Abandonment

"Jenny, where are you going?" I asked, my hands already shaking. She turned towards me, no pity left.

"We've been over this. You know, I'm done. Really, I just... let's just talk about this tomorrow, okay? I'll call you."

The love of my life was walking out the door, wearing the sweater I'd given her for Christmas that year. One of the sleeves was already starting to unravel. An orange string hung down from her cuff. I touched her arm.

"Michael. Don't make this harder..."

"No, I - I just want to..."

She stopped. Her face was set in a scowl that didn't quite reach her eyes. They were misty. "Please..."

"Just this thread," I muttered, and tugged at it.

She sighed, but didn't push my hand away."This isn't helping any."

"I just want to fix it," I said. I pulled. It unraveled further.

"Get the scissors. Just cut it, okay?" Be quick, her eyes said.

I ran into the kitchen, and opened up the drawer under the sink where we kept the scissors, along with the spatulas, corn holders, knives, and those little kitchen utensils she used that I didn't know the names or the purpose for. The one with all the wires that spread out like a fan. That wooden mallet with the ridged end. I found the scissors tangled with the wire thing, and shook them free. I ran out, and cut the thread clean.

"Thank you," she said, relieved that I wouldn't pull at her any longer.

"Don't go."

"Don't make this any harder..."

"Don't leave me."

"I'm not leaving you, Michael. I just need some time, okay? You'll know where I'll be. I won't be gone forever."

She needed time to 'think about things', she'd said. Time to spend apart, to think about whether or not she could stand to spend any more time with me. I had no idea if I would ever see her again. I couldn't help but remember how my mother had left, shortly after my fourteenth birthday, how she'd danced out the door to a life of freedom leaving me and my father behind. Now my father was gone, and here I was - a twenty-eight year old musician who couldn't keep a responsible future in line who was struggling to keep the love of his life from walking out the door. "If you go, everything will change."

"Everything is always changing," she said. "You've changed. I've changed."

"I haven't..."

But I had. She was right in that. The past three years or so since we'd come back from Mexico, since I'd been making a real go of it with my music. The band had been on the road more, and with Jenny working on her Masters, we were just seeing less and less of each other, despite living in the same space. We had both changed. There were times when we went perhaps weeks without really having a meaningful conversations. Days in which we never even touched each other. Times we even slept separate, with her falling asleep in her studies, or me passing out on the couch after a show.

I wanted to touch her now. I wanted to take her in my arms, and find some magic words that would make everything alright again. I wanted there to be some way to turn back the time to the trip home from Mexico.

Listen, it was like this:

The radio was playing, all the windows were rolled down. We were in the back seat, with her head on my shoulder. The wind was blowing her hair, and it reminded me of waves on the ocean, how it fell and rose in soft, soothing patterns. I was near memorized; she was near sleeping.

"I love you," I murmured into her hair, then.

"I love you," she muttered back, then. A half-smile forming on her sleepy face and transforming her into an angel.

I wanted those days back. I wanted to be freshly graduated from college, and full of hope for the future. I wanted to think that the whole world was a wide expanse of road, that I could drive down it in any direction I chose.

But I couldn't. I couldn't say the words to make her stay. "I'll call you," she repeated, and walked out the door.

It closed.

I stood there a while, expecting it to open again. She would come running back in, saying how she couldn't stand to be apart from me, that even ten minutes was too much of this 'trial separation'. The door didn't open. My legs started to ache - I'd been performing steady all week, and all the moving around I did on stage got to me sometimes by the end of it.

I put the scissors away, and held on to the thread. I curled up on the couch, too tired and too lonely to make it to our bed. Besides, if the door did open up again, I wanted to be right there where she'd see me waiting - before she could change her mind.

I tied the thread around my finger, like an orange thready ring. I fell asleep, and dreamed I was alternately twenty five and fourteen.

The women I loved were leaving me.

They always were.

(I'm working on a sequal to my short story series - you can see a list of which stories from the first series I posted on Gather here )