Flash Fiction: Seven Years Later

Seven Years Later.


I told myself that it wasn't her. There was no way it could be. It just couldn't, but I knew that it was true. Tara Benton, the first girl to break my heart. I hadn't seen Tara for nearly seven years, since her wedding. Yet here she was, as big as life and just as lovely. She came bounding up to me, arms thrown wide, a huge smile on her face, the kind that still lit up her face like Christmas morning. She threw her arms around me into a great hug and buried her face into my chest.

She spoke a mile a minute, but I didn't catch any of the words she had said. My heart was still lumped in my throat and the words could find no breach. She looked up at me, her deep blue eyes catching mine and sweeping me away again, just like they had in years past. She grabbed my hand and walked me over to one of the benches, telling me about her life and what she was doing.

We sat down and I think I made the appropriate gestures and nods, but I don't remember ever saying any words. I just remember what it was like to feel that way again, to feel a way I hadn't felt in a long time. To hurt in a way I had tried to forget all those years past. The taste of tears and the empty hole in my heart seemed a little fainter, like they had happened to someone else. Things long buried seemed to want to surge to the surface, yet all I could do was drink in Tara and re-discover what facets I had forgotten.Finally she seemed to take a breath and I realized that she was talking to me, expecting a answer.

"Edward, It has been so LONG! Why didn't you ever call me? I called you and called you and you never called me back. I missed you. I STILL do. What happened to us?"

I sat there for what felt like a long time. Her eyes, so blue, her hand so soft still clenched in mine. I remembered every inch of her, the fall of her hair over one eye, the cleft in her cheek when she smiled, she even smelled the same. After all this time, she was still the first girl I had ever loved and I remembered why I had fallen so hard. I placed my free hand on hers and cupped them together, running my fingers over hers, remembering. But then I felt it. I felt the thing that had hurt so much then, felt what had taken her from me. As cold and constricting as ever. Colder than her rejection of my proclamation seven years ago, and colder than my heart in the years that followed. I felt her wedding ring.

"Because you broke my heart."

I let her hand go and stood up, watching her eyes go thick with tears and walked towards the rest of the party. I waited for a tear of my own to fall, but it never came.

End of Line.
Gerrad!