A homeless thief breaks into a house that has nothing worth stealing - except for the heart of a lonely man who is obsessed with time.
*****
Blake has been living on the streets for...
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-Jordan-
On Thursday morning, I woke up with a horrible feeling in my gut. I hadn't gotten much sleep that night, and I felt tired when my alarm went off. I made the bed, took a shower, dressed up, did my yoga, talked with Mom and Mr. Xavier, made sure my flowers were all right in the balcony...
I stopped to stare at the city in front of me. Blake would leave me, if not today, tomorrow. He said he would be gone for a week or two, but I wasn't sure if I could handle it. Especially if he didn't come back... The life I had before meeting him... I couldn't go back to that. I didn't want to go back to that! Why couldn't he see that? Why was he still planning on leaving me?
I shook my head. We had known only for a couple of weeks. I was being ridiculous. Why would he care about me, about some stranger he met in odd circumstances? Why would I care if he left or not? I definitely wouldn't have, if I wasn't such a freak who couldn't handle any kind of change in my life. After two weeks, we were barely acquaintances, two people who happened to talk for an hour every evening.
Shivers run down my body, and I returned back inside. Acquaintances... Now that wasn't true. Blake meant so much more to me, but I couldn't believe the feeling was mutual. It was too soon to even think about it, not only after two weeks. But... that man was special, I couldn't deny it. Or I was just so big of a freak that it was special only to me.
*****
I knew we were going to have that conversation today. I could see it in Blake's eyes when he climbed up on my balcony and smiled at me. He had to go. It was time. I wasn't going to be the first to bring it up, so I waited patiently for Blake to find the courage to speak up. It was his choice to leave, so I wasn't going to make things easier for him.
"How are you?" he asked carefully.
"I'm fine," I said, even though I was not fine.
I focused on getting ready to start painting. I grabbed my palette and poured different colors on it, waiting for Blake to continue speaking. He did continue, but he just talked about his day and asked about mine, and before I knew it, we had spent almost half an hour talking about everything else except about his trip.
When it started to seem like he wasn't going to bring it up at all, I had to change my mind.
"Do you have to leave?" I asked, interrupting him when he was telling me an old story about... I honestly didn't know what he was talking about since I hadn't been listening. He shut up in the middle of the sentence and looked at me timidly.
"I have to," he said with a sigh. "I don't want to – believe me – but I don't have any other choice."
I put my palette and brush away, and stepped back from the painting. I felt disappointed and miserable. The past two weeks had been the best in a long, long time. I had been thinking about Blake so much that I had almost forgotten that horrible day all those years ago. That day had never left me. I had never been able to ignore it so completely, not until Blake showed up.
