You remember the way the front door of the shared apartment slammed behind you. It was how you wrote your pain into the air. You wanted him to come after you. To be wrapped in thick tree trunks of his arms so he could shield you from yourself and the disaster you both had become. Despite not being religious, you prayed for his warm embrace to stop the storm, willing there to be enough love in his arms to calm the winds that tore at your insides. But he wasn't the chasing type. He still isn't. You know now that you cannot tell people to go and then blame them for leaving. Bile rises in your throat as you recall how that fate was sealed when you turned down his proposal of forever.


The sea salt breeze whips through strands of chestnut hair as you speed through the streets of Berkeley, venturing past the golf course then towards El Cerrito. Tires hiss against pavement, whispering memories of two years prior. As the wind howls into your ear, you remember the way your anger morphed from a mere nagging inside your chest into a desperate yearning. You pull up to the apartment and are consumed by the once familiar guilt that greets you upon arrival like a chivalrous butler that has been paid off to keep your indiscretions to himself. You stare into the dimly lit window and recall scenes from nights like these.

"Just passing through the neighborhood," you'd claim, greeting him with a tight lipped smile that told of the things your mouth didn't. Sometimes you talked briefly, remarking on sketches spread across the coffee table and the line of furniture he was designing. Things you were genuinely interested in but knew you couldn't acknowledge because it simply wasn't the nature of your trysts. Other times he demanded you take off your clothes, a low, deep rumble erupting from in his chest as you both tried to temper impatience and arousal. You remember the way that he fucked you, flipping you onto your back before pressing you against the length of the couch and crawling into the space between your legs. It was that exact moment with notions of wrong or right dissolved as he spun a dizzying web around you, cocooning your insecurities and doubts in a slick coat of the mess left behind after you were done with each other.


"Will you..." The gem stares at you with a glare of electricity. You don't hear the end of his sentence. The important part. Instead, you are thinking about how there is someone in this world that cares enough for you to want to spend their remaining days in your company. Now, you straddle the delicate line of friendship and the desire to sink teeth into the crook of each other's neck, whether for sport or sin. Your eyelids flutter gently shut and you can taste the salt on his skin. You hear that guttural growl erupt from his chest unlike any other melody you've heard before. He makes you feel both safe and wild, a perfect balance of exactly what you need. You are certain of nothing except that his presence in your life makes you feel whole in ways you thought impossible. The overwhelming emptiness and sadness you feel when you admit this to yourself is enough to make you choke. There are still so many words that will forever remain etched beneath your tongue, heavy and metallic with their weight. And that is enough of a reason to tolerate the self loathing you feel for all of the ways in which you have broken one another yet continue to dance together in the inferno.