Page 4 of Ryan
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Ryan
Istay sitting in the car for over an hour, never taking my eyes off her street, with her two-floor house, just like she wanted. It has a garden at the front, with flowers framing the property; the lawn in the centre is trimmed to perfection. The white window frames, the red door. The room above the garage with its freshly-painted shutter. A fence surrounds the house, also white.
Everything looks new, full of expectation, of the future. Full of life.
A life lived with somebody else.
It’s all just what she always wanted, just as she planned for years, as she had dreamed as a little girl.
Because I know. I was there. I was there every day.
Everything was how it should have been, except for one insignificant, miniscule detail.
Me.
A minivan parks right in front of the house, and I instinctively shrink myself down into my seat, for fear of being noticed. The driver door opens and a golden head of hair appears, tousled by the wind. She opens the back door and leans inside, only to appear a few seconds later with a little girl in her arms.
She pulls up the hood of the girl’s jacket, smiles, and gives her a kiss on the nose. She closes the back door and slowly makes her way towards the house. She looks for her keys in her bag then puts the key in the lock. She opens the door, and they both disappear inside, taking with them what remains of my heart.
I stay there, with my gaze fixed firmly on the door, not really knowing what I’m waiting for: maybe for someone to shake me, scream at me and wake me up, tell me that it was all just a bad dream.
Someone to reassure me, to take my hand. To wait for me to come home, hug me and tell me that they missed me.
Someone who decided not to do any of these things. Not with me.
But she’s doing them with someone else.
I shake my head, trying to piece together any remaining dignity I have left, but it seems to have disintegrated, along with everything else.
I start the engine and get into gear, but before I can pull away, another car parks in front of the house. I grip the steering wheel tight and try to resist: I was not ready for this.
But I stay and watch anyway.
I watch him approach the door, and I see her open it before he can even knock. Then, with that damn smile again, she turns to someone that is not me.
They kiss, on the lips. He puts his hands around her and pulls her towards him.
Those are not my hands. They belong to someone else.
I instinctively look down at my own hands, trying to remember the sensation of her skin under my fingers, but it’s been so long that my mind has deleted every trace of her memory. I can’t do anything but ask myself how it must be for her, to feel someone else’s fingers graze her skin. If she gets the same goosebumps, the same emotions. If she still wants them to touch her again, forever.
Like she did with mine.
They exchange a few words, then they both go inside.
Together.
And I stay there, outside.
Alone.
I stayed there, shut outside as if I had been shut out from my own life: as if it had been taken from me, and I didn’t understand why. Because I can’t bring myself to understand what I could have done wrong, what I could have said, or what could have made her decide that it shouldn’t have been me holding her in my arms when I came home.
I would have painted the door red for her. I would have mowed the lawn every Monday morning, on my day off. I would have built her that damn shutter with my own hands, while she watched me through the front window. I would have planted her favourite flowers around the house: I would have asked my dad to help me, who understands gardening a hell of a lot more than I do. I would have laughed, cried, breathed and sweated every moment with her.
I would have given her everything, just as I always did, and would have continued to do until the end of my days: just like I was ready to promise her. I would have given her my life and, in exchange, I would have asked her for only one thing: to let me stay with her.
It hurts. Fuck, it hurts so much. More than it did two years ago. More than a month ago. More than yesterday.
It hurts more and more every day, and there’s nothing that can ease the pain.
