Coffee and laughter at our café in town. As we drove back to the house, the journey had been a dark and silent kind of ride that cherished the absence of words, lit by the energy of things unsaid.
He rolled the windows down as we drove over the gravel road, through acres of dew-scented meadows. I breathed in deeply and let my heavy eyelids droop as I turned to look at his face.
It was too dark to see each other, really. But I could still see the way he had looked at me over our cappuccinos: with that sexy gleam that made me feel like I couldn’t say anything. Or more aptly, like I wanted to scream something so profound that the words hadn't been invented yet.
When we first met, that look had made me want things that I barely even knew how to want. Even now, years later, he couldn’t know what it did to me. From the shadows of the car, he felt me look at him and his warm hand moved to cover mine.
We reached the end of the country drive. Now the engine was off. Crickets, night music, and warm air.
We sat there for several moments with unbuckled seat belts, saying nothing.
He leaned over to rest his lips against my forehead and I breathed in his familiar sun and earth scent.
I pressed my lips to his with feather-lightness. Home.
…..
It was a simple evening of simple pleasures, and we had experienced many like it. But that night was different because none have followed since.
Perhaps because of this, those are the moments my mind has taken and wrapped so carefully for my dream-self to live over and over again. When I wake up to find them vanished and empty, I feel like I can’t breathe, like all the air has sucked through the gaping hole in my chest and abdomen.
We were happy. For so long we were happy. But maybe I always knew that so much of a good thing wasn’t fair in a suffering world.
That morning, when I woke up next to him, he was changed. His arms were familiar, and his face, and the rest of him, but it was not him.
He jumped up out of bed, and looked at me with the eyes of a stranger. I scurried out quickly after him, twisted in the sheets and feeling panicked. I grabbed his hand, but the way he tensed at my touch told me that if he could remember the night before he may have recognized my hand as the hand that held the coffee mug across from him, but that was all.
He did not know it to be the hand that had held his countless times, that had placed the wedding band on his finger, not even as the hand that had been burned by the stove two weeks ago when I made us chocolate chip cookies.
He looked at my hand, and he looked at my face, and the panic in his eyes told me what would happen in the next moment. His legs were longer than mine, and he was faster. Of course, I bolted after him.
I couldn’t help but glance in the mirror in the hallway as I ran past it. Had I turned into a monster overnight? But no, I was just typical flushed and messy-haired morning me.
“Aidan!” I cried after him as we raced down the stairs of the old country house. He looked back at me with an expression that I have never seen him wear. He was a terrified child, and the distress written on his face nearly broke my heart.
As his hand pulled the door open the light outside almost blinded me. The door closed behind him, and I opened it two seconds later.
Then he was really and truly and totally gone.
