Notes: Bitter belongs to Remy Zero.
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The future is wasted
And I can�t see the light from the sun
I can�t even see where to run
You said we were learning but
The whole world is burning...
She hadn�t known what she was looking for when she crossed the country at the drop of a hat, so she could never say for sure if she had found it.
Days passed quickly in those first few weeks, and they settled into an undeniably domestic existence with very little awkwardness. She would watch him over the edge of her section of the paper in the mornings, as he sat wordlessly contemplating his coffee with drowsy eyes, and she would marvel at the turn her life had taken. The image of herself as comfortably settled had never really crossed her mind.
It had always been her ambition that had fueled her visions of the future, and somehow she had left that behind in California. She had a job here, a position in a small PR firm, but it was nowhere near the high-powered executive work she had always seen herself doing. And strangely enough, she was happy.
Every girl has her image of the perfect knight in shining armor, a vision of the man who will one day become her love and her life. But as she grows, the knight�s armor inescapably tarnishes from the weathering effects of reality, and she is left with only the tattered remains of a childhood dream. Somewhere along the way, she had given up on the idea of a handsome prince riding in on his white stallion to rescue her. In fact, she wasn�t sure if that had ever been a part of her fantasy. It seemed like as far back as she could remember, she was the one saving him.
In the end, she decided that the saving had been pretty much mutual.
She had showed up on his doorstep, suitcase in hand, and he had taken her in without a word. She hadn�t allowed herself to think about it too much on the flight from the west coast. There were some things that just couldn�t hold up to too much analysis. She didn�t let herself think about what would happen if he turned her away...or even what would happen if he didn�t. She had always been impulsive, she supposed, but this was bringing things to a whole new extreme. Her hands had trembled as she pressed the button by his door, and she told herself that it was from the cold.
But the smile that lit his face, if only for a second as he opened the door, made it all worthwhile.
Love was never a word that was spoken between them, and when they did talk of relationships, it was always in the abstract. If pressed, she probably couldn�t even find the words to define what it was they shared, and she was glad that no one had ever asked. People would assume things about them, she�d see it in their glances, their wordless questions when the two of them would be out somewhere in town, and she found to her own surprise that she was never uncomfortable about those assumptions. When a waiter would make a casual comment to her about her �boyfriend,� or once even her �husband� outside of his hearing, she would never correct them.
It was the first time in her life that things had been simple and utterly uncomplicated for her, and for a while she found it refreshing. She would wake in the morning to the comfortable warmth of him pressed up against her, and she would fall asleep at night listening to his quiet breathing, and for all the hours in between he would be with her, if only in her thoughts. The conversation of what they were to each other never came up, and they were both happy that way, in their simple and undefined life together.
She couldn�t quite pinpoint the moment when that contentment ended.
Somewhere along the way, the need for change had crept back into her life without her even noticing. She found herself looking at her existence and wondering how she had gotten so far off track. Things were not happening for her the way she had planned them, and panic started to set in as she discovered that she was suddenly not in control anymore.
�What is this?� she asked him one night as they sat curled on the couch, sharing a carton of Chinese food. It was one of those familiar domestic scenes that had become snapshots of her life, and she wondered for a moment how many nights they had spent like this over the last year and a half, before deciding that it didn�t matter.
�Lo mein,� he told her absently, and instead of making her smile like it normally would have, his complete obliviousness of her true meaning brought an unexpected sting to her eyes.
�No, I mean, what is this?� she tried to clarify, gesturing between them with her chopsticks.
He blinked. �What, us?�
�Yes. Us. What are we? I mean, what are we doing here?�
�We�re, you know�� he shrugged a little and shifted uncomfortably. �I thought you were happy like we are.� It wasn�t a statement, though. It was a question, and she didn�t have an answer to it.
�I thought I was too,� she said, almost to herself after a long pause, and the stricken look on his face sent a twinge of regret through her. �It�s just�� she sighed in frustration. �I don�t know what I�m doing anymore. I have a crap job, and I have�whatever this thing is that I have with you, and that�s it. That�s all I have here, and I�m just�I�m starting to wonder why I ever left LA in the first place.�
He looked at her, and his eyes said for me, but he didn�t say a word, just looked at her with those soulful dark eyes that had drawn her to him in the first place. There was suddenly a pain in those eyes that she had never seen before, and she knew her words had put it there. There was a part of her that wished she could take them back, and wrap her arms around him, and forget that she had ever said anything, but her mouth betrayed her, and just kept talking.
�We�re standing still, Toby,� she said, willing her heart not to break, praying for the tears not to come. �We�re living this�this life that isn�t going anywhere, and I�m just tired. I�m tired of running in place and getting nowhere. I want to go back to California.� The words came without her planning them, without her even thinking them before they were out there, hanging over them with the weight of a thousand anvils ready to drop.
He pulled away from her and stood. He paced, in the way she had seen him pace hundreds of times, when he was worried, or upset, or confused, and she knew he was all of those things now, and a million other things besides. When he spoke, she could hear the defeat already seeping into his voice. �Would there be anything I could say that would make you stay?�
They were words that would have sounded desperate coming from any other man, but from him it was a genuine question, an honest attempt to find out if there was any way to change her mind. And as she thought over all the words that had never been spoken between them, she discovered that they were already explicitly understood, and speaking them would make no difference at all.
So she said �no,� and it was the end of the discussion, and when he came home from work the next day, she had already packed her things. In the end, there was nothing much to say, and as they hugged at the doorway, clinging to each other as if the force of their arms could reverse the decisions that had already been made, she leaned over and whispered in his ear, �Goodbye, Tobus,� and tried to smile through the tears that fell down her cheeks.
She pulled away then, and turned to go, and as he closed the door behind her, she heard him whisper, �I love you, Claudia Jean.�
And she found that when the words had been spoken, they did make a difference, but not enough of one. So she whispered them back to the closed door, and then turned to hail a cab.
Part Four: Everything You Hoped Would Last