The After Effect || short story series: book #1

3.

Crashing into a million pieces when reality set in, snapped me out of that trance I thought would last forever.

The line made him wince.

He knew what he had done, and he didn't want to read what he already knew.

Everything was going fine until he broke up with her that first time.

The reason?

He still wasn't entirely sure. Maybe it was the miles between them, that prohibited him from touching her skin, that drove him to search for that touch someplace else.

He didn't know what she tasted like, felt like, smelled like, and the more he tried to ignore the fact, the more it turned him away from her.

It wasn't her fault, yet it seemed like he wanted it to be. He wanted, ever so badly, to project the guilt on someone else besides himself.

Perhaps even then, as he thought about it all with a blank stare at the small black lines in front of him, he was subliminally pushing that particular thought away in denial.

He was certain it was best to find someone else that could give him what she couldn't, but he ended up realizing how wrong he was countless times.

And she welcomed him back in, countless times.

He thought about the plans they made; the times he told her he would be there to hold her in the mornings, and kiss her at night, touch her when she needed it, and how he wouldn't stop reminding her of how much he loved and cared for her.

He thought about her pauses over the phone, the smile that must have played on her lips as she closed her eyes, and set his words into vivid images of the two of them together.

The promises he made, and broke, over and over again, but couldn't seem to stop making because somehow, the false hope became the only hope.