Sur Le Fil, a romance fiction

PART ONE: POISON OAK

Cold covered everything once upon a time when skin was softer to touch and lips were ready to be kissed, happiness grew like vines around tree trunks underneath the warmth of the sheets of love that they covered themselves in. Wrapped tight in warm embraces keeping out the bitter snaps of the rushing wind that nipped at open, vulnerable skin, they shared stories under orange trees in summer. Swam in forbidden lakes with laughter to shake the Earth, loud shouts of happiness falling from their wide open smiling mouths in Spring. Danced through piles of leaves in autumn and huddled during winter in the safety of their home. It seemed all their lives were spent together but it'd only been 4 seasons, more or less. In between orange trees and candy kisses came turmoil that couldn't be avoided when they fought the urges they'd always known. "I don't need that now I've got you." he'd whisper to her in the darkness of their room when he'd shake violently and feel the torment of his demons twisting in his mind. She'd agree but desire for something greater ate away at her heart and sat deep inside of her eyes, her addiction not nearly as strong as his had been. See, they had lives before each other; her an innocent, young girl who didn't know much about the world with parents who restricted and bound her from being everything she'd ever dreamed of being and him a wild and reckless boy who'd grown up without any guidance and who'd only used things he bought in back alleys to heal his always aching heart. Now, they shared their sad songs together with written words and guitar strums. They played out scenes from long ago in each other's minds, behind closed eye lids, "You paint me pictures too beautiful to even understand." She'd whisper as she held his trembling hands, she'd trace the lines etched in his skin with her gentle, kind hands there in the cold that covered everything. Happiness can only sprout when you water it properly. They sat in a drought, together. The floor boards creaked with saddened groans, moaning words in hopes of healing the broken pieces of what was lasting and trying to pop out through the snow. "We've never gone through winter before." "Now's the time to try." He taught her how to live, how to love and to be loved and he introduced her into a world that she never even knew existed full of parties and wild nights, full of sex and deep throaty laughter and fast driving and living so hard, so fast that every moment feels like dying. She showed him gentleness and living easy, how good it feels to let the sticky air of night cling to your skin and the stars shine bright in your eyes, how good it felt to get stuck in tall trees and roll down big hills with your worries thrown to the wind. She showed him how to live careful and he showed her how to live wild for each of them, it all felt like dying. He'd say things like, "If this were my last breath, I wouldn't want to spend it any other way." and she'd say things like, "You're making my chest explode with things I've never seen or felt before." and they'd only whisper truth and love into each others' ears in the late nights they spent cuddled up and they were more real alone then they were out in the world. They grew into each other so fast that it felt like they'd never been away, as if the lives they had before each other no longer existed and everything else was trivial and nothing mattered except seeing the other smile with bright happiness. She braided flowers into his always messy hair and he weaved his fingers in hers, in his eyes she found solace and in hers he found home. "I think, maybe we've been entwined since birth but our stars didn't catch up to each other until now because the universe knew that now was the time I was willing to let my heart get implanted with the beauty you've shown me that this life, world has to offer to me." The trees swayed in the wind raging around them as they lay in the middle of empty suburban streets, under the lights and they'd sing each other melodies and felt as though these moments would last through their lifetime, she thought they'd live forever and he thought it'd never get better then this.

