Unrequited

chapter 11

The sunrise used to be my favorite time of day. But then someone taught me to love sunsets, and I'm glad they did. Sunsets are like beautiful paintings, with the sky ablaze with colors. The day I met him, the sunset was magnificent. The sun was a big red balloon floating over the waves of the reflecting sea. I watched it slowly drown in the blue, creating a perfect masterpiece.

I'm not a painter, but I still feel like I could capture the beauty of that sunset on canvas.

"Hey!" Kenneth's deep husky voice broke my reverie. I turned to see him walking towards me on the deck. He looked handsome in the raw sunlight of the sunset, but it wasn't the same as the sunrise. I felt a pang of fear and pain in my heart as my eyes met his grey orbs. He was the pain in my life, the one I couldn't let go of.

"Hey," I replied softly, trying to control the storm of emotions inside me. I was so busy trying to stay calm that I didn't realize he had come up beside me and sat down.

"Uhh... ummm..." I looked his way when I heard him say something. "You... Uhh... I... um"

"It's okay," I cut him off gently. "You can tell me later. Just enjoy the view right now." He relaxed beside me, and I realized that whatever he was going to say must be important to him.

"I'm proposing, Lia, I know there's a drift between you two but I just want you to be there ... for me, you'll do that for me right?" he said after a few minutes, breaking the silence and my heart again. I couldn't believe he was going to do this to me again. I wanted to say I was happy for him, but the words wouldn't come out. The beautiful sunset I had been enjoying was now meaningless. I hated how his words stopped my world in its tracks. I looked at him and saw that he was waiting for my answer and he got it when my head moved and I nodded slightly in agreement.

"I... I'm so happy... I-it's great," I said, forcing a smile that never reached my eyes.

He didn't see the pain in my eyes because he was too busy smiling. He smiled so brightly that I felt like I couldn't breathe. He didn't see my pain, but I saw his happiness, the twinkle in his eyes. It was too much to bear. I tried to breathe, but I couldn't.

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The news Kenneth dropped on me was a punch in the gut. Every word that left those lips of his was an awakening of the sleeping pain, the pain I had forcefully dragged to sleep. The pain seeped to my senses clenching my guts, breaking my heart and my courage. I smiled at him like I was okay and congratulated him as if my insides were fine, I wasn't burning in pain despair and the memory of the betrayal his girlfriend my best friend threw at me.

My heart had always questioned the authenticity of the affection of people who broke just by the news of their muse's engagement but now facing the tide myself realization drilled its way to my heart as I bled with every single word Kenneth threw at me. Now it was the affinity of their heart filling every single cell of this body of mine, it was now breathing in the same air as theirs. I now could hear the music of his silences; I could now hear the melody of his heartbreak.

I understood the crack in his heart, the shattering, the descent into madness. I felt it myself When Kenneth revealed his heart and verbalized his plans for the proposal, each word shattered bits and pieces of the remaining strength my heart had.

He said he wanted it to be special for Talia but when he rendered proposing two days before their anniversary, the dam crumbled, leaving me drowning in raw, unfiltered pain.

He called it 'special' for Talia but that day was a special date marked in the calendar of my heart—a date when my heart will survive the hurricane again.

A small pained smile painted itself on my lips as I rose from the dock and let gravity pull me to the cold salty water of the sea. The cold water kissed my body as a frigid shock a stark contrast to the firestorm within. The cold kissed my skin, pulling the heat outward, yet the fire in my heart burned undimmed.

I hated it!

I despised the ugly burn, the agony, the sheer ache that clawed my heart, it should have defused, mixing in the salty water along with the body heat flowing out of my body, bringing the cold back in but it was rigid, rigid as a rock at the bottom of my heart. My eyes failed to see clearly and the water suffocated my lungs. I should have swum up, should have gone out but it was better here, water suffocated me but the pain I felt above was more choking. It was more gut-wrenching. Down here, the pressure held me captive, but compared to the constricting grip of my emotions, it was preferable.

"Olly! Olly!" Ash's voice pierced through the murky silence, followed by the desperate clasp of her arms around my waist. "Omg! Olly....Are you-" I couldn't hear her anymore as silent darkness surrounded me, pulling me into its depths.