Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

We crossed paths outside the restaurant. On the same night, at the same hour, at the same spot. When I was going out, he was walking by. And he supposed that I was there alone, which was false, and in turn I could not suppose anything of him at all. My fiancé was still inside, taking care of the tab while I decided to go out to the car because I needed some air, and that's when I saw him. We shared a reaction that made us appear stuck in place and somewhat disoriented, as if we'd forgotten how to walk or how to say "Excuse me" or anything else. I eventually budged myself past him, in a way that made the entire sidewalk to the left and right of me feel small and narrow, and I got into the passenger seat of the car and did not look out of the window.

But he, seeming restless and needy, approached the window and lightly knocked on it. I wasn't the one with the keys, so I couldn't start the engine and open the window. I rolled my eyes as I was left with no choice but to exit the car and stand out in the cold to talk to him because there was apparently no way to avoid one another from the moment we saw each other.

And, well, just from properly standing face to face with him, that allowed me to remember everything. I was the good girl from a small town who was turning into a city slicker. And he was the kind of boy that a good girl would want, but simply put, he was the first male hopeless romantic I'd ever seen. When we broke up—after admitting that the feelings between us seemed to have dissipated over time—he was more devasted by it than I was. Maybe we both made a wrong choice when it came to choosing the person we wanted to love, but maybe part of me also didn't want to truly admit that for the time we were together, he had showed me a palette of colors that I could only see with him. Colors I wouldn't have seen until I was with him. Colors that I see with my fiancé now, but are some more of a brighter hue than they previously were. Or maybe there were just unfortunate circumstances that occurred during our relationship. Miscommunications that we couldn't recognize because the kind of love we had was rushed.

Neither of us can immediately get a single word out of our mouths from the second I'm out of the car, that and I wasn't sure of what there was that I could say. I'm entirely silent, and he's stammering because he's already noticed the diamond shining on my finger underneath the moonlight.

"You're engaged," he finally says. "I thought you were here alone."

"Why are you out alone? For a guy, especially for a guy like you, that surprises me," I said, shrugging, because it'd truly surprised me; I would've expected otherwise.

"Sometimes it feels good to just go out and get some fresh air, you know?"

"At six-thirty in the evening? In the middle of winter when the sun set two hours ago?"

"Why not?"

"Listen, my fiancé's inside, paying the bill for the delicious dinner we just had because it's our anniversary. I can't stand out here forever."

"Well, I'm sorry to interrupt you, then. If you really want me to, then I'll just turn around and start walking back home."

"No, wait. I'm going to ask you a question, OK? It's been a long time coming, and I think you know that. Have you seen anyone in the past two years since we broke up? Did you ever meet a random girl at a party and feel like you had to kiss her while all of your friends were looking? Did they start clapping because you were about to enter a relationship?"

"That's more than one question."

"I just want to know, that's all. Did you also, I don't know, sleep with her and then leave her house during the night out of fear that her dad would discover you two together?"

"Yes to the first question, and no to the rest. Also, the last one never happened. Not in the way you phrased it, anyway."

I glared at him when I realized he was still alone. Of course, I'd been long over him and our breakup, but I could only express sympathy for him.

"What happened?" I soon asked him.

He took a deep breath like he either was trying to recall what happened or didn't want to explain what happened at all.

"Long story short, she said that it was too much for her," he said. "Which is fine. That happens sometimes, you know?"

". . . Do you wish you could still touch her?"

He raised his eyebrows and scoffed before chuckling at my question.

"What?" I said, chuckling with him. "It's just a question."

"No, I don't. Not really. Let's just say that it was too late when I realized that, well. . . she wasn't exactly you. There's only one of you, and now you're engaged to someone who I just hope isn't a dickhead of a guy. Not that I'm saying I was ever a dickhead, but I know you're in a better relationship."

"She's not a guy. And she's not a dickhead, or a bitch, however you want to put it. But I like to think that second chances exist, and you should, too. You should see if she wants to meet you again. That just sounds the most right for you, it's the most suitable thing possible. But tonight. . . this was something different. Something that I think we both needed, don't you think so?"

"Yeah. I really think so. I guess I shouldn't be very sorry about interrupting you anymore, but I better leave you to it. You seem to be having a great life."

At that moment my fiancé walked out the doors of the restaurant, and when she and my ex saw each other, he waved at me and left.

"I saw the whole thing," she said to me. "You can't hear anything through the windows, obviously, but. . . what was that about?"

I looked in the direction that he walked, and continued to stare down the street as he disappeared into the night, heading in the direction of what I believed was his chance to ask the other girl for a second chance.

"I just had a question for him," I told my fiancé, with a sense that, for the first time since I'd been with her, that I could confidently speak my mind about the man I was with before.

Breakups are similar yet very different, especially when you either go through multiple or soon find the right person directly after leaving the previous person. But when you and your previous counterpart don't have a need to express hatred and negativity post-breakup, I began to believe it was OK to say a few words to them if you happened to unintentionally come across them while out and about. Like I knew, I long had lost my romance with him, but I just wanted to know how he was doing relationship-wise; I just had a few questions.

Chapter Text

Like being lost in a very complex and seemingly endless and disorienting puzzle that is an ancient labyrinth, the bewildering feeling of falling for someone so suddenly after the event that led to the breakup is just that of what she felt.

From one week, to one month, to one year, it only felt like one day. She tells herself that, similar to getting a papercut, "It only hurts this much right now." It's what she tells herself like that feeling of being so slightly struck by a piece of thin paper, that it's identical to having her heartstrings tugged at to cause the same kind of pain—but it will only last so little, when in truth, it will last what she comes to believe will be a lifetime.

