Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with Amy Sherman-Palladino or Warner Bros. I make no profit from this story.
A/N: This is a companion piece to Rain Stained Memories.
Moonlight Vigils
He always thinks of her on nights when the full moon shines brightly in the sky.
He knows why as well. The soft white light of the moon reminds him of the girl she once was. The sweet, naïve, innocent girl that he fell in love with.
It has become almost a ritual for him. Three nights every month he allows himself to stand at the window with the moonlight washing over him and think of her without feeling guilty (all other nights he pushes her away because he knows it's wrong, knows he shouldn't be thinking of her). On these nights he stands by his window (or, as has happened on a few occasions, sits in his car on the side of the road and stares up at the moon) and he remembers everything.
He remembers a bridge and a basket, a car accident, coming back (coming home). He remembers a kiss at a wedding followed by a summer of nothing (no calls, no letters, no smoke signals). He remembers jealousy and eyes meeting across rooms and kisses and her mom's disapproval. He remembers a destroyed snowman and twenty-two point eight miles. He remembers a party that went wrong (so horribly, horribly wrong). He remembers Dodger and that really he was never anything other than exactly that.
He remembers running away, a confession and a desperate plea, and then a girl falling apart at the seams. He remembers the last time he saw her, so long ago now (four hundred and fifty-eight days). He remembers that she left. He remembers thinking that, for the first time in whatever semblance of a relationship they had, she had been the one to walk out on him.
He remembers love.
But then the moon will drift behind a cloud and he is pulled back to reality. As the clock ticks closer to four o'clock he collapses back into bed next to the warm body he left there hours earlier. He watches his girlfriend (Sarah? Elizabeth? Anna?) sleeping peacefully and he promises himself that he won't think of her again until the next guilt-free full moon.
(He lies.)