What makes love last?

Iteration 7996.

We sit across the mud-stained table from one another. Our legal cavalry sit either side, worn by a battle they intentionally made worse to benefit their own pockets. The table is so god damn wide, wide enough to fit all the worldly possessions we built together, ready for them to be un-ceremonially separated.

I’m not sad; that's a lie I’m distraught, but not that we’re getting divorced, it’s happened so many times before nothing surprises me any more. What I can’t fathom, as I hear her discuss how we’ll sell the summer house we so lovingly restored five years ago, is why this time it didn’t work. Why after 7996 times I couldn’t keep it alive?

I put my head in my hands. I did everything right, I followed the rules, I played my part. I got that finance job so I could give her everything; maybe it meant I wasn’t around as much but it was all for her she knew that right? I knew her well enough by now though, I knew she needed to fly on her own. All the other times she’d been able to fly with me by her side just not this time. It had happened before but not like this, not out of nowhere.

I hear her voice slow and I look over at her across the table through no-mans land. Her eyes rise to mine ever so slightly beneath wet eyelashes, diamonds of pain just hanging there with no one to wipe them away, a jewelry box of the weeks and months of hurt this so obviously caused her. My body screams. It was my job to protect her, to find her in this darkness not bring her bloody destruction. My hand moves towards her automatically, hers slips under the table.

In a weird way I question whether she knows what I know, that this isn’t the end for us, it’s just another iteration of us finding each other in the abyss. It was my job to make sure our souls found each other, like some kids magnetic science experiment across whatever warped time continuum was thrown at us. She curls her bottom lip, like the way a mouth would if it had shoulders, almost as if to say better luck next time punk.

Between us lay a gaping void, not just in space but in time. The wooden table seemed to expand a little, the universe acknowledging I’d fully lost her in this moment and order needed to be restored. Well the universe could go fuck itself because I knew my job and I was god damn good at it. I would have better luck next time.

Iteration 7997.

We sit across the train carriage table from one another. It is the perfect meet-cute, I imagine us telling our kids how perfect it was. We met on a train as it rattled through the countryside and it was love at first sight and we lived happily ever after the end. 

She has a set of headphones in so I need to get her attention in a non-creepy fashion. This isn’t exactly a problem I know how she thinks, but I have to do it in a way so she doesn’t cotton on to the fact I know her to her core. I never know the situational stuff like where she grew up, that changes every iteration, but stuff like I know she hates cucumber because it tastes too bland. I know if you asked her for her favourite flower she’d say anything that came from a bulb, but leave it in the ground pretty please. I know her favourite painting is Whistlejacket in the National Gallery, but I wonder if even she knows that yet?

Either way, you get the concept, I’m her and she’s me, the universe is willing this to happen, this time it has to be it. When she sat down she’d smiled, keeping her warm eyes on me for a second longer than she should, her yellow hair tumbling round her because she’d obviously run to make the train, standard Karis. My body is hot imagining how quickly this might happen, how we might be in the train toilet banging it out before we even arrive at our destination. Even after 7997 attempts I can’t get over how much I need her, how much I yearn to find her body in the darkness.

I put my hand into my bag, her eyes follow me. I pull out a worn copy of A Picture of Dorian Grey, her eyes widen slightly at the cover, I know her brain will want to ask, you’re a lucky guy if this is your first time reading that, and she would be right, in every iteration in all the time continuums in all the world I am one hell of a lucky guy.

Her face softens with the book reveal but no words come. She lifts her hands to the table and starts texting on her phone, a shining wedding band appears on her slender left hand, not showing the wear and tear of age.

For fucks sake. This was karma for making her so upset in the last iteration, fuck fuck fuck.

Iteration 7998.

We sit across the canteen table from each other. In front of me is a blue tray with an unusual array of chocolate pudding, cheese and a portion of tomato soup, Heinz to be specific. She looks at me with a proud sense of satisfaction, on account of her managing to squirrel together all of these strange items from the hospital kitchen unobstructed.

In front of her is a flask of coffee, she sips it gently whilst asking me how I’m feeling, if I wanted anything else, if I was feeling positive post this current round of chemotherapy. I smile at her.

To be clear I’m not feeling good and I’m not feeling positive. She knows what I know, she is my doctor for heavens sake, she knows I don’t have long left but does everything she can to make hospital trips slightly more palatable.

When she accidently bumped me in the hospital car park I was so relieved, ready to start my courting routine at any time, any place. When I quickly realised she was my consultant that caused a bit of a spanner in the works. Even when I asked her out she flat refused due to breech of contract, saying I had to be discharged as a patient for her to date me. It was fucking typical that since then I'd never really been discharged.

Thankfully, she was keeping alive whatever this weird doctor / patient flame was even when I had no strength to. I loved her even more for that if that was even possible.

At the table her delicate hands cling onto the flask, as if they want to ask a question that her mouth won’t let her. We’d met too late. I was too late. I’d soon leave her, another iteration down the trash because of my inability to say no to a cigarette.

Her hand creeps to mine. I look at her. Her eyes are wet. I need to kiss her and can’t believe I’ll have to wait until the next iteration, whenever the hell that would be, whether I'll even meet her in time. This was becoming a fucking disaster.

Iteration 7999.

I sit at the kitchen table, Sunday newspaper open to the back pages, to the obituaries.

I’d gone through most of this life not being able to find her and then today of all random days she crops up.

Karis Dean, loving mother and wife to Harris Dean, passed away peacefully in her South London home after 10 years of marriage. Mrs Dean taught English Literature at Pimlico Girls School and was a lifelong lover of classical music, playing both the piano and clarinet.

Worst of all I knew Harris, a long time ago, we’d been at university together. He followed the path I bloody should have, lucky sod.

I wish I was back in iteration 6985. The one where we dated in university and she just drifted away. She was happy, I’d made her happy even for a tiny snapshot and she had a wonderful life.

Maybe that was all I could give her, maybe that was all I could do for our flame, just keep it from being extinguished all together. A bright blot in the sky that eventually fizzles out.

I deserved to stay in darkness for the fucking mess I’d made.

Iteration 8000.

We sit across the office table from each other, me holding her script in my hand.

We’re going through her screenplay at the start of a new film production. I found acting when I was older, mainly on account of me having all my hair, and she had come into her own through writing after a successful stint as an actress herself. I’d always watched her from afar, scared at what I might bring if I forced my way into her life.

I needed her to be happy, so much so I’d just stayed away, she deserved everything this world could give that I seemingly couldn’t provide.

We open the first page, her hands are even more delicate in her older years, beautiful and balletic like her fingers are permanently choreographed. I take a breath at the thought of her hand alone touching mine after all these iterations, all these echoes and ripples in time and space, to this moment where we finally sit across from each other after building our lives apart.

Her eyes meet mine, blue and deep. Orange embers flicker in them, like a flame has awoken, like something is only just beginning.

“Our souls already know each other, don't they?”