Author's Note: I can never finish a story, but this was for English class, so I had to. I'm glad I did- it's getting me to finish other stories too. Printed out and double-spaced, it's a little over 8 pages. It's short; leave me alone, at least it's a story!
-insert happy face here-
fictionpress won't let me indent, fucken RAWR!
please read and REVIEW. any comments help me, and/or make me happy.
Yeah, author's note over.
Enjoy.
Time Apart For Broken Hearts
Elle McKinnely kept one eye permanently glued to the clock as she busied herself with cleaning the living room. She was on edge again, as she constantly was these days, with a flurry of thoughts flooding her mind. Would he come home early? Would he call in to say he'd be late? Would he not call at all, not show up until midnight? Could he, somehow, cross through a time warp on the way home and appear, once again, as the man she'd met eight years before?
The familiar purr of his car's engine pulling into the driveway stole her from her thoughts, and she glanced at the clock subconsciously; 9:00. Elle watched her husband walk into the room. He was rubbing his temples as if attempting to quell a headache.
"You're late again." The woman's voice was quiet, but lethal.
"You know very well not to expect me home at 4:00 in the afternoon, Eleanor. I'm not a teacher's assistant, for crying out loud; I run a business!" The man, who had, surprisingly enough, once been in love with the woman now sitting in front of him, wondered fleetingly how they had ended up like this: her; cold and indifferent, him; working late and using her full name. He thought of the girl he had proposed to six years previously. She had been outgoing then, funny and smart with a quick temper- the life of every party. She got along with everyone they met and the two were known by most people as the most charismatic couple ever to live. He had changed too of course- he'd given up his dream of being an artist and traveling the world. He'd traded it in for a more feasible job goal, one that included a business suit and $120,000 a year.
"Oh, 'a business,'" she mimicked, her tone condescending, "You're a bloody store manager, John, not a high-strung marketing executive of some sort, and I'm training to be a teacher, which is a rather well-respected job, mind you!"
"And it'll definitely solve any financial problem you'll ever have."
"Oh, money again! You act as if we're destitute; we're not! Honestly, it's as if money is all you care about. It is, isn't it John? I don't know how your morals broke, but mine are still intact. And I'd rather be passionate about a job than about the money it makes me!"
"That's good, because teaching certainly isn't going to make you much," he responded, a harsh tone in his voice.
She stood up, looking older than her twenty-seven years should have allowed. Her brown eyes were alight with a fierce passion that hadn't been there in years; something was going to change. "What has bloody become of you? What happened to Johnny, the kind-eyed artist who spread happiness and beauty to everything he touched? Do you even remember a time when love was more than just a word to you?"
"Of course I do, Eleanor, but things change. People grow up. We're not twenty-one years old and still living in England or even twenty-five and just moving into that small house in Vermont. We're in L.A. We're adults- face that fact- and you need to start acting like one.
"If the fact is that what everyone says is true and that growing old really does mean losing your sense of love and magic, then I don't want to face it." The next words spilled out of her mouth without her permission, but even as she thought that, she knew that they were true, unequivocal even. "In the past eight years, I've followed you from Oregon to England to Vermont and now to California, despite my family's constant disapproval. I would have followed you to the ends of the earth if you had merely asked! I've loved you since the day I bloody met you, John, and the memories of those times have kept me by your side throughout every move and fight, even when the fights became a nightly routine! But…they aren't enough. I'm sorry, John, they just aren't enough anymore." Realization lit her every limb as she walked away and up the stairs to their bedroom.
Fifteen minutes later, she had a suitcase packed with all the necessities and a few keepsakes. She held a box in her hands as well. It held the mementos that were too painful to bring with her; the letter John had given her a week after they'd met, explaining the odd but ferociously gripping attraction he felt towards her, a painting of the two of them shortly after their arrival in England, the knocker that had once resided on the door of their house in Vermont, which she had loved so completely that John had taken it from the door for her, and a picture of the two of them sitting in the shade of a willow tree, looking happy and peaceful.
As Elle descended the staircase, she felt her first spark of something like fear, but it wasn't unpleasant. It was the mix of apprehension and nervousness that she had at one time been used to, when she and John had been young and carefree. She spotted John sitting at the dining room table, staring blankly at the chair across from him. On the table in front of him were a half-empty bottle of wine and two wineglasses.
He held a glass out to her. "Would you like a drink before you go?"
She shook her head slowly before setting down her suitcase and walking to him. She took the bottle from his hand before he could pour himself another glass, and let the alcohol wash down the kitchen sink. She turned back to him, leaning against the counter.
"Look at you," she said, and walked back to him. She straightened his collar and flattened his hair. "You're a mess." She smiled softly as she said this; he seemed somehow younger, in the way he looked up at her. She allowed herself no more than a second of looking into his eyes, afraid of the emotion that might be there. "I'm going to miss you…Johnny." With that, she kissed his forehead and walked out of the house, thinking to herself that it might be the last time she would ever do so.
His voice was quiet and her thoughts were loud, so she didn't hear his whispered words as she left the room. "I love you Elle."
Elle McKinnely stared at her hands on the steering wheel after putting the keys, albeit a bit shakily, into the ignition. She looked at the ring on her left ring finger and took a long, deep breath before removing it and pulling out of the driveway. The usually crowded Los Angeles streets held fewer cars than normal and the traffic flowed easily. It was as if she was meant to be leaving; the path was clearing for her, though she didn't even know where she was headed.
