And I will swallow my pride.

You're the one that I love

And I'm saying goodbye.

Say something, I'm giving up on you.

I'm sorry that I couldn't get to you.

I had felt her straying from me for a while now. She had only managed short, blunt answers to every text message. Non-committal replies when asked if she wanted to do something with me. We had been a couple for several blissful months now. I had always known she was in over her head with me. Hell, maybe I was in over my head, too. I had convinced myself that nobody should fall so hard, that nothing should feel so right. Why shouldn't I convince myself of such things—she certainly had? She had been spending all of her evenings at the Penny, most likely trying to erase the mistake I was sure she thought she had made in choosing me—in letting me in. Was I her mistake? I wasn't sure, but I sure as hell hoped not. After months of dealing with her "cat of the tree antics" and chasing her to what felt like the ends of the Earth to keep her in my life we had these past several amazing months with no trouble. I began to realize I was silly to believe things could be so perfect. I thought she had put the running behind her. I had always whole-heartedly believed that people had the capacity to change if they wanted something enough. How could I allow optimism to overrule logic? After all, logic was my shield, wasn't it? It had kept me safe my entire life. Yet here I was sitting in my cold car falling apart in the realization that my optimism may have been sorely misplaced. The truth of the matter is, she warned me. Repeatedly. She warned me over and over again that she was a runner—that she couldn't stay pinned down. Yet I insisted on confining our love in a small basket of a hot air balloon, which I sent steadfastly to the sky. I couldn't help thinking how beautiful it was up there. Everyday with her like a gorgeous warm orange sunset with flashes of pink, orange and red as seen from six hundred meters into the sky. Yet as gorgeous as it was up there—as simple and serene—I knew she was trapped in that tiny basket with me, six hundred meters in the air, with no escape. Looking back on it, I was surprised she lasted this long.

Things had never been easy between the two of us—she would always be difficult. However, that was one of the things I loved most about her. Life with Gail would never be boring. No matter how difficult, life with Gail would never be ugly, either. She brought a beauty into my life I wasn't aware was missing. When I was with her the colors of the world seemed to explode around me—like I was living in a black and white world that she brought color to. The trees were greener, the sky bluer. And her eyes, god her eyes. I knew I couldn't look into those eyes when I set my plan into motion. Those eyes were my anchors to this world, my anchor to her. If I looked into them I would be looking into her. Her eyes were also so closed to everyone else, but I could read them like an open book. I could always see her vulnerability and I made damn sure I was never the cause of heightened vulnerability within her. When her eyes showed she was scared, I held her. When her eyes darkened with lust, I was there. God, I was there. And those were the best moments of my life. Recently her eyes had been ice. The book was closed to me. She was closed to me. I wasn't sure how to fix it, but I had to try something. I had to try something that would inevitably shatter me more than it would shatter her. We had tried her leaving and me begging her to return countless times. The separation was always her choice and she always knew she could end it at the utterance of three words "I miss you" or "I love you" or a combination of the two statements. I always came back, without second thought. I always had—because without her I felt like I was half a person and she was the only thing that could make me whole. Plato wrote in his Symposium that humans were originally created with four arms, four legs, and a head with two faces. Zeus feared the power of humans and split them into two distinct entities, condemning them to spend their lives searching for their other halves. Too bad Plato didn't give a guidebook regarding what to do when you found your other half and life and irrational emotions placed a barrier the size of the Great Wall of China between the two of us. I was pretty certain irrational emotions had far more wrath than Zeus ever had. Although perhaps Zeus had the right of it, feasibly two people with a bond like I felt I had with Gail should be feared. With her by my side I felt like I could take on any obstacle thrown at me with ease. I felt that we could scale Mount Everest in bikinis—that humans could fly—and other totally foolish thoughts. The absurdity of these illogical contemplations never bothered me because I felt that our love defied logic. I should have known that nothing could defy logic. Somewhere in my mind I was confident that this fact never escaped me. Nonetheless, this part of my mind was murky when I was with her. The colors of the world presented to me through her presence dimmed my logical brain into oblivion. While this was wonderful at the time, it was painful now with the realization I was losing her again and that, this time, I was going to have to be the one to leave her.

