Page 35 of Prometheus Burning

“Just be honest. For once, let me in. I’ve never asked you to get into your life. But I’m asking you now. Please. Tell me something personal.”

His gaze arched slowly back and forth, examining me, a twinkle of moonlight catching his eyes. A spark of some indefinable emotion covered his expression.

“Fine,” he whispered. “Fine.”

“That’s it… just… fine?”

“Fine,” he repeated. “I do… love her.” Jamie cast his eyes downward.

“And… you don’t love me.” The words dripped stalely off my lips. My shoes dug into the dirt, and I clenched my fists, not out of anger but out of pure panic. I sucked in a breath as my insides tightened.

His words washed over me, sitting out in the open, but I couldn’t completely process what he’d said. Not yet, anyway.

I didn’t have it in me to fully feel the meaning behind his words and what it meant for the us. Like I couldn’t handle the pain associated with knowing the boy who had my heart wasn’t capable of reciprocating those emotions. We’d been dating for eight months. It’d never crossed my mind before this very instant that a boy who dated me for that long would be incapable of loving me. Then again, Jamie was my first real boyfriend, so maybe I was just clueless when it came to these sorts of things.

Is this what it meant to love someone? Giving them your everything, and never receiving it in return?

“What about all of that back at the dance,” I said, voice squeaky. “About… me being your perfect piece?” There had to be something else… some sort of answer that would somehow fix what’d just been done and tell me that everything he’d said was a lie. That he did love me.

That he did see a future for us.

“You are my perfect piece, Jemma. Right now, you are my perfect piece.”

“Just not your eternal flame.”

“Just… not my eternal flame.”

A weight landed against my heart, forehead tightening. Jamie kicked his shoe against the ground. Gravel shot across the dirt and sprinkled as it landed back down against the earth. I wanted to grip him, force him to look at me, and demand an explanation. Ask him why he could’ve done this to me.

Instead, I froze in place.

Still, the fire raged inside of me, and I suddenly understand what it meant to be like Prometheus. Fuck. I would’ve preferred having my liver eaten alive on a daily basis than the hell of loving someone who didn’t love me in return.

But maybe being like Prometheus meant carrying around demons we’d never, ever be free of.

“You knew before we dated that you could never love me,” I whispered as the memory of Jamie at Inkwell popped into my mind. I remembered the camera dangling from his neck, a reflection of Melissa against the blacks of his eyes.

“I knew,” he said, seemingly without a second thought or care.

“You knew… and yet you dated me anyway.”

“I knew… and yet I dated you anyway.” Each word cut me like a jagged knife. I twisted my fists as I stood there. Didn’t he care that he’d just hurt me? Didn’t he have anything more to say?

“Do you… realize how much this hurts me?” I finally choked out.

“It must hurt like the devil’s incarnate.”

His voice sounded monotone, heartless. Void of any kind of remorse.

It was then that I fully understood the truth in what he’d say. He didn’t love me. He didn’t care.

Didn’t empathize with how deeply he’d cut me.

As the tears started to fall, I spun around and left him there, drifted back through the path and to the rocks which lined the waterway behind us. I retraced our steps, crossed a road which lead back to campus, and crawled back to the dormitories like a lost puppy dog who didn’t truly have a home.

For the first time in my life, I understood the despair would never leave.

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