The clock in the kitchen has a voice that can be heard throughout the entire two-story town house.
But I, Silas, am sitting in the source of the sound, delving in its distractions. But its ability to clasp onto your mind, and contain it no matter how hard you shake until it bleeds and breaks and cries and you give in, overtakes the diversions.
It's 12:50 in the morning and I've been seated in the little nook that the pathetic excuse for a kitchen table has been shoved into within the place of warmth and childhood itself, waiting for him to come to me- to come home. Mornings and mornings and abundances of mornings have consisted of Josh and Nora sleeping soundly in the comfort of a bed that contains absolutely no worry of whether or not their significant other will sleep in their arms that night because there is no doubt that they will. They may fight and have issues that they cannot overcome with ease, but they always end up asleep together.
I miss that.
I miss not having to worry about him.
I miss when I didn't have to question if I'd have a partner to protect me in my sleep that night.
I miss him.
The clock in the kitchen has a voice that can penetrate through time itself and remain gripping.
Five minutes have passed in reality and a lifetime has passed in my head. It's heavy with sleep and the air is heavy with anticipation and weariness.
What if he doesn't come home?
Silas, stop, I tell myself. You have to have more faith in him.
He loves you.
No he doesn't.
Of course he does.
If he did, then why would he let me worry like this, Si?
Conversations with Silas and Si have been frequent as my paranoia increases over days and weeks of apprehension: conversations between my myself and his myself.
But they're both me. Although only one can survive in the end, like a destiny foretold in a movie-
I hear the front door open.
His heavy footsteps falter and muffle as he crosses the threshold and carpet and hardwood and carpet. I don't turn around. My body aches for him, but I can't turn around. I wonder if he's seen my car, packed to the brim with the promise that I intended to keep, and did.
When the fall of his boots stop almost too quietly behind me, the fear rises.
He won't hurt me, he would never.
That isn't the desperate part of me calling out- it's the genuine part. He's told me time and time again that he loves me and I believe him because he does.
It just isn't enough anymore.
"Si…," he says, and it breaks my heart. Such torture and desperation was already evident in his voice, the voice that used to speak to me while I slept, like a lullaby- smooth and honest and… untruthful.
I should have known that there would be no hesitation in his understanding of my arrangements.
We've talked about this and yet, this moment is more painful than I ever imagined. Waves of hurt and agony wash away my previous worry and anxiety.
This is the end. I'm ten feet under and upside down, barely surviving- used to living under the surface.
I stand and turn without fear, just sorrow, to face the creature in which I've loved for lifetimes and forever and will continue to love for lifetimes and forever.
I meet his eyes and it was the worst mistake. For a being that has lived hundreds of years and has seen hundreds of deaths, there is nothing but overwhelmingly fresh ruin in his eyes. Knowing that I'm the cause haunts me.
"Si…Silas, no."
"I'm so sorry, Aidan…"
"Silas, please. Please don't do this to me."
His begging strikes sudden anger in my heart and I lash out.
"Aidan, I told you. I told you and promised you that I couldn't take it anymore," I whispered desperately, my voice rising slightly.
The look of complete agony doesn't cease to exist in his eyes, and I suffer in confusion. I told him, I promised him that if he slipped again my bags would be piled high in the Charger when he came home, if he were to come home.
But he didn't slip up, Silas, Si says.
And she's right.
But I just can't keep living like this.
I opened my eyes to a whole new world of hurt as his chest is inches from my face. Maybe he thought the void between us could be fixed by lack of distance.
Once upon a time, it would have worked. Once upon a time, Silas would have given in and gave him another chance.
I lifted a gentle hand to his face as I whispered, "I told you so…" and it tears him to pieces.
The pain falls from his eyes. I've never seen him cry before. His hand travels the length of my outstretch arm and encircles my hand. His touch blinds me for a moment and I almost lose myself. I almost become the girl that I was when we met: vulnerable, gullible.
But he no longer catches me when I fall.
You don't allow him to see you fall.
He wouldn't catch you even if he did, Silas.
"It wasn't you, Aidan. You didn't slip, you didn't hurt me this time," I say and his expression is filled with… hope?
The hand that is held captive by his reaches to stroke his face lightly, and as if to speak itself, says,
"I'm broken. I'm weak. I can't stay here any longer."
The hope disappears.
"She's everything you'll ever need. She wouldn't have to worry about you. And me…why me?" I laugh in disbelief. "What is there to love about a pathetic little girl that trips down the stairs in the morning and can't protect herself?"
His eyebrows furrow in sad aggravation. His eyes are drowning in emotion.
"I love you because you're everything she's not. She's everything that I hope you'll never be. You, Silas, I want you. I want your heart beat and the warmth that I feel when I touch you. I want that blush that used to creep onto your face when I smiled at you, I want to be the only reason why it's there." he says, a sob escaping somewhere in the midst of his lamentation.
I know he means every word of it, and I almost stay. I almost give in.
I caress his jaw and draw him closer to me.
"Aidan, you're doing this for me and for yourself: for the freedom that you'll be rewarded. But that reward is meaningless if you become what you didn't want to fall back to. Please… if you love me," his eyes widened as if to retort, but I placed a finger over his naturally pouted lips and continue, "and I know you do Aidan, I know… you'd let me go."
That was it.
Si had been pushed into the almost non-existent space between us, sinking back into Aidan. The girl that I'd become over the past couple of months, the girl that stayed awake until the mere hours of the morning in worry that he was no longer Aidan, had been given back to him. She'd been given back to her creator.
The tears had ceased in his eyes, but they had been created in mine.
He understood.
He said nothing. He swallowed and continued to stare into my eyes; pleading with words that he knew could never bring me back to him. I was gone.
And in that moment, that tiny minuscule of a moment that I knew I'd regret for a lifetime and forever,
I kissed him- I kissed him for the time that he'd playfully wrestled me into bed upon figuring out I had a bag of blood hidden in my shirt; I kissed him for the times that my favorite pizza he brought home for me would fix everything, and he'd eat it with me like he enjoyed it; I kissed him for all those fights, all those pointless fights that ended in glorious nights against his cool skin; and I kissed him for the moment I came face-to-face with the gorgeous stranger that offered me his shirt when I tripped and spilled coffee on myself outside of our home- his home.
I kissed him for all the moments that I'd loved him and continued to love him and will continue to love him.
I, Silas, kissed him, before turning my face away and his lips lingered on my cheek.
I brushed past him and out the backdoor, hearing a violent sob break freak from the broken man behind me, and an echo of one forms on my lips.
The clock in the kitchen has a voice that has long been dead and reverberates through the two-story town house, a reminder of seconds and minutes and hours and days wasted on its distractions.