Two hours of driving brought her to a clear lake, surrounded on one side by an open field, and on the other by woods. She knew instantaneously where she was and that there was a hotel about a mile from here that she could stay the night in. This was the spot John had brought her to when they first came to California. They'd gone to this lake before they'd gone to their own home, and they had continued to go every chance they got. It was Elle's favourite place in California.
She resisted the urge to park here and explore her lake in the dark. Instead, she drove on to the hotel down the road and got herself a room there for the night. The next morning, Elle woke up feeling exhausted instead of rejuvenated. She brushed her hair, bought an orange from the hotel's cafeteria, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, and packed her suitcase back into her car. Before she left the hotel room, she took one last glance around, checking for things she'd missed, though she had hardly unpacked anything. Somehow, she felt as if she were missing something. As she turned to leave, she realized what it was, ran to and yanked open the bedside dresser drawer, and snatched her wedding ring out of it. Elle stared at it for a second before slipping it into the pocket of her jeans.
When Elle drove back to the lake, spotted a willow tree and remembered all the times she'd spent underneath it. This thought brought along with it thoughts of her and John resting in its shade. She shook them from her head and realized that this spot, ironically enough, that had once symbolized the start of her life in California with John, would now symbolize the start of a life on her own. Elle wasn't sure how she felt about that, but her lack of assurance didn't stop her from parking by the tree and grabbing her camera before hopping outside.
The camera was like one out of her dreams- a black, digital Canon EOS Rebel XT with top shutter speed. John had given it to her for her last birthday. She walked to the water's edge and snapped a shot of a bird flying overhead. She knelt down low and got a picture of the lake from a bug's perspective. She turned then and took a picture of the willow tree- of her willow tree. She remembered the picture at home in the keepsake box with John and looked at the picture she'd just taken. The shot looked eerily empty without the two of them filling it up.
Elle couldn't help thinking about the events of the night and the past years. She recalled the day they'd met, their first date, and the day he asked her to marry him. Her family had hardly approved, but she hadn't cared.
"I love him," she'd started, talking to her parents, "And he loves me. And we will go on loving each other long after the end of time rolls around. That should be what matters most. And to me, it is. We are getting married; whether you show up or not, that's your decision."
"But what now," she thought, "what happened to the love that was supposed to last longer than time itself? How could that have just disappeared?"
The longer she thought about it, the more she realized that it hadn't. The love she had felt for John, the love she still felt for him, was much too strong to ever die, much less because of a few fights. She thought about the fights then and about how, maybe, they weren't always his fault- maybe they were usually hers. John hadn't wanted to give up his career as an artist, but he'd done it because he believed that they needed more to survive. Maybe he was afraid of somehow failing Elle by not giving her all he thought she deserved. Maybe it wasn't about money. Maybe Elle instigated many of the fights because she felt like she was losing the boy she'd fallen in love with.
She couldn't stop loving John. He was a part of her; as much a part of her as the green is a part of the grass in the spring. There was no separating the two. How could she ever have doubted that?
Without thinking, Elle found herself bounding to her car just as a light rain started. Her cell phone lay beeping on the passenger seat, and she noticed that she had seventeen missed calls. She picked it up and hit speed dial number two- John- before checking who the calls were from. There was no signal.
"Bloody rain," she muttered darkly before jamming the keys into the ignition and putting the car into drive. It wasn't moving. Why wasn't the car moving? She looked in the side-view mirror and saw her back tire whirring in the mud. After muttering a string of curse words to herself for her horrible luck, she decided not to let this seemingly portentous setback keep her from her goal. Even though it was as if the world that had before been aiding her was now working as hard as it could against her, she wouldn't let that stop her. She would try to push the car out of the mud before it started to pour.
"Sometimes," she thought, "you have to fight for love." And she realized that that is perfectly okay, normal even.
Elle walked to the back of the car and noted that there wasn't a lot of mud to push the car out of, but that, with the rain getting steadily heavier, more was accumulating every minute. She bent forward and began to push, trying to use her knees more than her arms. When that didn't work, she turned her back to the car and pushed that way.
"Ugh." Her breathing was quick now, and she slid down the back of her car, sitting in the mud. She didn't really care that her ninety dollar jeans were getting ruined- it was her ruined relationship she was worrying about as she brought her hands to her face and finally cried.
"You never did have the best luck with cars." Elle gasped and looked up; ready to start crying harder from sheer astonishment, for it was Johnny's voice she heard. When she looked up and realized that she wasn't hearing voices that weren't there, her face completely lit up with surprised happiness. Him standing there, in a pair of old jeans and a faded t-shirt, rubbing his neck with his hand nervously, was enough to make her jump to her feet and run to him.
She threw her arms around his neck, and he picked her up and spun her around. Neither of them wanted to let go, but Johnny felt like he needed to explain himself. He set her down and quickly began rambling; "I know that if you love something, you're supposed to let it go and wait to see if it comes back, proving that it was always yours, but I'm just too bloody impatient for that, Elle. I don't want—"
"Stop. No, I'm so glad you— Johnny, I can't live without you. I'm so sorry for everything I put you through. Every fight and every move and every time we hardly talked…I know now that they hurt you just as much as they hurt me. All I want is for you to be happy, no matter what jobs we choose or how late or early we got off from work. Arguments happen, but as long as you're happy, I'll be happy. I…I'm not ready to let go of you now, or ever for that matter. You're my Prince Charming, remember? We're supposed to last forever."
"Supposed to," he questioned, cocking his head to the side.
"We will; longer than forever. We'll outlast time itself."
"I know we will." He smiled knowingly as he leaned towards her, and, chilled to the bone in the pouring rain, they shared a kiss, sealing the promise of forever.