Feathers and Sand

Part I

The Scarlet Letter stares back at her from her desk, and she believes that in this instance, this is some higher power trying to get the message through her head that cheating is wrong. For most people, you are taught to always do right by others. So, clearly, Emily should’ve known better than to cheat on her boyfriend. But that damn Barakat was just too irresistible from the moment go. She just knew he’d get her into trouble.

She pushes away from her desk, desperate from a break from the sad room that’s just big enough to keep in all the secrets and painful memories, but not big enough for the addition of anything more. Her feet decide on the beach—as they numbly carry her there—, and all its vast spaces, that can provide miles of escape from her thoughts.

“Jack, this is so wrong,” she whispers against his lips while his hands find themselves searching her body.

“So wrong it’s r—”

“No,” she interrupts, allowing herself to laugh before she gets gravely serious, “So wrong I think it’s time we end this.”

“Em, what are you saying?”

Why is he doing this now? Why is he looking at her this way, with those big, sad, brown eyes? Why is he saying the one syllable that could always get her to cave? Em. It seemed like nothing, but to her it’s everything. The only person who she ever gave permission to call her that was Jack. It’s his thing, their thing.

“J-Jack,  I can’t do this anymore… I can’t cheat on Austin.”

“Oh, so the five months leading up to now were what then? Practice?” he pauses, nearly bursting with anger as he pushes away from her to stand at the side of the bed, “You know what you are, Emily? You’re the asshole at the car dealership. You’re the asshole who asks to test drive the car, adjusts the seat and the mirrors, changes the preset stations, gives the little knick in the dashboard a name and then decides not to buy the car; only to buy another car from another dealership from down the road. But, you know what, if you had just given the first car a chance, it would’ve been the best car you’d ever driven. The car you turned down was actually the better car, but because it might’ve been a little bit more work to keep, and a little bit more money to buy, you chickened out and you went with the other car, the one you wouldn’t have to put in the extra work for; which is pretty shitty on your part, all things considered, I mean you basically fucked the other car over. You got its hopes up, only to kick it in the balls and say ‘Nope, fuck you, first car! I’m gonna go get the other car, because it’s better, somehow.’ Somehow, there’s always another car, a better car. Somehow, there’s always someone better… than me,” by the end of his metaphor, his voice is breaking and she can no longer bear to look at him, “Someone is always better than me. And I thought that for once, for once, Em, you were gonna be different. I thought, for the past five months that I was good enough, finally. I felt like I was good enough for you. Clearly, I was wrong. I was so wrong. I will never be good enough for anyone. You and everyone else on this fucking planet have made that clear.”

“J-Jack,” she manages to stammer out, “Don’t talk like that… I just… Right now is bad timing for you and me. We can’t be together right now. Maybe sometime in the future.”

“You can’t ask me to wait for you to figure yourself out, Em!”

“I’m not asking. If you truly love me, I won’t have to ask because your heart will answer that question on its own before the question even comes.”

And now, here, in the dark, after the storm and its aftermath has settled, she is left alone. No Austin, no Jack, just alone. Alone with her thoughts, and his words, her heartache, and the ghost of his touch.

She’s almost envious of him. While she’s stationary, stuck in her own heartbreak, he is unchained, un-caged, and freed, floating away; like sand, or feathers. The beauty of both sand and feathers is that you can never hold onto them for too long. Some say it’s because they’re never meant to be held by one for very long. A feather is a particle, separated from its whole. It never has anywhere else to belong to except the place it was separated from, and so it goes on a search, looking for a temporary home. And sand, the trouble with sand is, it’s always slipping through your fingers. It never has a desire to be held onto.

So, maybe, just maybe, she is the feather and he is sand. Both always just out of grasp of everyone, never meant to be held; one in the same but not quite similar enough to be a perfect match, not quite similar enough to be together.