SHORTS: Separate Our Ways

    I waited for Justice to knock. I stared at the key holder by our door that spelled out home and the custom-made wood carvings just beneath it that read: Justice and Deanna. Her knock startled me. I stood in the doorway, opening it just enough for Justice to walk through. She was coming to get her things. This was finally it. I watched her as she moved from the front to the back, passing pictures of us that hung all over and picking up things that were once ours when we were in love.
Now out of love, they were just hers.
I could see her sneaking peeks at me as she moved around. Her pain was apparent and so was mine. I never understood how loud silence could be in comparison to noise until that very moment. Had we finally run out of things to talk about? How did we get here?
For a second, I wanted to read her mind and see if she was thinking the same things as me. There had been a point when her love was exactly what I needed to get through every day. I had to admit that the days hadn’t exactly been easy without her. So did I still need her love to make it? Yes.
         I felt my heart beat fast as she walked over to our dresser and sat down the chain I’d bought her for her birthday. I wanted her to keep it. At least then, I’d know she would remember me long after time had healed both of our wounds and new lovers were in place.
She sat it down slowly, and that was enough for me to know that it was hard for her to part ways with it and possibly me, too. She never did hide her emotions well, but what Cancer could unless it was behind exaggerated anger. I loved that I knew her so well but I hated it, too, because it would make it harder to erase her; harder to forget that she liked her burgers plain, her friends loaded, and a Dr. Pepper to wash it all down.
Now I thought of everything that I would have to forget: our first date when she held my hands and asked me to be her girlfriend wedding proposal style. Us sitting on the floor of the bookstore reading Canterbury tales, Nikki Giovanni, and Shakespeare. Her giving me the last of anything she was drinking when we went out to eat just because she knew I wouldn’t finish a refill and she liked to share. She would leave the television on my favorite channel—Lifetime—and run my bath water. I would complain about it being too cold. Justice got angry at me when I took too long to get into bed. She needed to kiss me every night before we fell asleep whether we were angry or not. I’d remember the fact that she wouldn’t sleep without some part of her body touching mine. Then, every morning she greeted me as though she hadn’t fallen asleep with me the night before. The thoughts of our movie dates and Blockbuster nights, just us. I’d be forever haunted.
         She still packed. I wondered what she would miss about me, if anything at all since she was pretending not to care right now.
         I knew better.
         She had her favorite things about us. Our clubbing nights, where because of me, we always had to match each other no matter what; we’d actually started matching by accident. There were story nights when I read to her sliding in some poetry sometimes. I kissed her entire face, gave her countless back rubs, we took long showers; made love beneath the drops. I’d wash her back and she’d wash mine. She hated my random biting, but loved the nights she caught me singing by accident. She carried my bags when we shopped because I was too much of a diva to do it. Who would I put my feet on now as I slept? She’d never find another to give her our reinvented butterfly kiss, which was my long lashes, fluttering against her cheek. Why are we over, I thought.
         She threw her bag over her shoulder and turned to face me in our, no my bedroom. It was the first time we’d looked into each other’s eyes since the break-up. My soul lived in those eyes; they set me on fire. She reached out her hand, my my door key in her palm, but I didn’t want it. I walked past her stretched arm, standing close, pulling her bag from her shoulder and dropping it to the floor. I reached for her chain on the dresser and unhooked it, latching it around her neck. I spoke in a whisper since the tears that sat in my throat prevented me from speaking louder, “Don’t… ever…” I paused to hold my tears, “…take this off again.”
         My hand shook as I reached up to touch her face. Her eyes started to water. She grabbed me tight and held me close to her and it shocked me. I wrapped my arms around her and she buried her face into my neck and started biting at my flesh. I could feel her tears running down my collarbone as she kissed me. She tossed me onto the bed and stood beside me removing her shirt, then her sports bra. My eyes widened. She hated to expose her chest, so this was just like saying I love you.
        She pulled off her shoes, then her jeans and boxers. She got into bed, leaning over me and raising my shirt. I pulled it over my head, exposing myself to her. She pressed her skin against mine and lay in my chest. Her tears were warm. I reached my hand to her face and in my mind I had flashes of the first time I wiped her crying eyes due to her thoughts of not being good enough for me because she had nothing to offer. That was so far from the truth. She leaned up kissing me again, while sliding my pajama pants off. She kissed down the middle of my stomach but I grabbed her head. I didn’t want to have sex. We lay in bed holding each other and crying. This is what it took for us to understand each other. We couldn’t get anything right, because in arguments we had the same problem, we never saw the other side. However, this was love and love was where we both wanted to be. We had achieved love and now we had to get through the hard part—loving the flaws of each other. I looked into her eyes. ''I'll unpack your bags.''
        She kissed me and turned around so that I could spoon her. She liked when I laid behind her and held her. That was the only time that I didn’t mind seeing her back.

©2011 Christiana Harrell