For you.
“Don’t go. It’s not time to get up yet.”
The man stood placing his feet onto the cold hardwood floor.
“Did I say something wrong?”
The woman sat up looking at the man as he ran his fingers through his hair grabbing it in two large clumps. The man stood and turned meeting her eyes, but couldn’t utter a word.
“Please, come back and rest it’s far too early for this.”
He had stopped listening to her pleas and turned away. He placed his hands, balled up into fists, onto the dark wood of the dresser looking in the mirror back at the woman propped up on both arms beckoning him to come beside her.
“It’s far too late,”
He whispered quietly shaking his head and looking at the saddened image of the woman who sat behind him. She rose slowly and walked delicately across the floor and slipped her arms around his waist.
“This isn’t right for either of us,”
He could feel her chin gently pressed onto his shoulder blade.
“But you stayed; does that mean nothing to you?”
Violently, the man pulled himself from her trip and walked sharply to the glass doors that led to the balcony. The white sheet of snow was intensified by the glare of the early morning sunshine. He scanned the surface of the untouched snow looking for even the slightest imperfection.
“Why is this so hard for you?”
He turned to her,
“You are not who I fell in love with anymore.”
A stray tear traced down the woman’s cheek as the words sunk into her skin,
“Do you not miss the moments where I kissed you in the early morning?”
She clenched her fists as her voice began to rise, attempting not to crack.
“Or how about when you held me so tight I could’ve sworn I felt your soul come in through my pores.”
He turned back to her and placed his hand to the side of her face and looked into woman’s pained eyes.
“We grew up, there’s nothing that will change that. You cannot live forever in our past.”
She wrapped her arms around his and grabbed her forearms tightly locking him in place with all her strength,
“Then I have no other choice, I’m not letting you go.”
She felt his shoulders shrug,
“Now you’re just being childish.”
“How can you not hold onto the inner child, why have you changed so much since we last were together?”
The grip around his waist tightened as he sighed deeply trying to avoid her eyes.
“People grow up.”
“No.”
Tears stained his shirt as she buried her face into his chest,
“No one grows up and out of someone they love. If you say you love someone it’s eternal that doesn’t end just because you think you found someone better.”
His hands cupped gently around her shoulders as the man pulled her away from his chest,
“This isn’t about who either of us met; this is simply what happens when time and distance come between two people.”
The woman let go and sat down on the edge of the bed looking at the wooden slats that formed the bedroom floor.
“Best friends don’t just die overnight.”
“Then I guess we weren’t really best friends to begin with.”
The woman looked up at him,
“Then what are we?”
The man kneeled on the floor propping himself up with one knee,
“I didn’t say I was going to stop loving you. Nor did I say I never wanted to love you.”
Reaching into his pocket, the man withdrew a small black box that he had removed from a hidden corner on the dresser.
“I grew up and stopped having a crush on you; it’s far more than that now. We both grew up and now I kneel here because I don’t want to continue dwelling in the past, instead let us make a new future.”
The woman sat nervously on the edge of her bed staring into the now watery eyes of the boy she once knew.
“It’s time for us to make new memories together and let the old ones remain in the past. Marry me.”
The woman nodded speechlessly,
“I- I will.”
“And I will promise to love you.”
New tears formed at the corner of the woman’s eyes but these tear would never hold any sorrow. The man slid the ring onto her finger and kissed the top of her hand.
“Forever.”
