Smoke of His Breath // Ethan Torchio

lesson 99: you shouldn't have threw it all away

Ethan Torchio's POV

I'll never forget that long drive home
After you said what you needed to say
You have no idea how deep this goes
You say you're protecting me
But I know you know that's a lie
What happened to compromise?
You left me here and I
I'm still wondering why you never called back
I still need you
And now I'm just lost like a map with
No direction cause you never called back
All I hear is silence
Now I'm just broken
Like a shattered piece of glass cause you never called back
(You never called back - tommy boi)

*
I walked around the streets for a couple of hours. I had promised Marlena yesterday that I would pick her up tomorrow from school.

Even though I spent limited amount of times with her, I enjoyed every minute of them. Even though she was Damiano's kid and as much as it was hard to admit, I could see so much of Carmen in her.

Carmen.

I was a child when i met her. In kindergaden. She was like every other girl in there. With braids, with toys. I was like every other boy there. Going after what seemed troubled.

I knew her for so long. I've known her my whole life. But if I knew what she would grew up to mean, I wouldn't wait until high school to know her. To love her.

I've known her for my whole life but she had allowed me to love her only for a year.

If I knew all the times we would lose, I wouldn't have waited a second to make a move. Because time we spent together was a single dust in a big desert.

It wasn't fair. This wasn't fair.

We had loved too much. We lost it too quickly.

Last year of high school was the best year of my life. That's why it was so fucking hard to let it go.

Over the past 5 years, we had won so much. None was complete because I had lost her.

We had made so much money. I didn't care because she wasn't there to spend it with me.

We had been so successfull. I never felt it because she never told me so.

We were loved by so many fans. But even their love wasn't enough to replace hers.

I had fucked so many people over the past years. None of them made my body burn like she used to make me feel.

I could still remember when we were studying at Damiano's place. Before we were dating. We had an argument about if Pride and Prejudice was better than Love in the Times of Cholera.

She had insisted that love in the Love in the Times of Cholera wasn't real because he wasn't faithfull to her.

"So you think, the love in Love in the time of Cholera is more impactful? He literally gets into relationship with over 500 women. He says he waits for her, who by the way is already married with someone else. How is that a fucking good love?" she said. Her voice getting louder.

"Love isn't measured with sex, Carmen. Unlike Eliza and Darcy, what Florentina and Fermina have is real. They really love each other, even though they are apart for years and years. Their love remains committed, even when their bodies aren't."

I was the biggest fucking proof of she was wrong and i was right.

I had tried so much to wash her touch off of my body. Because even when she wasn't touching me, I could feel her. I could feel her all around me. Every cellI have had memorized her skin. But she wasn't there anymore and she wasn't goimg to come back.