Looking Back

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had never cut my losses and gave him up.

I'm sure that we would continue to love each other just as he loves that man now.

They are dancing. I watch them from my spot perched on the windowsill of the large ballroom. It's my sister's idea. The dance. I suppose she was just happy about her re-engagement with that Austria guy that she decided to throw a nice party. Does that make sense? A re-engagement celebration? I don't know, but right now, I really couldn't care less. Because I'm watching the man I once loved swaying to this slow melody with this stranger, basking in the love he now shares with him. Not me. Him.

How many times had we told each other that?

"I love you."

I let him know so many times, every single day when we were together. I knew that he had loved me in return. Even if he wasn't as open as I, even if he did not say it as often, I knew we had both been very much in love.

He was my first lover. Sappy, isn't it? But he was. I had never been with anyone else. He was my first everything. My first kiss. My first "I love you". My first time.

And I know that I was all that to him, too.

He never actually confirmed it, but when you love someone as much as I loved him, words weren't always necessary to figure out what he meant.

Looking back, I don't think he's ever really changed. Besides growing taller and more masculine (we were both teenagers back then), everything else remains untouched. He has the same strong personality that drew me in to him the first time we met in Budapest. I recall that he had been visiting someone. His eyes are as beautiful as ever. When I look into them, I still lose myself. And his smile. Oh, God, his smile. It is the single most precious thing I have ever seen. So small and fragile, and very uncertain. I can't remember a time when his smile had failed to leave me breathless. It was a treasure all on its own.

Look at me.

I know all this about him—all these details that most overlook—yet he probably hasn't spared me a single thought in centuries. I can't blame him either; technically, it was I who ended what we had. I hurt him.

But I didn't want to.

I can't explain it very well, because it is oh-so complicated. But know this: I had to do it to keep him safe. I wanted distance between us to avoid harming him.

If I had lost control and bit his flawless neck, it would have devastated me forever.

I should have given him an explanation. I owed him that. But he never let me, because he had left before I had finished what I wanted to say. It shocked me how easily he could accept that I no longer cared for him after all the countless times I had promised him that I always would.

Maybe I should have run after him. I didn't, though.

I let him go instead.

We went our separate ways, and our love was left to die.

Yet I never really stopped loving him. I don't think I ever will. At least, that's what it seems like. I did keep my promise after all, then.

"I'll love you forever. Okay?"

I'm a silly man. I lost all that ever really mattered to me over something that I now realize I could have worked around. If I had really loved him, I would have found a way to keep us together instead of taking the easy way out.

I'm sorry. For everything.

The dance slows to stop and his happy Spaniard bows down to him. They share a brief kiss—he'd never initiate it, at least, not with this guy—and for a split second, he glances my way and we make eye-contact.

My beautiful Italy Romano.

Te iubesc.

Te iubesc - I love you (Romanian)