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'I'm miles from where you are, I lay down on the cold ground and I, I pray that something picks me up and sets me down in your warm arms'
~ Snow Patrol ft. Martha Wainwright
The air was heavy, redolent with the scent of smoke and sickly sweet scent of spilled alcohol. The glass between my fingers was cook and smooth, ice clinking against crystal the preferred accompaniment for the evening. It seemed to go perfectly with the snippets of conversations that drifted to my ears. Drunken men finding flaws in both God and science. Their words were just noise, something to take away from the silence that shrouded me.
It was right there, the escape that I so desperately craved, right in my hand. I ached for it, for the lightness, the haze that it would bring but I couldn't do it. I didn't want to do it. If I drank, he would be gone.
No matter the fact that he already was, that he had walked out without so much as a glance, after saying those simple words that I had unknowingly been longing to hear.
He was still there, haunting me, even though he was miles away. He showed up in my dreams, so vivid that I could feel his touch, the heat of his breath lingering on my skin even after I awoke, my throat raw from screams and drenched in a cold sweat.
He was there down every alley, hidden in the shadows. I still looked for him, every time I left my building.
He was there, in my office, disjointed flashes of memories everywhere I looked: Dripping wet from the rain in the doorway. Soft words whispered by a piano. His body entwined with mine at my desk, the storm raging outside. I couldn't escape him, and I didn't want to.
I knew how to make him go away, there were ways, and many but I needed him. I clung to the memories, the gossamer images that faded into the air, into nothingness. I thought I saw him several times; in the flash of a hoodie clad figure rounding a corner, a glimpse of a face in the dark shadows just out of the lamplight. I could hear him too; whispered words, pretty and dirty, carried on the breeze
But it was always a trick, a cruel joke of my imagination. He was gone, miles away from where I was, never to return.
With him… even after knowing who he was, there had been a possibility, even if it was nearly miniscule, the chance at something more than this. Just the thought of a life outside the castle gates. I wanted it, I wanted everything, despite knowing it was the last thing I could have, but I couldn't say the words, couldn't make them come out. And he left, for good.
The tears stung at my eyes again, nothing new of late, and I shook my head to will them away. Not here, not now. It was getting warmer by the second, almost stifling and I couldn't fall apart, not here. Fetching a bill from my purse, I flipped it on the sticky bar top beside my untouched gin and headed towards the door, head down as I wove through the crowd. I could feel the eyes on me, I didn't belong here, and it was obvious as I nearly ran to the door.
The air outside was cold, a frigid drizzle had begun to fall and I welcomed it, the stinging water on the bare skin of my face, mingling with the tears I could no longer hold back. The pain of his absence was physically palpable and I yearned for it to be gone, even as I cherished it.
I ducked into the nearest alley, sliding down the brick wall until I rested on the cold, wet ground and let the sobs overtake me.