He didn't find it hard to imagine that he was able to block out the sounds of this foreign city as he looked at the objects in his backpack. The din of the voices, loud and fast and furious, faded away. The assault of the onions and cilantro and pungent spices dulled to a mild tickle in his nose. Everything was a blur, a smudge in his mind. The sac was black, worn and dusty, threadbare but strong. He wouldn't have kept it if he didn't know it was strong. It held everything. Everything that mattered, everything that was important to him. Everything that somehow managed to keep the sun rising and setting, the tides moving in and out, the air in his lungs flowing.
He started at them a moment longer, before reaching out a hand to touch the edge of a weary photo. He hesitated, moving his hand back, before grabbing it decisively but delicately. It was ripped down the center; he had torn it in a moment of rage, but had since taped it tenderly back together. It showed a girl, smiling, with dark brown hair and rich red lips. Her arms were around a boy, with tousled copper hair and glowing golden eyes. She was looking at the camera, but he was looking at her. He traced her face with his finger, chest constricting against a still heart. He took a deep breath, trying to ease the weight that had been ever-present in his chest since the moment he left her. Turning the picture over in his hands, he placed it safely back into the backpack, and selected a thin case.
Unwittingly, a smile came to his face, and it hurt. He remembered the day that he had made this for her. "Bella's Mix" it read in neat handwriting. Opening it with a "click" that echoed throughout the tiny room, he glanced at the list of song titles on the inside cover. He chuckled at the unfamiliar anxiety he had felt during that night, wondering what she would like and hoping that she would like the same kinds of things he did. He couldn't remember ever wondering that about someone before her. Looking through the list, the songs began to play in his mind. They mixed with images of her, a slideshow. A history. Lounging in the meadow, hands intertwined, legs intertwined. The soft stroke of her hand in his hair, the smooth tips of her fingers grazing up and down his arm. He would turn over to tickle her, and she would squeal as she tried to escape his arms. He would revel in her laugh, soaking it up as the sun and smile back down at her.
These were the most painful memories. The happy ones. It was far better for him to recall Jasper's dark eyes as he lunged at her, or her smile as she hung around the dog. It was better for him to remember the reasons he left. Better, but never easier. He tried, every day, to convince himself that the reasons that he left her standing there in that forest were more important than all of the moments that they had shared together, or would ever share together. Would never share together. It was the thought that the only thing left between them was never that left his stomach perpetually clenched and his mind numb.
But he knew that he wasn't really numb. Underneath the haze that he kept there, from lack of food and isolation, he was raw and shattered; one thought of her was enough to set the painful nerves on fire, spiraling him into his own personal hell. He was never numb. He was sensitive to her, always.
He shoved the CD case haphazardly back into the sac and settled down into his hoodie, popping the hood over his head and tugging the zipper up to his chin. He wasn't cold; she had borrowed his jacket one rainy afternoon and her heart-stopping scent had lingered on it. He was engulfed in her now, and he could imagine that this hard floor was her old bed, and that the arms wrapped around him were hers.
He couldn't sleep, but he fell into a doze of memories, the soft whisper of her voice in his ear, not a breeze or a draft but her voice. Suddenly that voice became tense, tight, rising in pitch as a choked "Wait!" pierced his ears. He was shocked awake by his final memory of her, the only one that he was unable to keep past the nerve endings, so that he felt like he was in a bathtub that had had a toaster dropped into it.
He breathed in her scent.
He closed his eyes, and her image danced behind them.
He thought of something else, but there was only her.
He turned over, and imagined her weight atop him.
He licked his lips, and envisioned hers pressed against his, always eager.
He pictured he was with her.
And it was heaven.