Just close your eyes
"Abby I'm not living without you. I love you." Words that I never thought that I would be saying to her again in a million years yet as the rain was falling, misting everything around us; I could feel my clothes now sticking to my back as I waited for a sign some kind of an answer from her. I couldn't believe that I yelled that at her, but there was silence coming from her now.
Earlier that day…..
Paris, I was on a plane to Paris, unsure of why I was going. She hadn't asked me too in fact we hadn't talked but on the phone, and even those calls were getting pretty sporadic at best. We both had lives they were just in different places but yet her mother was sick and I felt some kind of duty to fly there and make sure they were doing okay.
I got off the plane tired and jet lagged barely speaking enough French to get there. This was not my night as I finally staggered to the hospital and began a near frantic search for her mother's room. When I finally managed to reach it all was not what the phone call made it seem, her mother looked incredibly well, for some reason I thought that I was going to find her on her death bed.
"John," A familiar voice said from behind me, "what are you doing here?"
What did she think I was doing here, "I was told your mother was sick," I said in response to her, "I thought that you might like the support."
I watch as another man walks up behind her and is very friendly towards her. I'm not sure what to make of that right now. I didn't know where we stood the ground under our feet had been so rocky since we lost the baby.
"We are fine." She says in a soft voice, "John Carter this is…" I tune out the rest of what she says as I continue to size him up.
I nod to give her some inkling of interest in meeting her friend. "Pleasure." I say in a rather monotone voice extending my hand not wanting to be friendly but I didn't want to cause trouble right now.
It was almost as if she could sense how tired I was right now, as we start to walk, "I'm sorry I shouldn't have come." I find myself saying, I felt out of place, that I wasn't supposed to be there but on the other hand I knew that I needed to be it might have been that I was just overly tired right now, and was not looking forward to heading straight back to the airport for a return flight to the states.
"No it was very sweet of you to come." She places a small kiss on my cheek, "thank you."
I find myself looking at her wondering what this might have all been about, why she wasn't even attempting to stop me from turning around and leaving as quickly as I had arrived. "Kem," I am talking now even though I don't want to be, but I need answers that she just hadn't been giving me, "what's all that."
"Oh John," she lets out a little laugh, "don't tell me that you haven't been dating while we've been apart."
I look down now not happy with that answer but it was true I had been dating. "Do you think, can't we try." I am stuttering over my words.
She looks up at me with those eyes that I had thought I had fallen in love with but in the end I guess what I had felt really wasn't love at all, I couldn't help but think that this might have ended sooner if it wasn't for the baby.
"John," she said softly now, sincerely, "close your eyes." She waited for a minute for me to do just that, I'm thinking she's gone insane, "listen to your heart, when you do you will see the one person that you love, the one person that you are meant to be with." Her voice trails off, "what you see it's not me."
She didn't know how right she was. For the image that was before my eyes was not that of her, but of someone else who I was once upon a time close to. "You're right." I say.
"See, this is why this, what we have had was wonderful but it's not real, it's far from real, we wanted to think that it was, but it's not meant to be, not in the long run, we can't be in this for the long haul."
Her words were ringing truer than anything I had heard in a long time, part of me didn't want to let go but another part knew that it was time to move on to put this in the past, to put the thoughts of there being an us to rest.
"You know that I am right?" She says as she starts to back away from me.
"I do." That was my simple and emotionless response to that question.
"Go back to the states and find your happiness, I know she's there searching for you as you have been searching with your heart for her." She looks down unable to look me in the eyes, "I wish the best for you John."
This doesn't feel like I thought that it would. I thought that when it ended, that when this ride came to a complete stop that I would feel heartbroken or lonely but right now I felt nothing, other than the urge to want to curl up and sleep. "You too, I want you to be happy too."
"We both will be John."
"I had better go and see if I can get that flight home." I say to her, "I don't want to leave them shorthanded any longer than needs be."
"Have a safe trip home." She kisses my cheek one last time before I watch her retreat back inside the safe haven of the hospital. And it wasn't long before I was back on a plane to Chicago. Two worlds' that could never come together.
Chicago, one hell of a long plane ride later….
She is looking right at me now, but those eyes of hers are almost looking through me. As if she doesn't want to be hearing those words from me after all this time, but then can I really blame her. The things that I have done in the past have been horrible, deeply cutting her to the bone and there was nothing in this world that I could do to take them back.
I have to break the silence, we are both getting wet, "Abby I know that I could never say that I am sorry enough times, or expect to instantly have your trust back in a heartbeat, but what we had before, I know we could have that again." Honestly is the best policy but I had to wonder right now myself if I was doing nothing more than making an ass out of myself standing there in the pouring rain declaring my feelings for her, when I had no idea what feelings if any she might have held onto for me.
There is still silence coming from Abby but her eyes have soften now as she is looking at me, I can't tell if that means that there is something still there buried someplace deep inside her heart or if she's trying to find the way to tell me to go and jump off a bridge.
"I can't do it again Carter." Those words hit like a ton of bricks dropping on top of my head, but could I blame her for saying that to me right now, here I was after dropping everything to run to another woman on a different continent standing in the rain saying that I loved her.
I find that my eyes have drifted down now looking at the ground as I take a few steps back. Once again I had made a giant mistake thinking that I could fix something that, well was out of my control now. She had a life and that alone was enough to show me that I had no place in it.
"Carter, I can't just drop everything and say those words to you." She said to me, and at the sound of her voice I find myself looking up again. "I have moved on just like you told me to, doing everything that you asked of me in that letter and so much more. I've gone places that I never thought that I would, found a confidence that I never knew that I had and yet here you are back on my doorstep asking to be let back in. Carter I'm sorry I didn't wait for you to figure out your life before I figured out mine."
I don't know what to say to that, she has a point that was exactly what I told her and at the time I didn't know which way was up, I didn't think that even right now I could have told anyone what direction I was headed or where I wanted to go, my life was a mess and I was getting the feeling that I might never get it straightened out.
"I'm sorry Abby." I said backing up again until I feel the metal of the gate against my back letting me know that I was at the sidewalk now.
"You can be sorry as much as you like Carter, hurt like everyone else hurts, but it's not going to change anything. Words, they are just that words unless there's some action behind them, and that is something that I haven't seen out of you in a long time. You got so wrapped up in your own pain and hurt that you couldn't see anyone else's around you." She said there's anger in her voice that much I can still pick up, sometimes Abby was nearly impossible to read when it came to her emotions and other times they were right there on her sleeve for everyone to see, for those who knew her could see them.
"I know that now, but it's too late to do anything about it now. I can't change what I did; I can only now try to make it right."
"No there's no making it right this time Carter, you have to live with your choices just like the rest of us have had to too. I didn't have a say in your decision to go to Africa, or to come home turn around and go again, and then decide t stay, I didn't have a say in your decision to write that letter, I didn't have a say in any of that and now here you need to see that what you did, the consequences of those decisions you have no say." Abby looked at him before turning to unlock the apartment door. "Life and love are both two way streets Carter, but you decided to change all the traffic signs and make them one way. And you can't turn around and head the other direction on a one way."
I moved through the gate now not sure what to think what to say did I still have a friend or was this all too much and now she wasn't even one of those anymore. I had to admit that even I had lost a lot of friends over the last year, gained some but lost more that I ever thought that I would.