promised myself that everything was fine, that I would feel the brunt of it later. I never did.

"What would you like me to call you now?"

I glanced down at the skin of my wrist that was covered by his hand. "Lenny. Call me Lenny."