She used to wish that someone watched her, knowing that he did. She could feel him, across a room, through a window, tingling in her spine.
And it dawns on her that in 10 years, she never felt Roy's eyes on her, not once, not that way.
But then again, she had a list of, "I Didn'ts" for Roy.
- Trust.
- Respect.
- Depend on.
- Feel protected by.
- Feel cared for.
- Expect anything from.
It's pitiful. And she laughs at herself for being cynical and jaded at 27, wonders when that flight came in and whether she only bought a one way ticket.
She envies people who don't ask questions, accepting their lot with dignity, but a whisper somewhere in her ear reminds her she used to be like that, and hated it more than she does this writhing and thrashing over everything.
And she's done a lot of writhing lately, because there's the life she once expected and the reality that came instead - swift and uninvited.
She battles them both.
One tugs at her imagination, the "might haves" and "could've beens" stunning her into silence.
Debilitated.
The other scratches and tears at her heart, her mind. Her faith in everything.
Most of all, him.
Not the one she left, the one that left her.
He was everything Roy wasn't. Did everything Roy didn't.
But she wasn't brave and one too many dreams deterred left them both a little vacant, a little broken.
So now he's a memory. Distant and faded, blurred like the lights of a cityscape in a nighttime photograph ... beautiful to look at, but smeared and strung together like something that will always move too fast to really capture, something that only stands still in the moment you're there with it - not after.
She rubs her eyes and sighs into nothing, wants to reach her hands toward the space in front of her and see if she can find a little place to breathe, thinks maybe she should send one of those cards to PostSecret - splash her heartache and turmoil and love onto a 4x6 piece of cardstock and share it with the world, give a piece of it away. Maybe send a piece to him.
Instead, she makes up the bed just so she can crawl back in, and promises herself that tomorrow - tomorrow when he's back - things will be different.
