SHORT STORY: I LOVE HER AND I NEVER TOLD HER

AUTHOR: VICTORIA G.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own these characters.

I walk up the stairs… her shrine. It had been months since I've seen or talked to her. It's so difficult to keep in touch when I'm touring outside the country. We are so far apart now anyway, in the things that we feel, the things that we know, the things that we want. I could never tell her the ravenous secret that is slowing eating me alive. She will never see it herself either... I'm a fantastic actress. I'm Aino Minako, best friend, supportive albeit in spirit, maddeningly light, unburdened, and nearly carefree. Bitterness wells up, unbidden and unwelcome inside me. She has become everything I pretend to be, everything I've wanted for her…and left me behind without ever knowing all that I wanted was to come with her.

She is so… happy. There really isn't a better word for it, she just radiates satisfaction with her life... and why not? He is exactly the kind of man I would want my daughter to be with, handsome, considerate, successful…god, I hate him. I hate his beautiful face. I hate how romantic he is and the ring he picked himself that couldn't have been more perfect. Most of all though, I hate how she looks at him like he is the only thing that matters, like he is her source. I hate him so much I can barely be civil. I try to keep myself from wishing he'd disappear, from the selfish thoughts that suffocate me when I picture them together.

I wanted to follow my dream and we left behind whatever was between us, I just didn't think it would be forever. She's probably forgotten by now, the kiss…I haven't. I was so stupid to think we had… I had an eternity to decide. The memory of her lips on mine is burned into me, it is permanence... the measure for all experience. I move through space and time with a sense of loss so deep, that it changes the colors of things… makes the sky unpleasantly bright when the sun is out, muted and drab when it hides in the clouds. There is no sunset as beautiful as the light it would cast on her face, or flower I see that I do not image would be even more perfect against her raven hair. My mind writes poetry unbidden, my voice affects meaning into each song as if I were singing to her alone, and touch is only to remember how rough all else is when compared to the softness of her cheek. The world has become a faded photograph, constantly paling, failing me.

This ache is too profound for acceptance. I still, even now, can't keep away hope… so ridiculous. Just a text as soon as I got off the plane and my own body betrays me. My pulse quickens and my throat feels as though I've been eating sand. I read it again and again as I force my trembling legs up the stone steps. She missed me… I overreach, imagining a secret between the lines, releasing the sirens in my head with their traitorous whispers of 'maybe'. She's sitting on the bench by the cherry trees. I see her face and my stomach leaps into my throat and then promptly dives toward my feet as I take in the rest of her. "Rei…"

"I'm so glad you're here Mina…I'm sure you've guessed but… " She gestures to her enormous stomach. Her hand as it travels through the air is a blade so sharp I don't even feel it until its in me to the hilt. I didn't think that your heart breaking was something you physically felt. It was a figure of speech, but no. I felt it shatter, the pieces falling down inside me, pulling everything to my feet with such force it made me nauseas. My voice is captured in the intensity of sudden, needle sharp pain.

I used to imagine for my own sake the ways that I would be better for her than him, make her impossibly happy …but this, there is no competing with it. It's the worst and the best all at once. Something she always wanted, yearned for and the one thing I could never really give her.

I don't feel steady standing, so I crouch down using the bench for support, trying to steady myself against the vertigo. She doesn't understand and takes my hands, slips my fingers over her newly swollen belly to the place where the small being inside her is restlessly straining to get out. All I can think is how warm her skin is, that she still smells exactly the same, that this only makes her so much more beautiful.

"Can you feel it?" I nod because I can't speak, because my lips are the last barrier holding in the tears that have filled me to bursting, because what I actually feel is so far removed from the undoubtedly beautiful baby she carries. I'm kneeling in front of her and she is smiling down at me, threading her fingers in mine as if there wasn't a single thing in this world that could possibly be wrong today. Twin tears trace paths down our cheeks and I force a wide smile. She laughs, as if this were all just girlish silliness, and I meet her eyes as a silken finger captures another drop as it escapes my eye. Her palm moves to cover the right side of my face, cupping it as she leans down to kiss my forehead. The touch of her lips, her hand is like fire.

"I've missed you so much Mina-chan." A whisper against the heated skin just below my hairline. "I'm glad you're home." I'm dying inside and she has no idea. I love her and I never told her…and now I never will.

THE END