Immediately, tears formed in my eyes, and I closed them so they wouldn’t grow. I didn’t want those tears to streak down my cheeks, to let my emotions break me down all over again. It was hard not to picture him doing that all the time, for the rest of our lives, and our children remembering what their father did for their mother when we were gone.
He stepped into the bedroom, pulling off his shirt as he went. His shoes and jeans came off next, his expressionless eyes on me.
I closed the book and set it aside before I turned off the lamp, so no one could see us together through the open window. My top came off, my bottoms, and then my panties.
He didn’t say a word, just like I asked. He moved on top of me and dug his hand into my hair, kissing me softly, cradling my head as we exchanged purposeful kisses, our breaths coming out at the same time, our tongues eager to greet each other.
My arms circled his large torso, moving across his broad back so my nails could anchor in his flesh. My knees parted and squeezed his waist, my ankles locked together against his ass.
He continued to kiss me, his hand slightly shaking, like he couldn’t believe my lips were real, that the strands against his fingertips were really mine. Without saying a word, he showed me how much he loved me, how miserable he was every single day we weren’t together. He showed me his devastation, his agony.
I combated my tears until they were gone, but when I felt the pain in his soul, felt how much he hurt on a human level, the wetness couldn’t be stopped. The drops grew until they leaked past my closed eyelids, dripping down my cheeks to the thumb of his hand that rested against my face.
He pulled his lips away from my mouth and moved to the teardrop that made it to my neck. He kissed it away before he moved to the other, gathering the drops like they were too precious to fall.
When he came back to my mouth, his eyes looked different.
Wet.
Reflective.
Emotional.
My hands cupped his face and I steadied him, so I could look at him, see the same look mirrored back at me. My heart shattered even more, witnessing the strongest man I’d ever known come apart the way I did, show his vulnerability like he didn’t care how it made him look.
He positioned our bodies so he could slide inside me, combine our souls so we wouldn’t have to feel the anguish anymore. So, we could get lost in each other for a while…and numb the pain.The instant we were done, he got out of bed and pulled on his clothes, keeping his back to me. He dragged the long-sleeved shirt over his head and pulled his bottoms over his tight ass, purposely not looking at me, like that was the last thing he wanted.
Then he exited my bedroom, not saying a word.
I went after him, naked, unsure what I would say, unsure why I was following him at all.
He moved quickly, like he wanted to avoid me, wanted to get out of my apartment as fast as possible, unable to look at me because it was too damn hard. He stepped into the hallway and pulled the door shut behind him without turning around, his arm moving behind him and locating the knob by touch. Then he left.
I stared at the closed door and listened to his footsteps as they became more and more distant. Even when they were gone, I thought I still heard them, but that was just my mind playing tricks on me, fabricating my desires.
I turned around and saw the sunflowers he’d left for me. He did his best arranging them, but they clearly had the touch of an inexperienced hand, a man trying to impress a woman without knowing how.
I grabbed the stems and moved them around, turning them into a professional arrangement. I stared at the yellow petals, the light to my darkness, the torch on my forgotten path.
Then I started to cry.Sleeping together was a short-term solution that created an even bigger problem.
Maybe we should stop…for both of our sakes.
That was so hard to do, to take away the one that kept me going, that kept me focused on the future.
It was opening night at the ballet for our new production. We’d been training hard for weeks, getting ready to debut our holiday performances. Instead of doing a show we’d already done in the past, we learned new choreography, new versions of old songs, so our loyal audience always had a reason to come back.
Work was one of the few things that got me through the breakup because it kept me busy—and tired. Without it, I probably wouldn’t be able to sleep at all, and it also gave me a reason to get out of the house, to focus on something that had nothing to do with my own pain.