PART TWO: QUIET

Chocolate seemed to drizzle lightly from the tips of trees outside of their window her head on his heaving chest, his too thin arms holding her in a caress and they knew what they saw before them was not really there but they believed it to be and she shut her eyes tight and he begin to laugh lightly and she wondered if they saw the same things. She glanced up at his face, his eyes seemed sunken in but hers seemed the same way and it'd been days since the sun light had touched either of their faces, cigarette butts and empty liquor bottles littering the floor "Nothing fills me up anymore." He whispered into her hair but it sounded more like a plea, a whimper and she couldn't help but feel her heart ache to touch the core of him again as she once had to fix the broken parts. "How does anyone ever kill an addiction?" These were words that often left his mouth, chapped lips and heavy heart, he said he felt as though his lungs had collapsed and she wasn't sure what to do. Too pale skin, both of them looked like they were barely living but she remembered the beginning. She heaved herself up from him, looking into his far away eyes, "Remember orange trees and story time, happy days at the start of everything? We were beautiful then." His hand raised, weaving through her soft brown hair, a smile played across his lips, "I remember but baby, we're still beautiful now, just a little broken." He whispered back. She and him, together broken, tears filling eyes. "I don't think I can keep on like this." "Detox is the worse bit." She rewound time in her mind to a place before he decided he wanted them to clean their veins for each other, for life. Driving too fast down the highway in his car, he'd looked at her laughing and carefree and said "It'll never get any better than this, roll around in it while it last." At the time she had laughed the wind in her face, blowing back her hair, "I don't believe in predicting the future but I think things can only go uphill from here." How wrong she'd been and how right he'd been gave her a small laugh. When's the last time she laughed? Really laughed? She couldn't recall, she could barely recall ever moving from that awful bed they seemed to always be glued in. She ran her fingers along the veins in his arms, he took a deep breath and she moved her hand to his chest. She felt his heart beating through his t-shirt and she wasn't sure if that was right or not but she liked feeling the thing that was fighting to keep him alive. He sat up slowly and grabbed hold of her hand, kissing the tips of her fingers lightly and usually this is something that would make her smile but the way he did it was different, how sick he looked was terrifying to her but that wasn't something she ever wanted to share with him but he saw it in her eyes. Her worry staring back at him. "I love you. Too much." He reminded her, pulling her into him and holding her pressed against his chest, "This. It's yours, it beats for you. Okay? I don't want you to forget." Tears pricked at her eyes, spilling over the edge and she clinched his shirt and he closed his eyes, pressing his face into her hair. He knew it was breaking her, he was breaking her and if he were a better person he would have told her to go long before any of it even started. He would have told her to run away from him the moment they set eyes on each other that summer night, the moment that she took those few steps over to him and introduced herself. He never would have invaded her world if he knew it meant she had to give it all up for him. He was costing her everything.

PART THREE: EBBING TIDE

She awoke to the sound of birds singing their melodies outside of their bedroom window, sun pouring over their skin. A small smile played across her lips, today would be beautiful, she could feel it in her bones. "Let's go enjoy the sun." She whispered in his ear, kissing his jaw to wake him. "The sun?" He said it as a question, as if the word and the thought was something imaginary that did not really exist but it had been a long time since he'd seen the outside and it had been a long time for her as well. She pulled him from the bed, the bed full of his sweat and violent burst and convulsion, things she wanted to forget. She tended to him like he was her child, he had become nearly as weak as one but it wasn't something she minded because she'd do anything, give up anything just to see him moving, laughing again. Her life for his, her heart for his. She bought him to an empty, wide field they had once played in, long ago, resting in daises with hands locked and summer skin when everything had begun and he told her stories that made her heart ache and laugh and leap all at once. Beneath a tall tree they sat, the contrast of how pale he had grown compared to the brightness of the Earth was insane to see. Even if you didn't know him and his story, you'd realize he was deathly ill, some might even think the same of her. "I'm going to read you something." She said, letting go of his hand and pulling a small book from her bag. "What is it?" He whispered with his eyes slightly closed and his breathing too out of sync. "Just..this poem. It's us. It…it just reminds me of you more than anything." She began reading slowly a popular poem written by E.E. Cummings, "I carry your heart with me, I carry it in my heart I am never without it anywhere I go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling. I fear no fate for you are my fate, my sweet I want no world for beautiful you are my world, my true and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you. Here is the deepest secret nobody knows, here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart. I carry your heart, I carry it in my heart." He sits against the tree smiling at her, big and bright, a smile she couldn't remember when she'd seen it last. He reached his hand out to push her hair behind her ear, "I'm going to love you for the rest of this life and whatever comes after, Ellie, you know that?" He told her, his eyes shining. They kissed then, there. Under that tall tree with the sun beating down on their skin and the wind gently whipping at them, it was a nice day, winter was nearly over and she thought they'd make it through, just a few more weeks and everything would be okay. It would go and take his sickness with it. She ran her hand through his hair, down to the back of his neck and she felt him tremble at her touch slightly, once they broke a part he coughed intensely. It shook his whole body, a small amount of blood coming out of his mouth and he looked at her worried eyes and he wanted nothing more then to wipe it from her face, to rewind time to when things were simpler and he never saw her look at him in that sad, concerned way but only in the way that made his heart shatter on the floor. He saw a time that had passed before he'd tried to change into something healthier for her when they lay under a starry sky in that same field they lay in now, they had discussed their future together. How she'd wanted a quaint little house with yellow shutters, two little copies of them one of each gender, all the happiness that would surrounding them; everything she'd ever wanted for herself and everything he'd never thought possible for himself. He came back down to the present to see tears falling from her eyes, he wipes them away, kissing them from her skin.

