Let Her Go (girlxgirl) (lesbian story)

Chapter Sixty-nine

The speaker had a defined nose, bags under his eyes and a nervous habit of smoothing his comb-over until it shone greasily. The woman behind me had on too much perfume so with every gust of wind it blew forward and nearly suffocated me. I was restless, fidgeting. I wanted nothing more than to punch something really fucking hard. But most of all, beneath all these pointless distractions, beneath the stupid shit I was thinking to try and distract myself, to try to seem okay and normal and as if I could make it through this; beneath all that, I just wanted Baste. 

I wanted to see her smile, or feel her hand in mine, or cuddle up to her one last time. Fuck, I'd even take fighting with her if it meant I got to see her face again. But she was gone. 

How could she be gone? Still, a week later, I didn't understand. I doubted I ever would. The past seven days were a blur of sounds and sights but even though I'd experienced so many new things, I couldn't sharpen in on a single detail. Not one. It was like a dream, scrambled and broken. 

This wasn't working. The man still babbled away in Russian so, because I didn't understand and couldn't push away my horror, I bowed my head to my hands and tried to ignore everything. If only things would slow down. If people stopped going so fast then maybe I could process but as it was I'd frozen while everything around me hurtled forward. And every passing second was a second further from when I'd had her. When I'd last seen her, last felt her touch, last told her I loved her. Why had there ever been a last? We should've been old and grey. We should've had children and grandchildren to remind us of the other every day. To make it bearable. We should have had a life together. It wasn't fucking right and it wasn't fair and it made me so unbelievably angry. I wanted to scream and I wanted to sob and I wanted to sleep for a month all at the same time.

I was so damn tired. I hadn't been able to rest for more than a couple of hours at a time because I always dreamed of her and when I dreamed of her, I would force myself awake. I refused to cheat on my memory of her with a dream.

Yeah, it doesn't make sense but neither does anything else right now so fuck off.

I guess it was because I couldn't have her fade. Couldn't have the real taken over by the imaginary. I didn't want to forget a single thing she was, not a hair, not a pronunciation, not a single quirk or tiny scar or intimidating stare or ticklish spot. Nothing. And if I let these dreams mix up with what she really was I might forget something, or get something wrong, or make something up, and that would mean she was truly gone from me. For now, with her image freshly printed on my mind, at least I could be sure she was exactly as she always had been. Who knew how long this would have to last? I couldn't risk any erosion.

By now the man up front had stopped talking and there was shuffling behind the microphone. Nika's voice filled the air. It almost sounded like Baste's and as I looked up, the world blurry, her silhouette could be mistaken for that of her sister. I gulped down a sob and listened intently to every word of the speech even though it too was in Russian. Language didn't matter so much when every emotion was evident in her tone and gestures. I almost felt like I understood better because I wasn't distracted by bombast.

Watching almost calmed me. She really was so fucking much like Sabastienne. There were glaring differences too but even a pinch of Sabby was something I'd cling to.

I needed her so much, oh my god, I couldn't bear it! I was going to burst. 

I needed to get out of here and fast. As soon as Nika's speech was over, I started up and began practically running between the chairs; I couldn't watch them lower her into the ground, I couldn't listen to any more heartbreak - I could barely handle my own, I couldn't have other people's too! 

There were countless rows of chairs and people blatantly staring as I hurried by. I didn't need to understand Russian to know the mutterings were people asking who I was. Halfway through my walk of shame, I finally broke into a full sprint, unable to stand the faces any longer.

Inside the church, it was still as quiet as before. I sat on a pew and cried until I was gasping for air; my chest shredded down the middle by the huge hands of loss that gripped me. In the void, lay nothing but pain. Pain deeper than anything I'd ever felt before, pain that pulsed through me with every heartbeat like poison, spreading and infecting my body, slowly draining my life: pain I could never forget. If it hurt less, would I then finally be able to rest a while and allow all that had happened to settle? Or at least become understandable because I still couldn't grasp it. I sounded like a broken mind, repeating and repeating but never getting anywhere, unable to forget but unable to decipher. I was going crazy in this cycle.

No one came to find me. They must've wanted to see out the service. Maybe they didn't want to make a scene. 

Disrespectful.

I knelt on the stone floor, pressed my belly to my knees, my forehead to the ground and extended my arms, palms up, under the pew in front. It felt right. It felt like surrender, like asking for forgiveness or something more. Something with bite. Smite me down, if you so desire, for I shall welcome your judgement.

Oh fuck, here I went again. Losing my mind. But not a single muscle twitched. Either I'd truly gone insane or I'd finally realised there was more out there than I was willing to admit. Maybe I just needed a good stretch. Fuck knows.

"Swearing in a holy building, Bobbin?"

I jolted. That was Jonas's voice. How had he known I was swearing?

There were footsteps, I heard them now I wasn't lost in thought, and Jonas appeared, seating himself at the end of the pew.

"Why're you here?" I asked. It came out rude and I bit my tongue, annoyed to discover tone was beyond my control.

"Because you ran out and caused a huge stir. Are you okay?" I could sense his eyes on me even though I was no longer looking at him. "Don't you want to say goodbye ... see her lowered?"

"I don't have to say goodbye," I snapped, "she's still here."

"Bobbin, look," his voice concerned, "I know I'm not your favourite person right now but I think you-"

"Well don't."

It was silent.

Within me, the air was trapped and stagnant. I was a cesspool of every awful thought and emotion possible and I couldn't let it out. I wanted to sob. I wanted to thrust my fingers down my throat and feel that burn. I needed some control over myself because I could clearly control nothing else.

I screamed.

The sound filled the church and sang around us, seeming to hum and grow like a living organism, pressing into our ears harder and harder until we could think of nothing else, feel nothing else, be nothing else; until we were one with the scream and everything it stood for. Then my lungs were out of air and down fell that noiselessness once again.

"Do you feel better?"

"No." I got up and threw myself down onto the bench beside him.

"My ears don't either." He wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me into him. I lay my head on his shoulder as I used to with Sabby but didn't feel any of the peace I'd experienced then. I knew getting over this took months, years even, and it had only been a week but I needed to get better soon. How could anyone bear this for longer?

God, I missed her.