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You wake, gasping for breath as the visions of the dream start to fade. You reach for him and realize, once again, that you’ll never be able to comfort yourself by holding his smaller frame so tightly to yourself again.
You hear him telling you to hurry up and get out of bed, breakfast is almost ready. You smile and stumble your way to the bathroom, mind not relaying the bottles you’re stumbling over.
In the shower, you see it again, your hands running with his blood as you did everything you could to save him and you’re suddenly huddled against the wall, fighting with all your might to get it off. It’s not true, you just heard his beautiful voice.
You convince yourself and leave the shower. Getting dressed, you ignore the mirror. It’ll just remind you again. You forget that you broke them all.
You make your way to the kitchen and open the refrigerator, grabbing a bottle out. You straighten as you hear the door to the penthouse close and he yells, like he always does, “I’m home.” The bottle crashes to the floor but you don’t realize it. You rush to the hallway but it’s empty. He’s not there. He’ll never be there again.
Returning, you grab another bottle and make your way to the living room. What a funny name. Living room. What were you supposed to call it when there’s no reason to live anymore?
Lighting a cigarette, you hear his teasing words from all those years ago, “You can’t live off of cigarettes and liquor. You need food in this house.”
You smile, remembering what that teasing had led to.
Someone is pounding on your door but you ignore it, they’ve been doing that for the last few days. You silently salute their perseverance and take another drink.
He’s standing there in the doorway looking at you and you look back. He is so fucking beautiful that he takes your breath away. Those blue eyes sparking fire at you, the way the sun has always glinted off his hair. Your light to your darkness. The only one that makes your world spin madly.
This one isn’t wearing your ring and you realize it’s from that time before. Before he realized how much he meant to you, even though you tried to tell him so many times. How did the words you are mine not translate to I love you?
The image of him changes as you watch and he’s walking toward you, a little older, a little wiser. The look in his eyes drowning you in the love you see there. Your only salvation. He sits beside you, curling up on the couch and just watches, never speaking.
You get up for another bottle. Drinking from the bottle makes so much more sense now. You don’t have to scent the whiskey or care to savor it. Drinking it down quickly allows you to remember all the good things and forget that day.
That day when you exited the store right after him to see bullets riddling his chest as a car drove by. That day you lost everything because what the fuck did it matter if you had everything everyone wanted if he wasn’t there with you. That day that you tried to keep him from bleeding out as he stared into your eyes and smiled and told you not to worry. That it was okay and not to blame yourself. That day that your hands are bathed in his blood as the life ebbed out of him. Anyone but him. You’d actually prayed. Me, please let it be me and not him. Don’t take him away.
More proof that the gods didn’t exist that day as you lay him in the ground in that white coffin. You’d found the people who’d done it, a mere drive by shooting for some fun. They didn’t know who they had shot until you found them and taught them why they had never stood a chance in your world. They’d cried and begged. Nothing like the calm acceptance he’d shown.
You look up, it’s gotten dark again and you hear him telling you that it’s time for bed. You go to the bedroom and stumble. You fall, not realizing through your haze that you fell on broken glass. You don’t feel the pain or the sticky wetness pouring down your hand.
You don’t think anything is different as you slip into oblivion, seeing his face coming toward you and holding out his hand. You grasp it and finally, finally, you are able to pull him to you again. You tell him finally after all these long, long years together those three words you had never once uttered, preferring to show him instead. He smiles, and whispers, “I know.”
He’s here so that you don’t die alone.