I met you for the first time in a dream. It was a silly little thing, I can't remember what about. The only remarkable thing in it was you. I hung onto it as long as possible, trying not to wake up. But eventually I had to, and I almost cried when reality hit me over the head like a bucket of ice. I went back to my grey life, my grey school, my grey friends. The empty ache within me that you had filled for a night still hurt, nothing had changed.
Except my dreams. Because I dreamed of you again, months after. You were more real, this time, and I could almost believe in our dream-love. I woke with your arms around me, until I moved. And then I remembered my first dream, and dared to hope that I would dream of you again.
I had always lived in a world of dreams, it was an easy step to go to ignore the real world altogether. All I had to do was endure until the night, when sometimes you'd visit me. Those nights made up for all my pain. At last I experienced love, at last I had a place in someone's heart. I lived two lives in my time, and the only one I cared for was the one that others said wasn't real.
You see, I always knew we didn't have long. You were too beautiful to ever be touched by age, too reckless to die in your bed. You'd made the choice of the heroes, whether you knew it or not. Live fast, die young. And death is death, even in a dream.
Of course, I knew you were faithless. How could someone like you stay tied to someone like me? I'm not beautiful, or witty, or anything that could hold you, not even in a dream. It was enough that you came back to me, however long it took. The psychologists would say I imagined you like that because I didn't believe I deserved better. But then, nobody was asking their opinion. No woman could have deserved all of you. I had your heart, and it was all that I ever wanted. You were perfect. Beautiful, intelligent, witty, laughing, generous. Everything, in fact, except real.
I woke with your arms around me and lay still, trying not to lose the feeling. But this time it was you who moved. I rolled over and there was a man in my bed, in the spinster's bed I'd never bothered trying to fill. I wasn't frightened. Enlightenment rolled over me, in a golden wave of dream-light. I'd married you yesterday, hadn't I? How could I ever have forgotten! Three months ago I'd met a man called Kieran, and yesterday we'd got married.
You must have woken when I moved, because you whispered my name and pushed yourself up on one elbow, looking at me. I pushed a renegade strand of hair away from your sleepy green eyes. And again I wondered why someone as beautiful as you wanted to hang around with someone like me. And I wondered how long we had.
I'll skip the next bit. If people want to read a love story, there's thousands of Mills and Boon out there. No need for me to make them sick as well. And there's people who can write Black Lace far better than I ever could. So let's just say that we were in love. You had my heart and I had yours, and that's all that anyone needs to know.
It felt a bit strange, being married. From a new perspective all my life, all my friends, seemed different. Take Aileen. All the time I'd known her she'd seemed a nice sort of girl, with boyfriend after boyfriend. I'd always envied her. But now, now she just seemed lonely. Your influence, I guess. Sometimes it felt as if you were at my elbow, pointing out the loneliness I'd never seen. Couples I'd thought were in love, just clinging together because they weren't strong enough to live apart. I knew what real love was, and I pitied them. They had so little, how could I grudge them my share of you?
Oh Kieran, I'd always known you weren't faithful. How could someone like you ever be tied to just one woman? Of course I didn't mind. the others could have anything of you that they wanted, as long as I had your heart. But the death I'd always sensed in you was coming closer.
It was Aileen that did it. The moment I knew you were seeing her, I was terrified. I didn't know why, except that you were going to die and she was all caught up in it. But I couldn't tell you that. For the first time we argued, and you left me crying to go and see her anyway.
We started to grow apart, Kieran. Your heart was still mine, but more and more your body was hers. Aileen and I grew to hate each other for the halves of you we had, and I hated her more because loving her would kill you. I was certain of it now.
You didn't understand what I felt. You thought I was jealous. But oh Kieran, I wasn't, I was just frightened. And you were going away from me when I needed you most.
And then one night you left me and didn't come back.
I think I knew what had happened from the first. Don't ask me how, I just knew. The nights passed and you didn't return to me, and there was a sick despair in the pit of my stomach because the doom I had seen for you pressed down on me, and nothing could lift it.
Four nights later, they found your body. Slit from throat to groin, wrapped in a black plastic bag and buried in the park. They called me in to identify you. But what could I identify of yours in that lifeless, mangled corpse? The pain hit me, more than I could bear. The love was gone, and in its place just a bleeding wound that would never heal past the aching loneliness. In hurt and in terror I did the only thing that was left me to do.
I awoke.
I woke alone, in the spinster's bed I'd never bothered trying to fill, and I dressed alone in the echoing house. And then, wondering, I went to my jewellery box and took out and held the uneven round shape that felt like soft leather in my hands.
I don't know who makes our fates, but they're a real bastard. A bastard or a saint, I'm not sure which. And I don't care anymore, because now I know that whatever happens I'll always have the only thing I ever wanted.
Your heart.