Learning Me: A One Shot #AUG2016

Learning Me: A One Shot

The last time we saw each other it was fire and ice: fighting, battling, melting and freezing, frozen tundra, then molten lava, smoke that wisped around us making it impossible to see our opponent only to be gone in the next second.

We gave up.

It wasn't supposed to happen that way. We weren't supposed to fight and then just walk away from each other in the middle of a blizzard, in the middle of our quiet suburban neighborhood in front of our parents' houses.

The houses we grew up in, the houses where we fell in love, snuck out the windows, drank and kissed and talked and loved. It wasn't supposed to happen this way.

We were too in love for it to ever work. We were too in love with ourselves to make it work. We were both too in love with our dreams to ever believe that each other's dreams were worth anything. We weren't good for each other.

We were jumping into a pool with clothes on only to realize the clothes were way too heavy, so we only sunk. Down and down and down until we couldn't see the sun at the surface so we drowned in each other— no we drowned each other.

It broke me into shards of splintered wood to see him walk away from me first. When he said, "you pretend and pretend and pretend like we are still fucking seven years old. Well, Princess, this isn't a fairytale and I can't save you. Grow up. Get out of your head. Stop with the stories, the ideas, the dreams."

I pushed him. Mentally and physically. He could not use my career to knock me down. He could not use what I have worked hardest at to make me feel like I was the size of a pebble on his gravel driveway. "I'm sorry you are so unhappy with your life."

"I'd be thrilled with my life if you'd get the hell out of it." And that was the last thing he said before he turned away and I turned away and we both walked away.

A year and a half or so later it is what was supposed to be our wedding day. A beautiful summer day with a bright blue sky, butterflies, and no sign of rain. A day that I imagined for years until everything shattered.

We planned to get married outside at our favorite park only a few minutes from our parents' development because we loved the outdoors so much. Nature is where we became us. Where we both learned to ride our bikes, where he threw a stick that somehow landed perfectly and cut my lip opened, where we would lay on the grass and look at the stars imagining what our future would hold with our hands intertwined.

We never planned this, we never planned for the after.

My after has been filled with words, pictures of sad little animals, and another looming deadline as my agent pushes me to finish my fourth children's book. But how do I find light through all the haziness? How do you move on from someone that was your whole world? Someone who has seen you as a wobbly toddler, a cranky kid, a pimply teenager, a confident adult, a broken human being in the middle of a snowstorm.

I end up at the park that day. That same park that I was supposed to get married in. I sit with a notebook on my lap and watch kids play and adults talk on phones and hope for some sort of inspiration. I write meaningless words over and over and over.

"Carly?" I hear then look to see a body that I have memorized for years. A body that I could draw in my sleep without missing a single beauty mark or freckle.

I don't speak. How do you speak when a ghost visits after a year and a half on a day that should have been the happiest?

He sits across from me, his long legs straight out in front of him like he always used to sit. It made it easy for me to climb into his lap and kiss him whenever I wanted.

I'm leaning against the bench and he is leaning forward, I can smell him. It is so familiar. Dust from the wood he cuts at his shop and shampoo that smells like an island, because he always stole mine.

"Working on anything good?" He asks.

I hand him the notebook.

He will read, "And the Prince told the Princess that she could no longer be a princess while he ripped the crown off of her head. Her eyes filled with water instantly as she asked, 'why?' The Prince said, 'you can not live within the land of make believe while running a real kingdom. We warned you.'"

"I'm sorry, Carly."

"What happened to us?" I ask finally able to look Drew in the eyes. His gray eyes lock onto my brown ones and he pushes a stray piece of hair behind my ear, like he used to do all the time.

"We got scared."

"That couldn't be all."

"We fought all the time, Car. As soon as I put that ring on your finger everything turned to shit. We got scared. All of our games of house became reality."

"Do you still want this? Us?" I asked wiping the tears from my eyes.

"God, some days I do. So badly I want to go back to how we were. Where fighting with you was fun, our adventures kept me sane, and you were what kept me breathing. But then some days I feel like love shouldn't be like that. Maybe we're too much for each other. Maybe we depend on each other too much."

I run my hands down my face and inhale deeply, "I can't move on from you."

"Maybe we just need to grow up without each other first."

I'm silent. He smiles at me and continues his thought, "we've been through every milestone together. Carly we stayed home from college for each other. We don't know who to be without each other. I love you, I want you, but I need to be me for a little while longer."

"Did you know I'd be here?" I ask.

"I do know you better than anyone," he says with a shrug.

"Carly, I don't expect you to wait for me, but maybe we could wait for each other." He hands me back the engagement ring I threw at him a year and a half ago, "keep this. It's yours. Maybe one day we can be better versions of ourselves and make this work."

I nod and nod and nod because I am completely speechless because I do so much better with written word than I do with speech.

"I love you," I say right before he turns around and walks away from me.

"Forever." He says.

When he's out of sight I scribble out my writing from before and write a new story, a story about second chances, friendship, and what it means to love yourself.

Word Count: 1200

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Thanks for reading!

-Brooke