I knew this is exactly what I needed to do and it absolutely shattered my metaphorical heart. She needed to experience time without me, without the knowledge that she could come running back with her three or six words and all would be forgiven. She needed to feel what it was like to be without me when it wasn't her decision. Perhaps in my absence she would miss me enough to stop her silly running games. At least, that was my sincerest hope. Nevertheless, there was a huge risk in this plan. What if I did this and she was so hurt and she felt so abandoned that she never returned? I knew one fact for sure; Gail was terrified of being abandoned. She didn't mind abandoning people, yet, she could not handle when others made the choice to abandon her. I unquestionably did not want my name to end up on Gail's long list of people who have abandoned her or otherwise hurt her. What could I do? We couldn't continue on this trajectory, we were undoubtedly headed towards inescapable disaster. Perhaps my plan would expedite this, I did not know. The ambiguity befuddled my scientist mind. However, in this, my mind was set. I would leave her and I would hope beyond hope, like hell that she would return to me. I had never been more terrified in my entire life. Neither had I ever been filled with more dread for what I was about to do.

I cranked over the engine and headed towards her place. I texted Chris to ascertain her whereabouts and he told me she was home after a short night at the Penny. The drive was unbearable; I just wanted to get this awful task out of the way. The thought of seeing the hurt in her gorgeous eyes and those beautiful lips turn downwards into a frown nearly broke me. It was becoming hard to see the road with the wash of tears pooling in my eyes and slipping down the planes of my face. I pulled in the drive and entered her place and her room in a blur. She was sitting on her bed disheveled and clearly quite surprised to see me standing in the threshold to her bedroom. I could not bring myself to enter her bedroom. I could not look into her eyes; I could not come closer to her. She was a gravitational force I could not ignore. If I stepped further into her room, further into her, if I looked into those eyes I would falter. So I stayed, awkwardly, in that doorway.

"Holly, what are you doing here?" she said, irritability lacing her voice.

"If I have done something recently to offend you, I am sorry." I begin hesitantly. "Your actions recently have lead me to the realization that something I thought was so right is clearly wrong. We cannot manage to stay together for longer than a few months without you running away from me. If I am not worth staying for, let me make this easy for you, I'll leave and remove the source of your confusion. You won't have to leave the tree, Gail, if the tree is gone. I can't just be your comfort zone, I deserve more than that. I love that you ran to me in times of trouble and every second we spent together was…was absolute bliss for me. It is clear to me, however, that this was not the case for you. I can no longer be the pathetic girl that chases you when you try to leave me every five minutes. I'm worth more than that. You're worth more than that. If you can't stay with me then, clearly, I'm not the one for you. I'm sorry if you ever thought I was."

I notice that Gail kept trying to speak. Yet I rambled through it. An incredibly large part of me wished she would rush to me and shut me up in the way I had become accustomed to being shut up by her—a fierce kiss. She didn't this time, however, she just sat on her bed looking thoroughly broken. I did this to her. I did this. The guilt was eating through me so I did the only thing I knew how to do…I turned and walked away. After all, she taught me how.

I hurry back through the house as I hear her door slam loudly. Even disheveled she was beautiful. I just wanted to turn back the clock and stand in the threshold of her bedroom and tell her how goddamn beautiful she is. Instead, I abandoned her. I fucking abandoned her. How could I ever think this was a wise idea? I rarely used alcohol to make my troubles go away but if I ever needed wine it was this moment. I had a couple of good bottles at home and I made my way back there.

I enter my flat and throw down my purse and coat, kicking off my shoes without a single effort to place my belongings in the proper locations. I drag myself slowly to the kitchen, uncork the wine, and pour half the bottle into my balloon wine glass—silently thanking whomever it was that decided making wine glasses this large was a good idea. I down the glass in record time and quickly pour the other half of the bottle. As I am downing the second half of the bottle my phone beeps indicating that I have received a text message. I know exactly who it will be from and I know that I should not look at my phone. Clearly I am a masochist because I look at the phone despite knowing I shouldn't.

"I hope you know you're a fucking coward."

