everything is at an end, and that's all
The rain pounds steadily against the window pane and a fleeting memory boils to the surface: Rory tucked into her window seat, reading Anna Karenina with her head resting against the glass, the lightning illuminating her bedroom in flashes. Her head turns to him and she beckons him with a soft smile and a twitch of her hand.
She eats marshmallows covered in peanut butter and rolled in chocolate chips as a snack while she does homework.
He makes faces and faux-gags at her while she eats them, so she sticks her tongue out and tries to cram one in his mouth as he quips at her about her disgusting eating habits.
His arms wrap around her and drag her onto the pile of pillows he inhabits, she tastes salty and sweet, and he feels himself fall a little further.
He has a copy of Howl tucked into an old rucksack in the back of his closet behind stacks of magazines and dirty clothes, the pages are a bit curled at the edges and yellowed. He thought about writing notes between the lines, notes by which to remember, but in the end thinks it's better to forget.
For the first week after she crashed into his world, every brunette that walks into the shop catches his eye, and in that split second before realization he feels that rise of hope that is quickly crushed.
He dates a red-head named Julie, she's petite, almost frail, with the smallest wrists he's ever seen. She's a snuggler, who laughs easy, and reads Harlequins while laying on the fresh cut grass behind his townhouse.
She is, of course, a temporary distraction.
Three weeks after their first date, she throws a glass into the wall and breaks up with him for being an 'emotionally unavailable asshole'. As if she didn't know that from the start.
His friend Jake sets him up with a busty blonde named Kimberly, but he is swiftly instructed to call her Kimmy.
As much as he would like her to be the vapid shell of a person her exterior promises, she proves herself to be witty and smart, educated at Cornell, a voracious reader, with the most eclectic taste in music he's been witness to in a quite a while.
He falls in love with her before he even realizes what has happened. He asks her to move in, and they buy their own tiny apartment in a nice-ish neighborhood.
He thinks he might be happy for the first time in his life, truly, truly happy.
She wavers before his eyes like an oasis in the desert before coming into focus, his eyes tired and blurred from deep slumber.
She is soaked to the bone, white as a ghost, with dark strands of hair clinging to her face. She looks surreal; something from a nightmare, half-dead, drained, empty. Her eyes are wider than he remembers, staring at him, almost wild. Her face is wet from the rain, but he can tell from the tremble of her chin and red-rim around her eyes that tears are mixed in somewhere.
The baby's cry startles them both from their frozen positions, and he feels himself snap back into his body, suddenly aware of where he is and what is happening. Kimmy calls him from the back of the house to ask who it is, and he watches as realization dawns on Rory's face.
She thought he would wait forever, because that was the silent agreement he did not remember promising. He was supposed to love her, and only her. He would wait, and perhaps one day she would be ready, one day she would find her way back, or not. But he was supposed to cling to the hope.
He wants to ask her what has happened, why she is on his doorstep after 10 years, looking so very different, so very changed and unrecognizable. But that is not who they are anymore, they are nothing anymore, and they haven't been for a very long time. For a lifetime, really.
She nods three times, as if accepting this for the first time. She smiles sadly as her forehead wrinkles in grief and she turns and starts back down his steps.
A different time, a different place, he would've called for her; waiting for her to stop and turn. She would wait for him to run to her, and kiss her as the rain fell around them. Like a storybook ending to the perfect tragic romance.
But they are at an end, and that's all.