Next Time, Perhaps

“It's been a long time,” she said, “but I'd know that face anywhere.”

He smiled knowingly, slowly looking up to meet her eyes. “Hey there,’ he said, “You look nice.”

 She let out an uneasy laugh. “No, I don’t but thank you. Life has not been kind to me. I never found my place. I’m starting to think maybe I just don’t have one.”

He gently touched her face. “You will always have a place with me, my love.”

“What is worse?" she asked him, "To never belong and to be alone all your life? Or to be forced to be something that I am not? You know I can't pretend, and the only person who will ever be hurt worse than myself would be you.”

“What is more painful?" He asked on response, "To exist with hope for the slightest possibility or to discover you were a fool to think so?”

She felt tears come to her eyes. “I love you; I'm sorry.”

“Why do you always do that?" He asked her. "It doesn't have to be this dramatic. Sorry for what? I know who you are, I accept that. Neither of us is perfect, nor do we have to be. I want to love you for who you are. It is only you that is convinced that you must be someone else to be loved by me. You don't have to make yourself a martyr or a victim. You don't have to walk away injured,” He stopped speaking for a moment, looking at the ground, and said, “Why don't you just stay for fuckssake?”

“I remember..." she began, " we smiled a lot. I don't know why we stopped. I don't even remember what happened exactly; just that I felt like I needed to run. More than that, I don't want to remember anymore. I don't want to remember a time where everything was always beautiful – nothing has been beautiful since.”

He let loose a heavy sigh. “You're doing it again. Can't you just let me love you? Can't you just accept that, to me, you are enough just as you are?”

“I can't live a damn lie. I can’t stay here.”

“Just fucking stop,” he said, “Just stay. If I can convince you that you are wrong, will you stay?”

“You are an old fool. Do we really have that much time left to waste?” she laughed, “I just want to forget it all.”

He looked at her for a long time before saying, “You know, I’ve waited patiently for you. I put my own journey on hold because you always left the door just a little bit open… I’ve watched you get married and divorced three times, Andi. I can’t do this anymore. This is the end of our story. I deserve to be happy and that can’t happen if I’m holding on to something that is always just out of my reach. I was your backup plan, wasn’t I?”

“No! Of course not! I don’t know how to explain it…”

“I’m the dick you keep in the glass case,” he said. She tried to argue, but he cut her off. “ It’s ok. I’ve come to terms with all of that. I let you do this to me – I am not without blame. The responsibility falls upon me to stop it though. One of us has to walk away, Andi, and I have given you so many chances to just split clean; since you can’t do it, I have to.”

She didn’t speak for a long time; she didn’t have to – the tears glistening in her eyes did all the speaking for her. She knew in this moment she should say something; do something… Instead, she remained silent.

“Now, don’t cry. It’s not worth all that. If I was not enough to make you want to settle down in the first place, I’m hardly worth sobbing for. Let me remember your smile,” He let a small chuckle escape his lips. “You know, when I look at you, I always have and always will still see that silly girl I met all those years ago; always in a rush to get nowhere, putting 100% of herself into everything she does, but never into herself. You are a fire storm, carelessly setting a blaze to everything she touches for a moment just to walk away, then leaving it all smoldering in her wake.

“You might be right Andi, there is no pain in living life like you do, but there is no joy, either. I’ll miss you, probably for the rest of my foolish life. That’s my cross to bear. Yours, however, is much heavier. Eventually you will come to realize that you had exactly what you were looking for right in front of you the whole time and never saw it.”

As he walked away, it appeared as if the sun was setting around him. Her body shook; her chest heaved with sobs that wouldn’t fully escape from her lips. The air around her began to get heavy and as her breath began to grow more and more shallow, the world around her got darker and darker…

Some time later –

Andi struggled to open her eyes; everything was so bright suddenly. She looked around, where was she? A young version of herself approached her and kneeled at her side.

“Andi?” the girl asked. “Will you ever get it right?”

“What? Where did he go?”

“He’s gone again, Andi. He’s not coming back. The Universe is growing weary of your stubborn fears. This will be the fifth time you ended a lifetime without the completion of your destinies. You won’t get another chance after this.”

“Am I...?”

“Dead? In a word, yes. How are you feeling? These cycle completions take a lot out of a soul.”

“What have I done? I feel gutted…”

“Well, you know what they say, you never know a good thing until it’s gone. We go through this every time. It would be so much easier…for all of us really, if you’d just trust your heart and allow yourself to feel joy. Well, time’s up! Time to go back again! This time you will meet in grade school….”

The voice faded along with her consciousness. The next thing she saw was a bright, cold light.