Perhaps it was the wine, perhaps it was the emotional stress of the day but a text that generally would have hurt my feelings in this situation just thoroughly pisses me off. Who is she to call me a coward? She has left me a handful of times and she has the audacity to call me a coward? I know I can't reply to this message or I will say something I absolutely regret. I slam my phone down on the counter much harder than I intended. I was quite thankful that I did not break my phone in my rage. I lazily put the wine glass in the sink, not bothering to wash it. I had definitely decided an entire bottle of wine to myself was enough for the evening. It was making me sleepy and I was thankful that it seemed to be keeping the thoughts of Gail at bay. I kept the thoughts out of my mind until I climbed into my incredibly cold and incredibly empty bed. It felt like a wasteland without Gail in it. I lay there exhausted but unable to fall asleep because she's not in my arms. I am stricken by a great sadness at the possibility that she may never be in my arms again. That her side of the bed will never be filled with the effervescent presence that is her again. I let myself fall apart. Great sobs wrack my entire body and I feel as if I am going to split apart at the seams any second now. I am crying with so much force that I have given myself a raging headache. There isn't an ounce of my physical body or my metaphorical soul that isn't absolutely aching right now and yearning for the beautiful girl that belongs next to me.

Without realizing it I fall into a fitful and lonely sleep. I awake to the sunshine streaming through the shades in my room. Something is wrong. The sun was far too bright for such a dim world, I realize. A ray cast itself over the empty side of my bed where Gail belonged. I want to fall apart again, knowing I cannot. I have to go through the motions of the day. Perhaps work would keep my troubled thoughts locked away for a while. I would give anything for a break from such plagued reminders.

Work that day and for the next six weeks was relatively uneventful but there was enough to keep me busy. I tried to stay late at the morgue to exhaust myself so that my lonely evenings were short. I hadn't seen or heard from Gail since the text message the night of the incident. Her smile and eyes were burned into my memory but, with sadness, the images were fading. They had begun to seem blurry in her long absence. On one hand I was relieved that the devastation I had felt was slowly but surely starting to ease. On the other hand, I didn't want the image of her to fade; I wanted to cling to it, to cling to the hope that she would miss me enough to return. This is what my life had become—a constant limbo of "what ifs?" and "if only I had done this differently". I realized I deserved every gram of hurt and pain I felt because I had caused her to feel the same.

I was hunched over my desk when I heard a familiar knock on the door. The knock was more tentative and less brazen than usual but it was definitely Gail's knock. I spin around in my chair at a dizzyingly quick speed and see her in the doorway to my lab. With a sharp intake of breath I await her melodic voice.

"Uh," she stammers out "Swarek needs this analyzed" she walks the sample over and brusquely shoves it into my hand.

I make the mistake of looking into her eyes and I see all the hurt I had been trying to avoid seeing on the night I made my epic mistake. Even with those pained eyes and the overall look of defeat and exhaustion she exudes I know she has never been more beautiful to me than she is in this moment. I realize just how much six weeks without seeing that beautiful face and that perfectly composed body has affected me. I want to shout my apologies from the rooftops and get on my knees and beg and grovel for her forgiveness and tell her how much I love and miss her. I'm not brave enough. Instead I set the sample down on the table and look up at her.

"Gail…"

"I'll be back for the results later" she brushes me off and storms back out of the lab.

I knew at that moment how much I had crushed her. I could tell that the level I had hurt her was something nobody had ever surpassed. I was well aware that on that long list of people who have abandoned or otherwise hurt her that I was at the very top. I am about to fall to pieces again right there but instead I run off to the restroom to be alone. The dull ache for her I had been feeling the last five weeks after the initial shock of my departure has now increased one hundred fold. Seeing her again destroyed every ounce of reserve I had. I'm a good person, how could I inflict so much pain on the person I love the most? Perhaps she was correct; perchance I was being a coward. If only I had faced the problem of her hot and cold issues head on I wouldn't be in this pain and neither would she. I had never in my life felt like an idiot, I always prized my intelligence over all other things. In that moment, I never felt more stupid. I never felt like my intelligence had abandoned me—until now. I spent five minutes trying to pull myself back together enough to go run the sample she had brought. I didn't want to add gross incompetence to the list of my failures, as well.

