Tobias

23rd of March 2017

She had always despised the grandeur of weddings, and would laugh wholeheartedly at the enormous gowns that caused the women to penguin themselves down the aisle. She would have been satisfied with just the two of us, the witnesses, and the ones we loved. The purest display of ‘love’ shared only with the people you did love. But she wasn’t who I’d married and it wasn’t her who walked out on her well-funded life to go crying to her mother, about her lack of satisfaction.

Thinking about her again made my body ache, in need and in exhaustion of the memories. Being around her was as easy as breathing, it was carefree, it was light, and hauntingly beautiful. Always so distant, but only ever in reach for me, that’s what I’d always believed. When we were younger, she was my entire world, I was consumed by her, wanting to please her in every way I could. The reward of that tinkling laugh, filled my whole body with an irreplaceable warmth, that nothing else has ever come near to filling. She wasn’t like Rosie, who needed material things to be happy, who needed to spend cash to feel fulfilled, who needed to fuck each other senseless just to have some form of so-called ‘spark’, who used the ‘fifty shades’ cliché to put a marker on what was considered a spicy sex life. She just wanted to be loved, pure and simple. I could do anything in her eyes, and she considered me amazing, because I truly loved her and everything I did was for her. In this world, I had never seen nor experienced such beauty than when I saw the surprise and unimaginable happiness that she radiated when I confessed I loved her and handed her a single peony. We were but fifteen, so young and so naïve in love, and I felt so alive and refreshed as though I were bathing in her splendour. The feel of her kiss still lingering upon my lips some ten years later, as though I was there right now, blanket sprawled across the sand as she lay in my arms, my first love, my first kiss, my first everything. But she was long gone, a distant memory, of a distant me, of distant emotions that I thought I had long forgotten. Hauntingly beautiful.

It had been months since I had reminisced about her, but being alone in this house, consumed with only my own thoughts, as they echoed around the house, bouncing off the caverns of my mind and relaying themselves bare and naked before me. The thought of that laugh had my ears ringing, and eyes darkening, hazily drunk on my own memories of it. Why now was this filling my mind? Probably because another relationship was crumbling around me. Although to think of Rosie, the woman I had married, and swore my life to, a bitter taste filled my mouth, and it took all my strength to push it back down into its depths. Regret. Regret for marrying her. Regret for choosing her. and regret for losing her.

Decay was all Rosie had brought with her. My father had warned me against my choices on his death bed, but I was young and reckless. Uncaring to heed the words of a dying man, and too consumed on the idea of revenge. But he had loved her, like his own daughter. He had held a special place in his heart dedicated solely to her, and had left a small fortune for her future, so she could escape me. It had been his final kick in the teeth, a reminder that he would protect that which he held so dear, from his own son. Yet, I’m glad he had the foresight to do so, it would’ve killed me to know that I had poisoned her perfect innocence. Even though I knew that I had already caused irrevocable damage. As though summoned, the scar along my left palm began to burn, another memory of a poison that had soiled her beauty. I was tainted, and if she hadn’t pried herself from my clutches, I was sure I’d have suffocated her.

Maybe it would be safer for Rosie if she never returned, because the longer I thought about her, the more my stomach wrenched in disgust at the choices I had made. Rosie was a toxin that I didn’t have the antibodies to fight, maybe her absence would enable resilience to her rabid words. My previous statements of feelings fading replaced with truth, there had never been feelings to fade. We were just two vengeful creatures, clawing to each other to fill the blackhole existence that we’d created. If I truly engaged in my own train of thought, had I ever believed that what Rosie and I had ever shared was within the ‘cupidesque stage of blissful romance’?

Doubtful.

Rather what we ‘shared’ was a mutual self-hatred, and fear of loneliness. The only thing ‘nuclear’ about us, was the plausibility that we would implode, and leave in our wake the ashes of anyone who dared to involve themselves with us. We had already infected them, it was only a matter of time before they succumbed to the inevitable. She had been our first victim, and from that day onwards, the smile that I had yearned for so passionately, never reached her eyes, they were empty, void of life, and of the love she had held for me.