"Hey, don't fret over things you can't control."

"I just want you to be okay. I just want to save you."

"You can't spend your life trying to save me. Hey, look at me, I'm breathing right? I've got you, I've got this, right now, right now. I'm fine. I'm okay. I'm happy."

He smiles at her and she smiles back, she lays against him lightly and tries to push every worry from her mind so she can enjoy the rest of her beautiful day with him as she repeats in her head over and over again, reassuring herself: He's okay, he's okay, he's okay, he's okay. She wished she could just reach into his past and rip everything out of him that drew him to the things that'd made him this way, that she could push the bad blood from his skin and place within herself or make it just disappear so he'd never have to deal with it. She'd never have to see him suffer again. She listened to his heart beating, his shallow breathing and she let the sun glide over her. She pretended she was melting into nothing and he was melting with her, they were becoming nothing together, melting into the hard, cold Earth and they would grow together again into tall, beautiful trees that sat side by side, so close that they looked as though they were conjoined. She imagined they would sway together in the wind and they'd make it through every season, they'd make it through everything the way love should and they'd live with the animals that would play in their hair and they would sprout vines and throw their beauty out into the universe and last through the ages with stories to tell younger generations that sat beneath them. New couples, falling in love or already there and they'd whisper their secrets into their hair and hope they'd survive the way they had. She imagined them becoming nothing together, not existing really, they weren't real people; they were just ghost. Imaginary. Already dead but so very much alive.

PART FOUR: COMPTINE D'UN AUTRE ETE

"Can I tell you something?" He ask her, that night in bed with her in his arms tight. "You can tell me anything." She response. "I know that this is going to sound so cliche of me but…you're the only good thing I've ever had. Sometimes all I see is you, nothing else exist for me, you rescued me. I love everything you are and even if I'm not here, I'm still loving you with all I've got and I don't have much." "You've got me." He kisses the top of her hair, "Yeah, I've got you. You've got me." Sleep captures them both, she dreams of the summer when they met and how radiant she thought he was back then and she still thought it now even if it was dulled, he was still the very core of what her world was made up of, the only string left that was holding her so high up. Morning breaks through the window and she feels as though she'd just fallen asleep but she wakes with a smile, it slowly slides off her face when she realizes that his chest isn't moving, he isn't breathing. "Aidan? Aidan?" She begins to shake him gently, trying to get a response out of him but he doesn't move, she checks for his pulse but it isn't there and she swears she's still sleeping, just a bad dream. Just a nightmare and she'll wake up and he'll be there right next to her and he'll kiss her and tell her he loves her and they'll go out and explore the world again. She jumps from the bed, grabbing at her hair. She lets out a scream, a scream to wake the world, a scream that tears through her chest as tears explode from her eyes and she shakes and she isn't sure if she's really this ball of sadness or if she's just observing it, she can't be sure of anything. "WAKE UP! WAKE. UP. DON'T YOU DARE FUCKING LEAVE ME HERE! NOT NOW. AIDAN!" She destroys everything that is in there room, shattering glass and she can't stop herself, she has no control and her brain isn't a part of her body anymore and her body isn't her body anymore and she can't feel anything else and her heart has never hurt so much and her chest feels like it's caved inward. She can barely breath, "I can't…I can't…I don't know how to be with you. I can't…" She falls down into a corner, adjacent to where he lays, his limp body that was once moving and breathing and beautiful was now slowly becoming dust before her eyes. She brings her knees to her chest and stares at him there, "I love you." She whispers it to herself but really to him, over and over, maybe saying it will make his heart come back to life one last time. She can do nothing but put him in the ground, she stands over his black coffin as it lowers to the ground and her throat becomes tight. She sprinkles daises over him, she turns to leave and swears to sees him standing there, smiling at her and her breath catches in her throat but she knows it isn't real and he isn't real and she still isn't sure she's awake. She still can't breathe right.