It's all we do these days - fight. We fight, we cry, we break up, we're back together again, and the cycle goes on. It's getting desperate between us, it's getting ugly, and lately whenever we fight, Summer accuses me of cheating on her. I'm not, and the accusations sting. The worst thing is, I know she loves me, I know I love her, but sometimes... sometimes it feels like she doesn't like me very much. And because sometimes people are likely to do desperate things to save their relationship, one day Summer proposes to me. We're at the planetarium, and while we wait for the show to begin, we sit down on the chairs and lean slightly back. It's cool inside, the ideal place to be to escape a very hot summer's day. This is some time after that whole pregnancy thing, something we never broached again. I ask Summer if she believes in things like past lives and reincarnation and all that stuff. She does not. She says I know she doesn't believe in any of that mumbo-jumbo. I know she doesn't. Then I tell her how sometimes I have these visions - almost like memories - of a me that isn't 'me', thousands of years ago, standing in some island somewhere, looking up at the wintry night sky, with my wife and children besides me, as we watch the Pleiades being loosed in the sky. 'Is it me, your wife? The woman who's with you?', Summer asks. I tell her the truth : I don't know. But I tell her more truth : I hope she is. And Summer sits in her chair, quiet and silent, deep in thought. I move my hand to the armrest beside her, and she squeezes it tightly. Just before the show begins, Summer looks at me and asks, 'Will you marry me?'.
Of course I say yes, of course we get married pretty quick, of course it didn't change anything, of course it saved nothing. The fighting continued. But there was a new dynamic to them now, we rarely have any of the shouting now. Now there are only long, sullen, drawn-out silences that last days at their best, and weeks at their worst. We will literally spend entire days without talking to each other, Summer wakes up early in the morning and she leaves to go to work, and I wake up a bit later. She's either leaving or already left by the time I'm out of the shower, and she never says goodbye. She comes home later and later, and I also start spending more time over at mine's. There's nothing going on between us anymore, we haven't had sex in ages, she doesn't even let me get close to her, almost as if my very touch disgusted her. We don't go out, we do nothing together, except for a few days a week when we share a bed. But it's a cold, lifeless bed we share. Sometimes when she's asleep, I sit on the bed and watch her sleep. There's so much I want to tell her, yet I cannot speak. I can't, I feel bound and gagged. I love her so much. But there's only one way this ends, I realize. We can't go back, we can't move forward - we're stuck on a loop, we're stuck on a rut. And I... I can't bring myself to go. I just can't. I'm not even entirely sure if I exist without her.
This is it. This is how it starts. This is how the world ends. This is how we begin the end. We're fighting again, god knows why. Actually, I know why. But that's for later. And again - Summer accuses me of cheating on her. Summer accuses me of the worst things she does best, because I know she has cheated on me, though I never told her anything. That's why we fight, it's the guilt eating away at her. As she's throws a barrage of abuse towards me, demanding to know if I was cheating on her, I calmly say, 'Can I ask you that question?'. She's taken aback, now, but doesn't go on the defensive, rather, she goes on the offensive. 'Oh, fuck you', she says, 'Why would I cheat on you?', and I'm still strangely calm as I deflect her bullets, it feels like I'm a thousand miles away though I'm still there. 'You tell me, Summer, why would you?', and Summer looks ready to throw something at me. 'I know you are cheating on me', I say. I do know. She's mad - she's angry. She asks if I'd been going through her computer or her phone, she asks if I'd been following her. 'No, Summer. I just happened to get out of work early one day and when I'm getting home I see you kissing some guy by the front door. Then you both went inside, care to tell me what you did next?'. Summer does throw something at me, I don't even know what, but it comes no way near me. 'You didn't have the decency to at least not fuck him in our bed?, I say with some pent-up anger behind those words. 'It's not 'our bed', it's my bed, and I do whatever the fuck I want to in my bed!', Summer screams at me. She comes towards me, balls her hands into fists, and bangs on my chest like a drum. Every blow hurts, every single one of it. Fortunately for me, my heart is hurting more. She beats hard, furiously, curses me, cries, I feel her slapping my face, and her sharp nails rake my flesh, leaving trails of blood where they bit. After a while, the adrenaline ebbs away from her, and she slumps down to the floor. I sit down beside her. 'Hold me', she says. I hold her. She asks me to forgive her. Of course I do. I'm such a sap, I forgive her once, I forgiver her twice, I forgive her thrice. It gets to a point where I'm thinking that she's fucking every guy that she looks at. It can't go on like this. I can't go on like this. I can't go on. I won't go on.
I filed for divorce some days later. There was no salvaging us. Hell, there wasn't an 'us' left to salvage. By the time Summer received her papers, we hadn't been talking for a while. Complete communication breakdown. There were many times when I found myself reaching for my phone, wanting to call her and her hear voice, or just to text her, but I always decided against it. That way madness lies, I thought. I had endured enough pain and misery to last me a hundred lifetimes, and now all I wanted was to move on, and move out, and move away from everything. I had to leave all of this behind, or else I'd find myself withering here. But Summer calls me, and we have a very civilized conversation about the world we live in and life in general. I tell her I still haven't returned the key to her apartment, but I was happy to mail it to her. Summer says I left something over at her place, and I say whatever it is is not really that important. She asks me to come over. I... this is the last time. I say ok, and make my way there. Before I leave, I make sure the key is with me, so I can hand it over to her. When I get there, I ring her apartment, and she buzzes me in. I go up that elevator again, and knock on her door. A couple of minutes later, Summer opens the door. She looks tired, and sad, and raggedy. Like all this had a taken a toll on her. Maybe it did. We say a very curt hello, and I reach for my keychain, and very methodically and very slowly, I remove it from the ring. I give it to her, she holds out her hand, and I place it on the palm of her hand. My fingers lightly brush her hand, that skin, my god, I'm almost on the edge, close to being tempted again. I put my hand on my pocket. 'Here', she said, handing me a manila envelope. I open it, it's the divorce papers, signed. It's now completely official. The dream is over. I sigh, a loud, sad sigh that echoes down the hallway. Then I look at her. She knows how heartbroken I am, she knows how much I still love her. I'm trying very hard to fight back tears. 'Don't look at me like that', Summer says, 'please don't look at me like that.' And I say, 'There's something I'll think about for the rest of my life, Summer. You know what that is?', and Summer doesn't try to fight the tears, she lets them flow freely. She shakes her head, mouths a silent 'no'. This is the last time I look at Summer. This is the last thing I tell Summer. 'I'll think about how I could've been yours, and you'd be mine... It could've been me and you until the end of time.'
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