May twenty-second. The twenty-second of May. El ventidos de mayo. No matter what order it was spoken in, no matter what language, it was the day Tony couldn't get out of his mind. For him, the year no longer ended on December 31st and started anew on January 1st. Tony's world dictated that the omega was May 22nd, the alpha May 23rd. It had been that way for- God- almost twenty years now. Near twenty years in a void, near twenty years stumbling through jumbles of light and sound and motion and feeling. And then on May 22nd, everything would come to him in perfect clarity. Like a legally blind man putting on glasses, Tony was born at 12:00 A.M. each May 22nd and died again at 12:00 A.M. each May 23rd. But the world he saw was never happy: instead of seeing brilliant and vibrant life, he saw empty sheets, empty glasses, empty hearts. Not that April wasn't sleeping next to him every morning- including May 22nd- but he felt like she was a ghost that day. Or maybe the ghost was him.
April knew something weird went on with her boyfriend every May 22nd, for they'd been living together for almost twenty years. The first time that date had rolled around, April had asked him why he was so sad- because he really did look sad. More than sad. Broken. Defeated. Almost suicidal. But all he would say was "some shit happened today, a long time ago." And he refused outright to talk about it. That first time, they'd gotten into a shouting match with him threatening to walk out. It broke her heart to see him like that, and it broke her even more to know that it was something she'd never know. Over the years, she'd convinced herself that he'd been involved in a devastating accident as child, he'd lost many people close to him. But then again, she knew she was only kidding herself.
They'd never gotten married. It had been at Tony's insistence, that he didn't need a bunch of papers and some wanker who'd never met them to tell him he loved April and that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. Besides, the whole of the British government were right little tossers and he didn't need to get involved with them any more than he had to. So April had agreed. But it wasn't really her fault. She'd been young, still throughly entranced by Tony's rebellious nature.
Tony and April had lists- loads of them, all scattered about the house and in file cabinets in Tony's office. In the event of the dissolving of their union, Tony had wanted to make sure they each got what they were entitled to. There were no children to worry about, so everything on the lists were simply possessions, assets, and money. Tony had made it so that if Michelle ever came back, he could just up and leave. Just like that. Just go.
To everyone around Tony, it seemed like he was happy and jolly and normal most of the year, and then he turned, crashed and burned, on May 22nd. But what they didn't know, what they could never know, was Tony faked it. 364 days each year, he wore a mask. And since he wore it all the time, it was easy to pretend that was who he was. However, deep where he stored every memory he'd ever had of her, every "I love you" he'd ever said to her, every exact detail of that day, he also stored his true self: a miserable, pathetic little bastard whose first love was his only love. But she was also the one that got away.
Nicholas had always been good to her, and Michelle knew it. Or at least he had tried to be good in the beginning, and she had tried, too. For the beginning was when she had been the most angry, and therefore had the easiest time burying her feelings about the boy she'd walked away from. Things had been alright; not great, sometimes good, but always alright. That wouldn't be the case for long, though. When someone's heart hurts that much, it's hard to hide, hard to leave behind. But then there had been children- beautiful, wonderful children. That complicated things. Michelle had so desperately wanted to leave Nicholas, to find Tony, to not feel like she was living with a replacement all her life, to not feel like she was living with her second choice. She couldn't just up and leave the kids, though. They had become her world. Lovely kids, her Anna and Tony.
The household quickly became a mamma's boy, daddy's girl one. Anna and Nicholas bonded, mostly through the fact that Michelle had practically stolen Tony from them. Anna was older and well liked by Michelle until little baby Tony came along. Then, it became their world. Michelle had even made Nicholas promise that if they ever had a boy, they would name him Tony. Not Anthony; just Tony. Nicholas had agreed, baffled by his wife's adamant push for this name. But he'd never questioned. He had learned at the beginning not to question.
The beginning. The semi-blissful beginning. As the beginning faded into the middle, things started to change. Michelle began to guide Tony in his path, make him as much of an independent free- thinker as she could. She wanted him to be like her Tony: free, unchained, but possibly not as rebellious and manipulative. Because that was the thing that had shattered the thin reality of their relationship, in the end.
She remembered the day in a ridiculous way. She knew that everything she remembered more vividly than it happened. For example, she remembered Tony's shirt being an almost blinding neon green when she knew he never worn anything that flamboyant. In her mind, there had been an absolute downfall, the run-off of which rivaled Noah's flood. But she knew in reality it could've only been a drizzle. And her brain told her Tony had yelled and screamed and been a complete asshole and even threatened her physically, but logically, she was certain that he hadn't raised his voice. So she remembered the day vividly- too vividly.
After the break-up, she swore she would be angry at him forever, still throwing darts at his picture on her death bed. But then a funny thing happened... she forgave him. Somewhere in the midst of ice cream pints and The Notebook, somewhere in between the drunken partying and the list of boys longer than her childhood Christmas lists, somewhere during the whirlwind romance she had with Nicholas, she forgave Tony. She didn't know how it had happened or why, but she stopped hating him and started loving him. Again. Fucking wanker. She couldn't believe she'd allowed herself to feel this way. But then again, it wasn't like she had a choice.
So she would wait, train little Tony and dress up little Anna and occasionally sleep with Nicholas while she waited for her Tony to come back for her. Because he was Tony, and he was always doing stupid things. So she had to hope he was stupid enough for this.
But Tony wasn't stupid enough for that. Maybe he had been in his youth, but he wasn't any longer. And Michelle never came bursting through his front door, proclaiming her love for him. So they sat and waited their whole lives; two whole lives cursed by a love that was too strong.