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It’s been ages.
So long, in fact, that he nearly forgot it was once a necessity. It hadn’t been so for what felt like an eternity—how many years, now? Nine? Ten?
But as Linda’s arms wrap around his shoulders and pull him into a tight embrace, he allows himself the small satisfaction of pretending. It’s sick, probably, to close your eyes and wish someone else’s skin against yours. It’s sick to do that at all, much less your dead mate over your loving wife.
Saying the word, even if in his head, sends a numbing chill throughout his body. For the first time that day, the shock subsides a bit, and the first sign of long-overdue tears prick at the edges.
She looks at him with a sadness so despairing that it nearly reflects pity, yet he can’t help but feel as though she’s the one that should be pitied. If only she knew the terrible habit he had to revert to, the one he’d originally given up for her. Yes, he pitied her, wondering if she’d ever experienced a love as strong as the one he’d just lost. She loved him, he knew, there was no doubt about it. But there were layers to these kinds of things, these abstract entities no one could truly understand or define, and Paul feared, for her sake, that she’d never feel for him how he felt for John.
As she leans in to press a comforting kiss to his lips, he shoves the voice that had been so prevalent in his life into the dark crevice that, he finally realizes, it belongs in.
It’s too late, it tries to tell him. He’s gone.
That’s the bit that hurts the worst, the knowing. Of course it’s too late. A lot of things had crossed his mind since hearing the news this morning, but that was the most painful. No matter what realizations he came to now about the love of cosmic proportions he and his mate had been wrapped up in, it was too late. Nothing could be done.
Well, almost nothing.
Without an ounce of shame, he runs a shaking hand through her hair, and pretends. Pretends it’s those long brown locks, much softer than he would’ve imagined. Pretends it’s the press of his thin, chapped lips against his after a good gig, tasting of booze and ciggies and sweat. Pretends it’s his surprisingly strong arms wrapped around him, moments before pushing him into the nearest bathroom stall in the depths of Hamburg’s most sinful sites. Pretends, and Christ, it almost works.
She sighs against him as if she knows, but Paul can’t bring himself to feel remorse. It’s a necessity again, and Paul figures he owes himself—John—at least as much.
It’s all he can do to keep what’s left of his heart from shattering into a million pieces.