Cassie
"I hate you/I love you/Leave/Don't go away/I can't decide if I like your face/Or if I wish it would stray…"
-Jewel, "Grey Matter"
I try to relax into Ronnie's arms. I try to banish the thoughts from my mind, and think only of him, only of this moment. Instead my mind wanders down the familiar path it always chooses this time of night. This quiet hour between lovemaking and sleep, once Ronnie has succumbed to the latter.
Jake.
The name is a memory, a sound, a feeling, a tangible representation of what was, what was loved, what went away and what was left. It is a process, a pain, a moment, an experience.
Jake.
I see you in my mind. The smallest nuances of you, captured forever in my memory.
The sadness in your eyes, the tilt of your head, the way your hair fell. The way you moved your hands as you spoke.
The way your hands moved over me.
The hands that hold me now are someone else's, and though I look at them tenderly, with love and familiarity, they will never be able to eclipse the memory of your own. I love this man lying beside me with a passion and a fierceness that surprises me, but I have always and will always love you.
I imagine you think I hate you now. For Rachel, for the war, for all the things you left promised and unfulfilled, for the person you had to become to end that miserable existence of war and slavery.
You are wrong. You did only the things that you knew to do. I have had little more than a year to come to terms with your decision, a year of confusion and anger and rage until I realized that that was all you could have done. All that you, Jake Berenson, being the person you were and still are, could do. I have accepted that.
Strange that it is Ronnie of all people who has redeemed you in my mind.