Wax

Twenty Eight

That night, he dreamt about the words. It wasn't a fight. It wasn't, so he wasn't going to use that word to describe it, and so they were given their rightful term. Just, words. Neither of them had meant them and yet, they did. Very much so. And how strange it must be to be of two divergent opinions all at once, unable to reconcile the splitting of the heart—two broken sides.

In his dream, he would stand in the exact spot he stood that night. He would hear the words and time would stop, as though giving him a chance, a second attempt, at words and he would. He would think about the many other things he would say or the many other ways he could have worded his words but the words, ultimately, led to the exact same end and then, he was back. In the same spot. Hearing the exact same thing. And then redoing his words; all over again.

It wasn't like how they said it would be in the books. In the movies. The words did not feel like blades or swords or poison or anything so awfully dramatic and heart-wrenching, no.

Because when the world falls apart, it does not make a sound.

No blood is spilt; no tears are shed; no screaming, no shouting into the abyss and certainly not the creak of company. The words in his dreams, they did not feel like anything at all. They were quiet. And they smelled like a cross between rain and candles, extinguished.

Should there come a time when the world began to crack, he imagined the air filled with that scent. That was how the end would smell like. Rain and candles, extinguished.

The night passed.

And when Vanilla woke from his dream, he was alone.

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[Vanilla]

I was alone when I woke.

The premises of this rather abstract conclusion for a first thought of the day did not merely comprise of the empty space next to myself and a lack of warmth on the other side of the bed, no. That was the norm. The usual. And the past week or so had simply been an exception to the mundane; a brief enjoyment of the candle's company. Company that expanded its reach to every corner of my apartment throughout its stay that, however short, had colored the world in the warmest shade of fall.

I never realized how different the space felt like with him in it. So different that an instant in the waking world was all I needed to digest the disparity. Here I was, lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. Realizing the emptiness of it all.

This had come as a surprise. Multiple times, Leroy would leave before the apartment before dawn for his shift and indeed, I'd woken up to an empty bed many times throughout his stay—that was not some foreign, rare instance. Yet, those times felt vastly different from the alone that I was experiencing at present.

This alone was clouded with 'what ifs' and 'did he's'. Did he sleep here last night? What if he'd left the apartment as soon as I'd retreated into my room? Did he go straight to the firehouse then? Did he even sleep?

I reached for my glasses and turned to the digital clock by the side of my bed. Early. A whole hour and a half earlier than the usual time I had grown naturally accustomed to waking up at. Still, I got up.