I diligently run the samples and when she hasn't returned to retrieve them I continue with the rest of my pile of work knowing that she'll come when she needs to. A short while later I hear her soft knock again. This time she walks into the lab immediately.

"The results?" she says quickly.

"Oh r-right." I curse myself for sounding so damn uncertain.

I pull the paper out of the stack and push my arm out towards her to hand it to her. She rips it out of my hand quickly and looks at the results. She doesn't ask me for their meaning because she knows a lot about lab result—I taught her well. She turns and walks towards the door to the lab mumbling "I'll get these to Swarek right away." I curse myself that she is about to leave without a single protest from me when she turns around just before leaving the lab.

"Why did you do it, Holly?"

I can hear the hurt in the way she says my name. Nobody says my name the way Gail does.

"Y-you were about to leave me again, Gail. I know the signs. I've seen them enough."

I am surprised by the steadiness and the conviction in my own voice because my mind was more akin to a train wreck.

"So your answer was to just give up and leave me for good?" she asked incredulously.

"No, not for good. Never for good. I thought maybe if I left before you had the chance you would realize I couldn't keep playing these games with you. I know I handled this immaturely, but at the time it seemed like the best course of action. I thought perhaps you'd realize how much you missed me if you thought that you couldn't run back with a few uttered words and have all be forgiven. It was stupid. I was stupid. It was the hardest thing I've ever done and the thing I regret the most, " I painfully admit.

"You're right. You were incredibly stupid" is all she says as she exits my lab, and probably my life, again.

That is all I can handle. I have to get out of here. I pack up my belongings and close out the lab for the day. Amazingly, I make it home safely. I pull my balloon wine glass out of the cupboard and drown myself in another half bottle of wine. I am a full bottle of wine in when I hear the soft knock at my door. I know it's Gail's knock but I assume it's just an optimistic figment of my imagination. After all, why the hell would she come to my place? She thinks I am a goddamn idiot. Which, of course, in this case she is one hundred percent correct. I slowly stumble over to my door and open it clumsily. There she is, my vision. All the beauty in the world rolled up into one person. All the wine is making her glow as if the moonlight is embodied in her pale white skin. Her eyes are dark. Her tongue runs nervously over her bottom lip before she lightly bites at her lip. I realize I'm staring when I hear her soft voice.

"Are you planning on inviting me in or do you plan to leave me out here for the rest of the evening while you stare at me like I'm dessert?"

I can't help but laugh at her Gail-ness. I've missed her wit.

"Yes, please come…"

She walks through the doorway and pulls me to her by my belt loop and crashes her lips into mine hard. My head is spinning between the mixture of her and the wine. I breathe in the intoxicating smell of her that I've missed so much and she forces her tongue into my mouth. She kisses me with all the passion of six agonizingly long missed weeks. She breaks the kiss just as abruptly as she began it.

"You may be a fucking idiot, Holly, but you're my idiot. And maybe I'm an idiot, too. Maybe our immature reactions to such situations are what draw us to one another. I don't know. I don't know much of anything right now except that I can't wake up another morning without you. I fucking hate it. I can't wake up another morning trying to convince myself that I hate you because I don't. I love you so goddamn much. If you wanted me to realize how shitty my life would be without you, you get a gold star."

"I didn't want to make you miserable."

"Yes you did," she said angrily. "Yes you did," she whispers out softly. "And I deserved it. I deserved it. I had no right to leave you a repeatedly. That's where I was an idiot, Holly. You do deserve better and I am going to be better because I can't wake up another morning without you. Do you hear me? Never again."

"I...I hear you."

"Now, you're going to take me to bed. And we're not leaving it until the weekend is over. I have six weeks to make up for" she winks at me and walks tantalizingly slow towards the bedroom with a gorgeous sway to her delectable hips.

There it is again, the explosion of color, the sense that everything is right and in balance, the feeling that I am never going to be such a bloody idiot again. Exceeding everything else, though, that overwhelming feeling of intense love and, of course, lust. I need to shut my brain off this instant because the most beautiful girl in the world is headed towards my bed, ready to forgive my folly and I had best not keep her waiting, lest she changes her mind.

I'll be the one if you want me to.

Anywhere, I would have followed you.