Seeing Him

He looked at me. His hair was still a mess, and in the bright morning sunlight he looked more handsome and more human than I’d ever seen him.

“I guess I’m asking you to trust me,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck.

I stare at him, desperate to block at out the feeling of how much I love his black hair, chocolate colored eyes and the sound of his voice. There was just something about the sound of his voice that makes everything in the world okay, even just for a short a moment. Something about his mare presence that creates a feeling of calmness in me. But the best thing of all is the way he sings along to songs, even if nothing is playing. I would often hear him quietly singing to some tune in his head while he walked around the flat.

“Look, I know you’re upset with me. But I can explain everything if you’ll let me.”

The explanation doesn’t matter now. The reason behind him hurting me in the past won’t change anything in the present. 

“But it’s more than ‘being upset with you.’ What you did? You betrayed my trust. How can I trust what you’re saying when the last thing you did was hurt me?” My voice breaks as I remember the pain and betrayal I felt when i realized it was him who had stabbed me. 

When it comes right down to it, I was the one who had instantly trusted him. My trust only increased when I learned that he was so like me; Similar interests in coding and gaming. The trust further increased when after I feel asleep for the first time on the couch with him near, he turned the TV down so I didn’t wake up and tidied my stuff up into a nice neat pile. Something he continued to do for awhile. 

“Oh please. I stabbed you one time. I knew you would live.”

“And if I didn’t?”

“They I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.” He takes a step forward, closing the distance between us.

“You think I wanted to? You think I wanted to see the look on your face when you realized it was me. That look had haunted me right up until…” He trails off, unable to finish but we both know where he was going.

“Good.” I take a step back, keeping my eyes on my feet. 

If I dared to meet his rich chocolate colored eyes, I know I would drown in the chocolate river. I can’t keep going on like this with love and hatred for the man in front of me at war. Hatred because of what he did. Love because of who he is. It is the ten year anniversary this morning so it is about time I know.

“Why? Why’d you do it?” I ask after several beats of silence because I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t want to know why.

And I’d definitely be lying if I said that I didn’t miss him singing. Apart from the coding, the singing was what drew me in. I’ve always loved singing along to songs but never been confident enough to do it in front of other people and here was this guy clearly confident enough to sing in front of someone he had just met. 

“We were at war. It was the only way to convince Alette that I was on her side. He would have had someone else actually kill you if I didn’t and I would rather have you alive and hate me than dead and…” He trails off, a silent question left hanging in the air; Did I love him?

We never actually said ‘I love you’ as even though we had been together for a while before he stabbed me, neither one of us wanted to say it first. That stupid descion will haunt me till the day I die because I’ll never be able to properly say it now. 

“Do you want to know when it all started?” I ask, ignoring his question for now. 

I never actually told him what started the attraction.

He nods, taking a step closer to me so he’s within arms reach but keeps his arms locked by his side.

“The singing. You didn’t care that you were with sitting beside a complete stranger who was writing a rather murderous and psychotic book. You just sung along to the songs and coded.”

“I mean, I would often reveal how much I know about killing people, and that was in the first few days! You did you’re own thing and it made me fall in love with every single choice I had made up until that point because it lead me there, to you.” I never told him just how much those first few weeks meant to me.

I had just moved to a new city where there wasn’t anyone I knew and he was the first face I saw. The first person who didn’t feel like a complete stranger stranger. A person that when it felt like I had no one, would care that I would wake up at three in the morning or barely eat. A person I had, when I had no one.

“You were even as sarcastic as I was, something I didn’t think was possible. You just got me.” I smile the first genuine smile in a long time as I remember all the moments, resisting the urge to place a hand on his shoulder.

I’ve tried to do it before, it never works so I settle for his chocolate colored eyes. Chocolate had always been one of my favorite things to eat but after seeing his eyes, I was never able to look at it the same way again. He was all I could think about every time and it just made me love it that much more.

“I do.” I answer his silent question. “I do love you. How could I not love your little quirks? How could I not love you?”

He remains silent as he stares into my eyes, searching them for something before he finally says, 

“The singing?”

I nod. Certain songs of he use to play are stuck in my head. Every time I hear them, all I can thing about is him and an instant smile creeps onto my face.

He smirks at me, pulling me closer to him as my eyes dart between his eyes and mouth. It takes him several beats before he pulls me completely into him and crashes his mouth into mine. Our lips move in sync for several moments before I pull back, a feeling a sadness intensify the further we move apart because that it wasn’t real. Too much has happened between us and with Alette still out there, it’s too dangerous.

But the most glaringly obvious reason why this cannot ever happen again is because it’s not real. He’s not real. 

He never was. The love of my life died shortly after he stabbed me.

“You’re not real.” I whisper sadly, wishing more than anything that it was.

“Not in the same way you are.” He replies, his warm smile just as familiar as ever. “But I am still here.”

“Not in the way that matters.” I take a step back, the guilt to much to bare.

He’s dead, he shouldn’t be smiling. He shouldn’t be reminding me of how much I screwed up when it came to him. The worst thing is that he knew damn well what my craziness was like and yet he still liked me anyway. He should have known that I would get us into a drug war with Alette. 

“You’re dead.” I breath out, hating the moment the clock strikes six.

Every year since his death at five in the morning, he appears for an hour to remind me just how much I screwed up before leaving again. The worst part of all, is that I hadn’t wanted to know why he stabbed me until know.

“Till next time.” I say to the empty space in front of me.