Page 83 of Rainstorm

When nothing else mattered, when Chase was my sunshine, my everything.

I would have preferred for him to have burned everything.

“Is everything okay?” Chase asks while he’s walking toward me with a wineglass in one hand and a beer in the other.

I force myself to wake up and put on my fortress mask, a stony face of indifference.

“Everything’s fine,” I state firmly.

He stares at me for a couple of seconds in silence, not convinced by my answer. Deep down we haven’t changed, we’re still the same and we know each other very well.

“What do you want?”

The stare I get answers my question loudly. Simple, devour you.

“What did you want to talk about that’s so important?” I ask as indifferently as I’m able.

“About the papers your lawyer sent,” he replies, looking at me. “Do you really want to sell the house?”

Of course I don’t want to, no.

I shrug before answering. “What else can we do with it? I don’t want to live here.”

He looks around the living room and takes a long pull of his beer before speaking again. “Roselynn, I bought this house for you. It’s yours.”

“No, Chase. You bought this house for us. You bought it because we both fell in love with this place the moment we walked into it.”

He takes another sip of his drink and drops onto the couch, leaving a space for me beside him.

As I let myself sit beside him, I look into his eyes, desperately trying to work out what’s going on inside his head. I’m so confused with all his cryptic messages.

“Rose, keep the house. You don’t need to stay in Ariel’s place. You’re sleeping on the couch, for God’s sake! This is your place. Just come back, I’ll leave tonight, I already packed all my stuff.”

His sadness touches me so much, but it’s no use. I need to stop this desire to hug him and tell him not to leave, that I’m here, that I’ll stay if he decides to stay as well.

“Chase, I can’t live here, I would drown in a rain of memories.” And a rain of tears, as well.

He looks around the room in silence, no doubt thinking of all the happy memories that were made here.

If only these walls that we painted not so long ago could talk. The stories they could tell.

“I…” I’ve missed you, I want to say. Have you missed me as well?

The man who has been the love of my life looks at me with so much sadness and pain in his eyes. I crave touching his handsome face and kissing that sadness away.

But I can’t.

And I won’t.

So we remain silent, our gazes lost in the ocean of memories this house holds.

If this couch on which we are sitting right now, so close and at the same time so far away, could speak of all the things we’ve done on it.

All that we lived through together will remain here.

Are those sweet memories worth the pain?

“There’s no turning back, is there?” he finally asks.

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