Carl ran his fingers viciously through his hair, then down to scrub viciously at his face with the palms of his hands, trying to claw back some kind of grip on reality.
He stared again at the computer screen in front of him, at the inbox from the one person he had never believed he would hear from again.
Hayley had left him a year ago, gone to god knew where. Her Facebook page, what had once been the centre of her life now stood abandoned, unused. When she had left, she had left everyone, not just him.
There in the inbox were his last messages to her, begging her to come home, to call, to let him know she was alright. Begging for a call that never came.
Carl had been slowly pulling himself together, trying to live without the woman he had thought he would spend the rest of his life with. He had gone through all stages in the past months, swinging wildly back and forth between depression, sadness, anger, yet he was still waiting for acceptance.
A bit of a loner before she left him, now he was practically a hermit, barely seeing anyone that wasn't work related or immediate family, they just didn't understand. Their friends had tried at first, but one by one they had drifted away, not seeming to want him now that he was just a him, not a them. He'd driven them all away with his antisocial ways and his depressive thoughts. Only a stubborn few had remained, interfering in his life under the guise of 'helping' when all he wanted was to be left alone with his memories.
And now there it was, just one word, simple little letters that from anyone else would be so casual, but from her, nothing could be further from the truth.
*Hello*
That was all it said. But it was enough. It couldn't be her; he didn't believe it.
*Who is this?* he finally typed back after staring at the message for more than an hour.
The reply came back almost instantly
*Hello? Are you there?*
Carl just stared at the screen before finally replying.
*Why are you messing with me?*
He didn't like it, it wasn't fair. Why now? Why today?
He couldn't cope with it, it wasn't fair.
*Hello*, came another message, and even though he didn't want to get sucked in, his heart beat quicker, his fingers reaching for the keyboard even as his brain screamed at him to stop and think.
*Hayley? Is that really you?*
He didn't want this, couldn't deal with the heartbreak, not now, not when he had a date next week, a date that he had been trying to wriggle out of, still not feeling ready. His friends had pushed him into it, telling him that he needed to get out more, to meet new people. even though it felt like the last thing he'd ever want to do, they promised him that he would feel better once he'd done it. He'd promised them he'd try, had been forcing himself to embrace the idea... but now, now she was in contact, and he didn't know what to do.
He'd begged for this, pleaded for this, prayed for this, wanting her back more than anything, not understanding why she had left him, why she had gone, leaving him all alone. She, who had coaxed him out of his shell from the moment they had met, she who had held his hand and promised him that she would always be by his side, she who had made him believe her. Then she had abandoned him, leaving him to cope alone.
*Are you there?*
She always used to say that when she got home from work, are you there? She would fling open the front door and yell out to him, seeing if he was home. They used to come home together, at the same time every day, but that was when they worked at the same office, the office where they had met. She had breezed in one day, this angel that became his beacon in the darkness that always seemed to surround him.
