Page 130 - Contrast2015

days, but the year. It will glow bright in her memory, a yellow
crocus peeking out from beneath the snow, for the bad days.

She will know that even if she had known the way this
would end, before she gave him her heart, that she could
never have turned him away. There was always shelter
waiting for him, there.

The bliss will fade as spring comes. He will grow restless
and spend his days pacing, talking, planning. She will tell
him, come back to bed, but he will not. She will watch him
build a raft. She will see the pieces of his ride out fitting into
place, as she walks with him to the Registrar’s Office so he can
submit his application for graduation, as she sits with her legs
crossed and her hands clasped in her lap in the second row of
his senior seminar presentation. He is leaving, and she cannot
even ask him to stay.

The last day she ever sees him, it will pour rain. She will
go out walking in it, leaving her phone and taking only her
keys, and she will walk and walk and walk until she is
drenched to the bone, her hair dripping, her dress clinging to
her frame. He is the one going to sea, but she thinks that she
will be the one who drowns.

after

She will want to be friends with him, and she will not
know how.

It is not because they are incompatible for friendship. In
another life, they would have met, without the spark, and they
would have stayed up until all hours of the morning, debating
everything, discussing, laughing. They would have loved each
other like siblings, and he would have kissed the top of her
head, but she would never have wanted anything more than
that. She would have loved him in that life, just not the way
she loves him now.

Or in another, they would have been friends first. They
would have known each other for some time; they would have

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