Written a few weeks ago, but just now got around to posting... inspiration hit while stuck on public transportation with my iPod...
"my whole life's in frames
boxes of worn out, hand-me-down dreams
pictures us of, collecting dust..."
-paulina gretzky, 'fly'
They had spoken everyday for nearly fifteen years. It ended the week Emily moved in with him.
Even right after the break-up (don't you mean betrayal? a voice remarkably like Leah's hissed in his head), while Emily kept her distance, Leah still acknowledged him. Her words were cutting, her stares were cold and hard, but it was something. And it was better than nothing.
Emily moved in. She hung pretty curtains and made him dinner and ironed the few shirts he had left and rarely wore.
And Leah stopped.
She ignored him at campfires, refusing to meet his eye from across the circle. She didn't return any of Emily's phone calls. She tried to stop by the Clearwater's to surprise her sometimes, but Leah would slip out the back door before she was even on the porch. When she ran into Sam in town, at the grocery store, Seth's soccer games at the park, the hardware store with her father; she looked right through him as if he wasn't there at all.
It burned him in ways that even magic couldn't brush under the almighty rug of "destiny."
He tried. And told himself he did it for Emily; she missed her favorite cousin. (The truth was too obvious to acknowledge.)
Emily went to the Clearwater's with double fudge brownies (Leah's favorite) on a blue antique plate (Leah's favorite).
Seth ate the brownies in one sitting.
They were awoken by a crash that night. He stumbled out of bed, whispering to Emily to stay put, hoping to find a thief on the porch, or some bratty teenage hoodlums on bikes.
But he knew it was her. He could smell her; the faint scent of evergreen and too many sleepless nights.
He stepped out to the porch, cutting his foot on shattered pieces of blue china.
Emily would not relent. She kept her rose-tinted glasses firmly in place, and told Sam to "please, just try."
He left a bouquet of forget-me-nots on her porch. He left no card; he was never very good with words.
("Please, Sam, just tell me what this is about! Why are you doing this to me?!"
"I just don't love you anymore, okay?!")
He was terrible with words. Forget-me-nots would have to do.
There was a box on their porch the next morning, lined with familiar petals, weighed down with frames; old picture of the two of them in varying stages of happy and forever.
There was a note attached to the side of the box. 'I already have.'