Wounds
She's blonde.
Of course she's blonde.
Young and pretty and petite and with a laugh Carla just can't bring herself to hate. Because it's cute. This woman is cute, everything about her, from the way she hangs off his arm, like she can't bare to put distance between them. To the way she tucks her hair behind each of her ears when she is nervous and the way her eyes don't leave him for a second, as if she's scared he'll walk away from her if he catches glimpse of something (or someone) better than what she is.
Carla reckons she's right to be. She's been watching them from afar for a while now and it is sweet torture. He's happy. For the first time in over a year, his smiles are genuine and the darkness in his eyes has dimmed considerably, but it's not quite disappeared. It'll never quite disappear.
She hides behind street corners, a fugitive in her own home amongst her own people, and they're fascinating to watch. Perhaps she enjoys the pain. Perhaps she feels she deserves it. She watches her take his hand and they walk side by side, their arms swinging between them, and Carla can swallow that. They don't walk in sync. They don't entwine fingers. He would never do that to her. God, it's such a comfort to know that he still respects her, respects who she was to him enough not to replicate what they had with another woman.
The blonde as Carla has so affectionately named her does not appreciate being watched by others. She's a private person, her kisses made in secret, always pulling away from him at the earliest oppourtunity and she reminds Carla of herself in the early days. When what he had felt for her was so overwhelming to her – almost unwelcome – that she had pushed him and pushed him and pushed him until she was exhausting to be around, and yet he still stayed.
And yet she still left.
He's never able to hide how he feels, not to her. His smile is bright, but there is a sadness about him that the blonde is unable to see because all she can see and all she can concentrate on is the way they look to other people. His family are rather indifferent to her; still weary of whether he truly is coping with the absence of the woman he once told them in confidence he could not imagine his life without.
But he is without her now.
And he is coping with it.
On the surface, he is calm. On the surface, he can take someone else out for lunch and be fine in her company, be happy in it, even; that is, until something reminds him of all that he has lost and then he finds himself becoming just that. Lost. It doesn't take much; just the scent of one of the many perfume she once tainted his bedsheets with, the colour of the hair he used to spend hours running his fingers through, when it was just the two of them away from the outside world and it felt like maybe they could make it to forever. It is the little things that remind him of her and when they do, he is back to square one. Back to the day when he first realised she wasn't coming back and he locked himself in the bistro, smashed the place up a bit with his bare fists because it was the only way he could escape from his own helplessness.
The scars took an age to heal. A year later and Carla isn't sure whether the internal ones ever healed at all. Hers certainly haven't. Her wounds still feel open and sore and her pain is only worsened by the fact that the reason he cannot see her is because he isn't looking for her in the first place. Not any more.
She walks away before they are able to pass her. She walks away with a heavy heart, but she doesn't dare look back.