A Half Size Too Small

by ephemerae

No healthy relationship was perfect. That's what he has told me so many times.

The first time it happened, I felt lost. He was my anchor, and I was relieved to hear him say he still wanted me. We would overcome this, I thought, and I would try harder to be there for him.

The second time, I felt inadequate. I had simply stood there and waited for the woman to leave my home…our home. I tried to leave him. I grabbed a duffel bag and shoved things in blindly. Don't go, he said, he pleaded. He'd been feeling stressed. He didn't know why or how it happened. I love you, he said.

-

Women were the most precious things in life, my papa told me. There will be one day when you feel like you love one more than the rest, and that you would want to tie yourself to her forever.

Child, one needs to be tied to live fully.

When I first met her, I felt all of my strings begin to knot. No longer was I free, but a puppet with its strings caught in the hands of the puppeteer. I reveled in the feeling as much as I fought to free myself from it.

The first woman was just the same as the second. Sure, I had no problem getting it up and into them, but afterwards, I would push them away. When I was drunk, it was easy to paint another face over the makeup.

I always went for girls with darker hair and light eyes, because they were the easiest to confuse myself with. I never took them out anywhere, just one night after clubbing.

The girls always understood that I didn't really want them, because they didn't really want me either, and would never tell me what name I screamed when I was with them.

Conquests like these took exactly 4 hours. 2 hours spent in the club picking, then 1 hour of persuasion, then one hour of sex.

She caught me twice, and I can't begin to explain the guilt. I started to wonder if she had decided to exact revenge on me by doing exactly what I did. She wouldn't have any trouble getting a bevy of guys to sleep with her, if that was what she wanted.

Those feelings lasted for 2 weeks, and during those 2 weeks I stayed faithful, but my kisses bruised and more often than not I would take her whenever I wanted: on the kitchen island, in her shower before both of us had to go to work, three times in a row when we were in a secluded clearing in the park. I couldn't get enough of her, but I burned with the belief that I was only one of her many.

No longer could I live with the knowledge that one day, she could leave me.

-

He had never acted so strangely since I had met him. Constantly glancing at my hands, at the marks on my body as if to make sure that it really was him that caused them. He would leave huge hickeys on my neck for all the world to see, even when I asked him not to.

He asked me why.

I said that I had a job, and wanted to maintain some semblance of privacy between my colleagues and myself.

So you don't tell your coworkers about me?

I didn't know what to say. I just looked at him confused.

I want them to know who I am, he said. I want them to know whom it is that you belong to.

I could only stutter out a vague sort of reply.

Marry me.

He pulled out a ring, a beautiful ring, and at that moment I could swear that I had never seen anything else to rival it.

He casually slipped it onto my finger, pressing down when he met some resistance.

I was crying. You don't know my ring size, I gasped out between sobs of happiness and admiration.

I do. I bought it a half size too small so that you would never be able to take it off.

A/N: Would anyone be interested if this was made into a full-length story - we're probably talking about 5-6 chapters.