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Incredible final moments capture the entire span of a relationship.
FORGIVE-ME-NOT
(The Hurt Dance)
Two lovers were standing apart in
the night, stationery figures on a brick pathway with overgrown grass on both
sides. Years went by then they just reached the end somehow, their time
together had elapsed and now it was only a question of saying Good-byes.
Eric was a foot
taller than Joy and his shoulders were squared up while hers were relaxed. The
fine tips of their hair were lifted on the breeze.
“This is it then?”
said Joy.
“I
never thought it would be like this.” He spoke in her direction as though
ashamed. He tried to smile. So did she.
Most
of the sky was obscured by fast-moving clouds, and light shined on her pleasing
round face with a weak glow. Resentments, regrets, many feelings were crammed down
inside. What-ifs and What-now thoughts revolved. Neither would soon forget the
anguish of peeling apart.
He
said, “I’m sorry about anything—”
“Don’t
apologize, it makes you look weak and I don’t want to remember you like that.
It doesn’t matter now.”
“Right,
nothing matters anymore,” he answered.
His
car was parked in the driveway of her new place with the headlights on and the
engine idling quietly in the background. The pathway stretched out ahead and
behind them, all the bricks laid out in an intricate zig-zag pattern like saw
teeth grinding against each other.
Both stood at a
loss with neither wanting to turn away first. Joy was all soft and warm-looking
at him, awaiting their final embrace. She had sparkling gray eyes filled with
confidence and a curious type of remorse that came from command over him, and
deep, but defused intimacy.
“Are
you staying in the apartment?” she asked with a cheerful inflection.
Eric
shook his head. “You’ll get your security deposit back.”
“No,
keep it.”
“Everything
about that place reminds me of you. I’m already preoccupied thinking about
you.”
“Why
shouldn’t we think about each other?” she replied. “We aren’t dead.”
“No,
we are dead.” He pointed back and
forth at Joy and himself. “D - E - D. Dead.” He was implying that he would never
take her back again but her eyes and mouth opened like there could be something
more terrible in his words.
Above
them thick clouds flew by as pieces of dark purple sky broke through. She
wondered what she would remember most about Eric. His tenderness, the warm
brown eyes and the way he looked at her and made her feel, countless things.
Always with another future in mind, though. She was never touched in anger, but
sometimes she wished Eric could be more forceful, stronger. He became too
insecure, going so far as to blame himself for the breakup that he never saw
coming, and she was often bratty though he’d never say that about her. Looking
back on it they never had a chance of enduring as a couple. Grieving hearts,
misunderstood enough, paused in this acknowledgment as pained smiles stayed on
their faces for what would be each one’s very lasting impression of the other—complete change.
Moments
seemed to pass in excruciating slow motion. How would Eric remember her, not
knowing a tenth of what was true for her now? As they had been before, of
course! Anyone could see that.
Blessings, messy blessings. The cloud banks
raced across the sky in jagged shapes while the two of them barely moved. Eric
leaning forward and thin, and Joy, straight with a rounded profile were both
poised in their familiar poses. They resembled works of art waiting on the
final touches to be given by their painter, their entire strangeness rendered
in swirls of promise and futility, pressures all around them and circumstance
between them, and somehow, renewal beneath their feet.
At
last he extended his arm out to Joy. That was enough anti-climax for him.
Her
pretty moonface was mixed in sorrow and affection, like saying, “I do…I do love
you…” And with this and nothing more to offer him in consolation, she stepped
toward him.
He
stepped back. She took another step forward and he took another one away from
her, still reaching his arm out and smile evasive.
“What
is this, You?” she demanded playfully.
“It’s
ambivalence!” he replied, amused at himself.
She
pretended annoyance with hands on her hips, and they found themselves gazing
freely into each others face again. But, they quickly caught themselves with both
of their heads tipping back, and staring hard at one another instead. It was
hard to believe how special they had been when they looked so common now. They
looked like any relationship that ever went downhill.
The
darkness poured all over them. Car headlights pressed like two thumbs on the
throat of the night. It was down to this, only this, what they had amounted to
after all this time, really nothing, hardly even friendly. No retreat back into
the foggy dream of her breasts or any passion, they were just destined to be
more or less the way they were right now.
The
upper parts of Eric’s face were pinched in agony. Joy saw desperation in his
eyes and a flash of distress crossed her face like a quick passing shadow. She
wielded enormous power over him and he was helpless and tortured by it. Not
bad—she could control everything with no effort.
He
finally spoke up, “I don’t know when we’ll see each other again.”
“I’m
not sure that we should—”
Suddenly he delivered
a weak slap to Joy’s face, more like the tap of killing a mosquito or an
afterthought he had. Shocked by his own deed Eric braced for her reaction. But
she stared back at him as if nothing happened. He could not believe it!
She was astonishing, ridiculing him.
It ignited the unbearable
helplessness in him and he struck her soft face rather hard this time, freezing
them both in disbelief, then in shame.
She
whipped her arms and kicked Eric in such a rage that it was all he could do to
tumble them both down on the ground. Instead of screaming Joy focused every
shred of her strength into the punches to hurt him ten or twenty times more
than he hurt her, kicking him and pummeling his head and face with her small
fists. He accepted the beating and protected his private parts, warding off
blows the best he could.
“Loser,
loser!” She spat hatred like steel chunks. “Complete frikkin’ loser!” Smack! Thack! Thwack! Thud! The hits flew.
Read the most exciting and astonishing parts of "Forgive-Me-Not" in the upcoming FlightBook
Love Stories!
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