The Way You Lie

Chapter 1

     He had spent what felt like the biggest part of his life loving her. He was young, a mere twenty-five, so I suppose to a twenty-five year old seven years would seem an eternity when it came to love and lust and heartbreak and loss. She was everything any man could dream of in a woman; as beautiful as she was on the outside, her heart and soul were a thousand times as bright. Kindness poured from her being like her long locks of auburn hair fell from her head and her intentions were as fair as her pale skin. Her lips were thin lines, rarely dressed up with lipstick but rather laughter. When she laughed everyone heard it; it was almost obnoxious with enthusiasm, but it was genuine. Everything about her was real. And when those thin lines turned upward in a smile, be it from a compliment, or a good deed, or a familiar tune hummed while watering the daisies, it almost hurt not to kiss them.

     Actually, it did hurt. It ached in every place that could ache and throbbed in places one didn't know existed. It hurt when she laughed, and when she smiled, and when she would sip wine on the patio or chug water after a jog or bite her lip when she was curled up in the library, deep into a book, oblivious to the lives buzzing around her. Oh, when she bit her thin little lip he could feel a burning in his soul. When she was so deep in thought, so consumed by the work of some literary genius or in the thrill of a teenage love story, when she was so beautiful, and pure, and silent, and vulnerable, that was when he wanted her the most.

     She didn't even see him looking at her through the self of books, she didn't hear him fumble through the aisles, his shoes squeaking with each step. Often times, late at night, they were the only two souls in the building, save for the old lady down stairs who would lock the doors when they left. She visited the library at least once a week and found her place in a dilapidated arm chair placed by a large window overlooking the town. There had always been something about her that set her apart from other girls, and this was all a part of that. In a time when libraries were often uninhabited, save for the computer center, she found comfort in the silence and in the smell of old books and allowed herself to become lost in a reality somewhere different than the one she was in.

     She heard him at times, he had no doubt, but she never saw him, and while she suspected the presence of a stranger, maybe even a child, she never would expect him. He had left town after high school and it had been years since they had looked one another in the eyes, years since her stomach had filled with butterflies as their hands brushed while walking past one another in the hallways of a small town high school. It had been years since he had kissed her but he could still remember the sweetness of her thin little lips and feel the dimple that formed in the small of her back as she stood on her tip toes to kiss him back. It had been years, a lifetime, yesterday.

     He ached to kiss her again and when he went to sleep at night he dreamed of exploring her body in a way she never allowed him to at seventeen. The thought of his rough hands caressing her smooth bare skin was enough to make him tremble. He was never a man of great self-control, but rather a man who knew exactly what he wanted and he would do nearly anything in an attempt to appease his desires.

     He had only been back in town for a few weeks and was careful not to let anyone see him. In the past years, when he would return to town on leave and word made it back to her, she would lock herself in her little house on the mountain and not come out until he had returned to his station. It was his fault, he knew, that she hid. She had left him, yes, but he had broken her heart. If he was honest, he knew he had nearly broken her completely with his actions, even though he loved her more than she could ever know. He loved her before he knew her name and by the time she had touched his hand he knew he was hooked; he was ruined to any other woman for the rest of his life. When she left, he told her that exactly, and she almost laughed in his face before she cried and walked away. She told him he would be okay, and he told her he was never, ever going to let her go. She didn't believe him, at least not entirely.