Page 98 of Estranged Heart
The last two months have moved slowly and I’ve been forcing myself to get out more. Going to more of my usual places. Trying new bakeries, bookstores, restaurants, and lakes. I want to discover joy and beauty on my own, and I do, but not in the same way I did with Silas. His words feel as wrong today as they did when I left him at the hospital. Here I am, sitting outside his work, and not because of Landon but because I need to see his face and smile. To see him living and breathing.
Days and days of coming here, and I still haven’t been able to get enough. I park far enough away, hiding behind larger vehicles and trees, but hoping he’ll somehow spot me.
“Look my way,” I whisper. Let me see those pretty blue eyes shining my way again. He’s on his last customer for the day and as he pauses at the door, securing the lock, I swear he turns myway for a brief minute. His face unmoving, he stares off into space and then walks to the back.
I should leave before he comes outside but it’s always a struggle. My hand rests on the door handle and I fight my urge to exit my car. I watch as he cleans up the flower shop and turns off all the lights. The glass door pushes open, the parking lot lamp post leaves a glare in the reflection, and I start my car.
He glances around and I drive off, heading in the opposite direction from where he walks. I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep driving by here and his house like some fucking stalker. But I can’t stay away for long either.
When I arrive home, rain pours down on me and my heart cries out as each drop lands on my face. I didn’t think I’d ever go back to dreading the rain and rushing to get away from it.
Each splash coming in contact with my skin is like acid, burning me everywhere it touches. Once inside, I yank off my clothes, and an old carnation falls from my pocket, landing on the floor.
Crashing to my knees, I wrap my fingers around the disintegrating leaves. I’m carrying around a dead carnation, unable to let it go, unable to let him go. I never thought there’d be more places in my house I’d avoid sleeping in, until I’d laid on my couch and was suffocated by his scent. It smelled like he was right next to me and then I’d wake up feeling hollow when he wasn’t.
I toss my phone onto the coffee table so I don’t spend half of another night writing and saving text messages into drafts. I probably have over a hundred in there. I can’t send them but I can’t delete them either. So many start off with a simple “Hello,” and end in “I miss you” or “Come over and dance with me.”
Heavy with exhaustion and something else more wearing, I walk into Landon’s and my bedroom in nothing but my underwear, clutching the dead flower tightly in my hand. Pullingback the covers, I crawl onto the bed and lay down in my late husband’s spot. I close my eyes and curl into myself, letting sleep slowly take me.
I’m finally ready to move back into the room again. Maybe soon I’ll be able to sit in my living room for longer than five minutes without wanting to have the odor receptors in my nose surgically removed. Landon didn’t choose to leave me but Silas did. Why does that hurt more? Maybe because someone I love who walks the same earth as me is purposely staying as far away from me as he can.
Thirty-four
Silas
I thought I saw him through a foggy window when meeting my mom for dinner last night. I wanted it to be true. So much so, I kept staring even after the stranger turned around and proved me wrong. I was trying to make his eyes darker and face more round. I was trying to make him someone he wasn’t.
“Maybe we’ll actually run into each other by accident someday,”I remember saying to him.
Four months later and we still haven’t. Not at the state fair Reese dragged me to, not at any of the movies I went to see alone or at the skating rink, and not at any Christmas plays or tree lightings. Not at the mall, the hiking trails, or other lakes. Nowhere. Almost as if he never existed outside my dreams.
Meanwhile, what my wife did is everywhere, along with all the lives she helped take. I’ve avoided every news channel, and try to change the subject when others bring her up, but I see it in their expressions. I feel the sorrow and pity in the stares of myneighbors and customers. As long as everyone knows, I can’t run from what happened—from who Stacey turned out to be. I try to anyway. Like right now, as I stroll into a small bar outside town. I don’t recognize anyone here and I’m able to breathe easier. I’m no different than anyone else here.
A tall, rugged man smiles at me from his seat, holding up his beer bottle in a silent hello.
Walking past him, I tug at my scarf and head to the bathroom. I haven’t been with another person since Elijah, but I wonder whether Ishoulddive into a new distraction. Not from my broken marriage or my wife’s death, but from my torturous thoughts. What if I hadn’t said goodbye to him at the hospital? What if he was next to me right now? Would he be here because he truly wanted me, or to feel closer to someone else?
I thought I’d only be haunted by the question if we kept seeing each other, but it turns out I still am, even months after walking away. Months of going to counseling and picking up the pieces of my crumbling world.
After splashing water on my face and adjusting my scarf, I walk back out into the bar where the stranger continues to smile at me. I take the seat beside him and he scoots his stool closer, setting his beer down. He has dark blond hair, brown eyes, and a nice smile, but as good looking as he is, I feel nothing. Physical attraction has never been enough for me. I need more. And I can’t find more in a bar or on the hook-up apps one of my new friends from work keeps trying to sell me on.
A quick fling won’t pull me from my funk or help me get over wanting someone I can’t have. I try flirting back anyway, laughing at the handsome man’s jokes and accepting a drink from him. When he slings an arm around me and starts kissing my neck I flinch, my stomach lurching.
“I’m sorry but I need to go.”
“What? Why?” He grabs for my arm when I stumble back off my chair and drags me forward. “You just got here and we’re still talking.”
“I’m sorry but I can’t do this. I thought I could but I was wrong.” I yank my arm free and my head is spinning as I rush out the front door. My shoulder collides with someone else, the ache vibrating through me as I stumble back. Large hands steady me, and when I look up my mouth goes dry. A pair of familiar brown eyes pin me in place, and I can barely breathe with his hands on me.
“Silas?” Elijah’s eyebrows bunch together, and he looks as if he’s not sure what he’s seeing is real or just an illusion. Has he been seeing a little bit of me in everyone else too? Or am I hoping for too much?
“Hey,” I respond, too stunned to say anything else. Not wanting the wrong words to come out, for me to accidentally beg him to come home with me.
“Hey.” He releases his hold on me, rubbing the back of his head. A group of people try to enter the bar and we move away from the door so they can get past us.
“How are you?” His voice shifts.
“I’m good, you?” I shuffle from side to side, preventing myself from closing the painful gap between us. Time apart has done nothing to help me want him less. I was foolish to think I ever could, especially with him invading my dreams and reminding me why I craved him to begin with. Not Landon but me. It wasn’t until his hands touched me again that I realized the deep ache left in my bones from going too long without him.
