From Dusk to Dawn

Goodbye

For nearly two hours Luke sat outside the restaurant staring nervously across the road to the apartment building, waiting for Alyssa to return from work. When he first arrived, streaks of light could have still been seen floating across the evening sky, now it was replaced by the dark glittering blanket that sent chills down his spine. He tugged at his soft sleek black shirt for what felt like the hundredth time. He should not have been here, he knew that. He promised himself he would give her as much time as she needed, but just how much time was enough. It had been eight days since they last spoke and despite the constant heaviness in his chest, he kept his word and stayed away, but he couldn’t do it anymore.

The lights outside the restaurant glimmered on the growing number of customers while all around the feeling of a festive Friday night was building in the air. He passed his hand through his chocolate brown hair. It was all his fault. Everything was going perfect, like a romance movie girls would melt over. And then came his proposal. Not once in the year and a half they were dating did they discuss marriage, but for him, they were no doubt in his mind. His entire world begun the day they met and continued solely because of it.

He gazed up at the windows of the apartment building where so many had transformed a once hollow room into a home. Right about that time, they would be eating dinner and swapping stories of their day, or watching movies curled up in each other arms. Later on tonight, they would fall asleep with the person’s body heat providing comfort while their heartbeat soothed them to sleep. It was things that most people craved for, but for him, it was once a thing of inconvenience. He never understood how one could so easily share themselves and their lives with another person. To him, the thought alone was suffocating. Now, however, it was all he longed for, she was all he longed for. He sighed as his thoughts drifted back to her. The familiarity of the situation had been tearing him apart since they last spoke. From the very beginning, her first response had always been to run away.

With a few pieces of cake left on his plate, he raised his head just in time to observe her exiting a cab. In a long dark blue coat and with a brown leather bag in one hand, she glided up to the apartment door and out of sight. This was his chance. He had to make things right. He would match up to her apartment, and tell her how much she meant to him and he was willing to do whatever it took to make things work. With fear and desire but fighting for control of him, he rose from his seat and made his way to the entrance of her apartment building. However, upon arriving at the door, he paused with his hand on the door handle.

With the memories of their shared past being replayed, he began to question his decision of going to her. Being with her felt right like that was the way it always was and the way it will always be, but what if she did not really want to be with him? During their first few months of knowing each other, his desire to become more than friends was met with constant rejection and in the year and a half they were together, he was the one to wear his heart on his sleeve while she remained cold and distanced. Now, here he was, eight days after she ran out on his proposal, once again hoping she would come back to him. This left him to wonder, what if for her, he was nothing more than a chapter in her life? What if she did not want him so close to her and her life? He lost all sensation in his body as these questions flooded his mind.

He walked back down to the sidewalk and looked up to her window. Her living room lights were on. It had been eight days since he last saw her and every morning and every night he was tormented by her absence. He had been so sure of himself at the start of their romance but now with the realization that she may not want the same things he did, he was filled with a lifeless feeling that overtook his entire body. It left him defeated. There was nothing else in this world he wanted more than to be with her, but he did not want to be with her if it meant forcing his feelings on her. The next move should be hers if at all there was a next move to be made. With every inch of him falling apart, he bowed his head and walked away from the apartment building.
………………………………………

Standing by her living room window, Alyssa watched as the person she had been craving to see all week slowly walked away. Her chest grew heavy and her breathing shortened. Its better this way she thought to herself again and again. Yet, despites the many reminders from her mind, her heart and body were being torn off little by little as the seconds dragged by. All she wanted was to run to him and tell him how much she missed him and begged for forgiveness. As always, he would burst into a smile like a little child on Christmas morning and in the next instant, they would be locked in an embrace that would separate them from the world around them. The pain she had been experiencing for eight days and night would come to an end and she would once again by able to breathe. It was that easy. All she had to do was go to him. But it was for his sake that she fought against the beast within her.

She remembered the first time she ever saw him, she had fallen in love with him that very first moment and every time after that. Her heart always cried out when he was away and it would dance with happiness when he was near. Even the thought of him was enough to hold her together as she faced the challenges of her everyday life. And while this was enough for her, she could not ignore those moments when she would catch a glimpse of the pain he carried with him. The pain that existed solely because of their relationship. Because of her.

Though she loved him with every inch of her, she did not know how to give herself fully to him.  In the nights they spent together, she would lay awake after he had gone to sleep and in a blissful state, she would silently thank whatever God there was out there for their time together. But then a cold feeling would take over as her mind begun to wonder. What if one day, he came to learn of something in her that was not worth staying around for? What if one day he stopped loving her? What would happen to her then? He was the only one who ever had so much of her which meant he could either make her or he could tear her apart. 

There were so many times since they met when she tried her best to let him in, to trust what they had was real and it was not going anywhere, but whenever she came close to doing so, the fear in her would take over and she would then respond by pulling away from him. And as always, he would wait patiently for her to come back to him all the while bleeding on the inside. She knew no matter how much hurt he felt, he would not say anything, after all, he loved her more than life itself. She saw it in his eyes when he looked at her, heard it in his voice when he said her name and felt it in his touch when he held her. It was for this reason, she ran out after he proposed.

The moment he got down on his knees and pulled out that ring, she knew in an instant it was what she wanted. But thoughts of their past and possible future corroded her mind, and in those thoughts, she realized that he could never truly be happy with her. All the pain he had grown used to pushing aside would one day catch up to him and tear him apart forever taking him away from her. So, she did the only thing she could think of, she ran.

Little droplets of tears rolled down her cheeks and fell on her hand. She could not breathe. She could not think. She could not move. She stood near the window letting the feeling of despair sink in. As the stream of tears thickened, she slide to the ground with her arms wrapped around her. Memories of him flashed across her mind. The memory of the first time she saw him, their first date, their first kiss, the moment she knew she loved him. She thought of the mornings she woke up next to him and the nights they spent together. She thought of his smile and the comfort of being in his arms.

All of her memories with him was now part of their past. She could not go back no matter how much she wished she could. She knew that with the passing of time, her heart would bleed less and less, but for now, she let the pain accepted the pain and faced it the best she could.