He didn’t know me.
I didn’t know him.
I was left alone, pacing in Liam’s room for four hours. I had planned on keeping it as ruined as possible, but sheer boredom got the best of me and I did my best to straighten it up.
I put the mattress back on the bed. Piled the sheets I’d somehow managed to rip into the corner, along with the ruined pillows. The comforter had survived my assault so I placed it neatly atop the bed.
I replaced all of the drawers. Though they didn’t fit right anymore and all looked crooked. I liked it better that way. I went through every single one, trying to discover who this Jagger was. Trying to find a hint of Liam.
I found soft overly laundered tees. Underwear. Worn jeans. Belts. Shoulder holsters for weapons. Sweats. Basic male grooming instruments. A couple of loose bullets. The box for an iPhone.
But no personality.
No mementos.
Not until I searched his bedside table. Full of condoms. I swallowed bile at the thought of that. He was a man, and though I’d thought he was, he wasn’t dead. I wondered how many women there’d been since me. If they were better. More experienced than I’d been.
Two books on poetry surprised me.
I leafed through them.
Something caught my eye before I put them back.
The poetry books fell to the floor.
My shaking hand lifted a single white feather.
He was packing his bags.
I didn’t want to watch him do that.
Packing made it real.
Like it hadn’t been real before.
It had been.
That was the problem. Since he’d announced it, it was inescapably and brutally real. A truth I couldn’t escape, couldn’t ignore.
He stopped as I walked into the bedroom, as if he sensed my presence. He always did that, like he was somehow hyper aware of me. I wondered if that awareness would cross oceans.
I glanced to the backpack on top of the messy bed. “You know, they’re not gonna let you get away with a bed like that in the army.”
He rolled his eyes in response. “Yeah, well, it’s only for a small amount of time. You bet your perfect ass that I’ll be right back to this when we have our home together and you’ll have to nag me every day.”
I rolled my own eyes. “I don’t nag.”
He grinned, crossing the room and grasping my hips. “Of course not, my perfect, beautiful, Peaches.”
I glared at him.
He kissed my nose.
I closed my eyes at his touch. At his proximity. It was never something I took for granted. Got used to. But it was something I considered a part of me. I was never complete until I was in his arms. I didn’t even care if that was lame and anti-feminist of me. It was the truth.
And the truth was that I wouldn’t be whole for months, years, depending on how this went and it was staring me in the face in the form of a backpack.
I let out a breath and pulled myself from his arms.
He hesitated before letting me go, as if he too were hesitant to pass up a moment when we were in touching distance.
But he let me go.
He’d eventually have to let me go, so I supposed it was good practice.
I took the object out of my pocket and laid it on top of a tee.
His heat hit my back, chin on top of my head, hands covering mind. Liam fingered the pure white feather. “What’s this?”
“The day I met you, I knew that it was an important day. The most important day of my life,” I said. “Even though I was too young to properly understand it, or even know what it meant, I just knew you were going to be someone to me.” I paused. “Everything to me. So I wanted to have something I could hold onto. Remember the moment with. I wanted to package that feeling into something I could look at later. Even if my thought process wasn’t that complex at the time.” I stroked the white feather, slightly worn with how many times I’d held it. “So I found this, just lying on the sidewalk next to a crushed up Coke can.”
He was silent, though his arms had tightened around me. His lips on my hair.
“I want you to take it. To take the importance of that first day with you. And to bring it back with you.”
Liam turned me around. He clutched my face. His eyes shimmered. “I’ll carry it everywhere. Through whatever happens. I’ll never let go of our past. And I’ll bring it back, ready for us to start our future.”
It was dull now. Not pure white anymore. As if it sensed that nothing between Liam and I could ever be pure again.
But he had it here.
In a life he’d built without me. A life that he’d seemingly designed to make sure never involved me again.