My first pay cheque was used to purchase a cheap pair of jeans and a couple of t-shirts, replacing the holey, discoloured things I’d lived in for far too long in the forest.
The next lot of cash went to topping up my long-suffering cell-phone, and it became a thing of torture as I stroked the buttons and read old messages from Della that I’d never seen.
At the start of our separation, she wrote to me often. Telling me stories of classes, exam results, how much she missed me, how much she cursed me, how much she was sorry.
Then they became less and less. Until now, she didn’t message me at all.
Now, it was my turn to curb the all-consuming need to get in touch. Lying in her bed, I wrote text after text that I never sent.
I’m in town.
I’m in our old apartment.
I miss you.
I want you.
I love you.
I’m in love with you.
I deleted them all, needing more time so I didn’t do something I regretted, something we couldn’t survive.
Before I knew it, another two months had passed, pushing me over the six-month anniversary of leaving Della. Even though I still saw her every day—if only for snatches of time between window washing jobs or after work before dusk fell—I still missed her more than food, shelter, and freedom.
At least, she had a routine and friends. She had movie nights and dinners out. She had a life that I didn’t want to ruin, and it gave me all the more incentive to stay out of it.
I hated that I watched with horror every night until her bedroom light turned on, not just his. I held my breath to see if she’d sleep with him again, and exhaled in utter relief when she didn’t.
It was sick.
I knew that.
But it didn’t change anything.
And, as much as our distance slowly robbed me of life and purpose, I didn’t let her know how much I wanted her.
How much I missed her.
How deeply I cared.
How fucking screwed up I was…over everything.
CHAPTER TWELVE
DELLA
* * * * * *
2018
DAMMIT, THE APARTMENT still smells of him.
I haven’t been here in so long, but the moment I opened the door, it felt as if I’d never left.
It feels lived in.
I was expecting dust bunnies and cobwebs, but the floors are freshly polished and the corners neatly clean.
I know I said I wouldn’t write to you again, assignment, but I had to tell someone.
I think I might have to go see a professional. Admit I have a problem. Talk to a doctor, maybe.
This level of delusion can’t be real, can it?
I feel him watching me. I prickle for no reason. I stiffen at the slightest noise. I believe, no matter how insanely impossible, that he’s close by.
And now this?
I truly am losing my mind.
My bed was made when I came home, and I swear I left it a mess.
The bathroom smells like tropical disinfectant, not the faint must of mould that lingers in the grout around the tiles.
How is that possible?
Why do I keep deluding myself this way?
He’s gone!
He’s gone!
I need someone to scream that in my face and then maybe the folded threadbare towels will make sense, or the fact that if I stand still and inhale, my nose fills with his woodsy, wild scent instead of stale passing of lonely time.
I smell him.
And I don’t know what to do anymore.
I came here to put things behind me, yet everywhere I turn, the past keeps dragging me back.
I haven’t said it out loud since he left—not that I ever said it out loud—but sitting here in my bedroom that Ren helped decorate, looking around the apartment Ren helped make a home, I can’t pretend anymore.
I’m still in love with him.
Even more than before.
I’m still furious at him.
Growing hotter by the day.
And I’m afraid.
I’m so afraid I’ll never be able to get past this, that my future is a merry-go-round of prickled skin for no reason, smells of Ren in the air, and the unnerving sense that he hasn’t truly gone, after all.
Maybe he died out in the forest, and his ghost is haunting me.
Maybe this is what everyone goes through when they lose someone so damn special.
Either way, I can’t do this anymore.
I came here to burn you, and that’s what I’m going to do.
And then, I’m going to sell every piece of furniture and leave.
I can’t be in this town another moment.
Screw my creative writing course. Screw being brave. Screw lying. Screw everything.
I can’t do it.
I can’t stay.
I’m running…just like he did.
It’s finally time to say…goodbye.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
REN
* * * * * *
2018
STEPPING INTO THE place I used to live with Della was excruciating.
Every day was the same; the pain never got easier, or the sensation that I was missing something fundamental any gentler.
She was the reason I went to work.