cardigan [h.s.]

Chapter 52

It was weird for him to see her with someone else. The notion of her moving on after everything they had been through through the years boggled him. The moments shared between them slipped away like wine.

He had to watch another man love what he thought was his. His forever drifting far out into the depths of the sea, leaving him on the shore. He always used to think, "That girl is mine. She's my girl." It was how he introduced her to family and anyone who was willing to listen. She was his. He never thought there would come a day when she wasn't.

But, was she ever really his to begin with?

A question he had asked himself many times since he ran into her again. She always seemed like she was looking for a way out of everything. Even being with him. A habit of hers was to run when things got good because she had no idea if she would ever feel that way again if it was to end badly.

She would run like foxes do. Knowing places to hide out away from everyone watching. Her mind was a battlefield that tore her wide open. Her insides on display for everyone to see. The mangled mess that made up the girl he was in love with.

In the end, she couldn't handle the stares, and she did what she knew best. She ran.

From home. From the watchful eye of her overbearing mother. From her friends. From him.

Radio silence from the other line for years. Not word was heard from her. No one knew where she went. She found a foxhole.

But, he could tell this woman he met was nowhere near close to the girl she used to be. She was mature now. Older, not just in age, but also in the way she carried herself. Smiled in way that it reached her eyes and made them crinkle in the corner. Her hair was longer now, brushing past her shoulders.

She looked like everything he ever hoped for.

Only to lose because in her grand scheme of reimagining herself and manufacturing a different person from what she was years ago. She had found a way to also open her heart up again. She learned to love again.

And it was not with him.

Harry

When I was young, (and my family actually went back home to London for Christmas). My nan used to always tell me this story.

A story about a string—an invisible one—connecting you to your one true love. The one person who carries not just their own heart, but a piece of yours as well. She used to say that it could stretch, bend, get tangled up, but never break. It would always continue to connect two people. And she said it didn't matter if you were separated from each other, ignoring the string attached to another person for years.

She said, "You will always find your way back to them."

She called it a heart string. I call it fate.

Diana is the one on the other end of my string. We have stretched our beyond compared, got it tangled up to the point of almost being impossible to sort it out. But it has never broke. I can feel it tugging me towards her, like magnet on metal. I gravitate towards her.

I like to think my our heart string is what drew to New York. I think it's what made me beg for the transfer from Boston. No compasses or signs told me go. It was just a feeling.

Our heart string was saying it's time.

Last night was just another indicator that me and Diana are connected by this invisible string.

Diana, Cornelia, Niall and I all hanging out together again. It was kind of like we were back at that lunch table, all sitting together and chatting some shit. But, this time around, it felt different between us all. So much history between the four of us, that we all decided to avoid for the time being.