With every time she inhales and exhales as she cowers into the plush chair in the corner of her bedroom, she recognizes her current position as a trap. There are no traps besides her sudden panic as a result of the memory. Her only methods to ease the escape are her "happy pills" as she calls them, getting fresh air, and being comforted by none other than her young golden retriever. All three provide a major boost at one time, but some days, it's only the pills and her dog, or the pills and the air.

And one day, a day that had come after over one year since the breakup, she used all three of her methods at once, and a casual walk in the park became twisting but the thought of its future glory was one to never occur in her mind as she believed it may be impossible. To be a hopeless romantic who can fall for someone in the blink of an eye, yet has been well aware of being cautious about different people, keeping her eyes on someone new provides all kinds of feelings. Confusion. Wariness. Hope. Lust. The sight of someone beautiful brings along a rush of adrenaline but is a distraction she enjoys, especially when it's someone she's had her eye on for longer than she realized.

That would become one thing about seeing the person she liked, that she wanted to come to know. It would land her in another trap that caused those feelings of being confused, being wary, feeling hopeful, and being full of lust. To her dismay, he who she'd seen in the park had kept her from getting that fresh air that she knew healed her some amount when she needed it most.

When she returned to her apartment moments later, she rushed to her room and gathered some of her art supplies—some pencils for sketching, a set of oil pastels, an eraser, and a large square canvas to place on her easel. She thought it may have been odd to create a sketch that she wanted to be a kind of artistic facsimile of the one she'd seen. As she became lost in that labyrinth inside her very mind as her pencils met the canvas, she would finally realize that she was making a new connection with finding love. As it'd taken her a full day to finish the image, she stepped back and viewed it with the faint sunlight trying to peek through the dull autumn sky. She realizes just how much detail she tried to include within her artwork—and when she looked closer at the details, she knows a fact that she'd known long, but never fully admit to herself that she knew it. And it was that the very man she sketched had been living in her building, a floor above her. She knew what details to include because of the amount of times she'd pass him while they were taking elevators or coming in and out of the building. And it was those exact elevators that she had struggled with using because, well, she feared sharing one with him and him alone because of what she may want to say or do, and the way that they would rise and descend between floors had made her recognize those vibrations as giving her too little time to find the confidence to introduce herself to him, if she were to have no choice but to share an elevator with him.

She sighs at the sight of her art, and she mutters, "Oh no, I'm falling in love again." And she turns to her dog, who's lying in her bed, and she tells him, "I'm falling in love."

What she felt had just been, what she thought, was the best and worst of that labyrinth her consciousness would become ever so lost in. One of the other solutions to find her own way out, she realized, was to keep her connection with her pastel artwork more than just imaginative; she had to encourage herself to face her own fear of having chances of being in an elevator with him, and of thinking that she'd be alone for the remainder of her life if she had ever hesitated to tell herself when she would be ready, and that time had come.

A week later, she entered the elevator, finding herself alone. She had seen him on yet another walk in the park, but of course did not come into contact with him, and when she suspected he'd returned to the building, she went to visit him after waiting some few hours so she wouldn't appear what she called "stalker-like." But to her own surprise, he'd known what she was, who she was, how she was.

And he knew just what to avoid with her, and how to make her feel that she took her pills without taking an extra dose; what his personality had been towards her was nothing but potent. It was potent in such a manner that, the following night, the thought of him kept her awake for two hours longer than she would have liked.

"You cry sometimes," he said to her earlier that day. "And when I can hear it for myself, I know you've been needing to let it out."

Before she left, he asked if he could hug her to which she steadily granted, and she looked up at him, and she said to him, "How'd you know so much about me? We've never met formally. But now that I've come here and you let me in, you knew how to make everything right. I'd always tell myself that someday, the plane would finally go down and cause such an impact. Now you've turned it right around. How did you do that?"

"Because why should I be ignorant?" he had said.

She'd lie in bed that night and repeat what she told herself earlier: "I'm falling in love again." But she took it more seriously, and it pleased her. She didn't find the need to say "Oh no" because she knew it would be the kind of love she desired.

"I can't believe it. I'm falling in love."

Chapter Text

"Beth?" the voicemail from Rose began. "I know I've done everything else to tell you this but. . . I think it's time that we work this out. If we keep waiting any longer, then things will never get better. I, um, I'm always going to be here, you know, because I can't just pretend everything is fine. And. . . I love you. You know that. Call me back when you want to talk, please? Please."

I listened again.

"Beth?" her voice said again.

And I listened again.

"Beth?"

I listened until I felt all the force of the tension on me, like I was trapped in some rubble and felt a large brick placing more and more pressure onto my ribcage by the minute. And then I deleted the voicemail so I couldn't make myself listen to it again. It was her voice I liked to hear, and it was not the tension I wanted to feel. But I could only delete the voicemail so I wouldn't enable it to provide said tension.

On the day Rose sent the voicemail and I first heard it, it had been one month since I'd last seen her. And for her to call me 'Beth' rather than 'Elizabeth,' it meant she was vulnerable. When she would say it, it would be when she was excited or affectionate, or in other cases, she wasn't having a good day and needed me. And this time, she needed me. But I refrained because I wanted to make sure that I could help make things right without accidentally doing something wrong without thinking first.

This long, tense, emotional, loosely romantic war between us, what had been a great war, began because of me. Partly because of me. I was working at a local coffee shop, and Rose was home, and on most occasions she likes to visit me at work. One day, the very day that would eventually lead everything to go wrong, she'd come in, bought her usual, and blew me a kiss before going home. About an hour after she came in, another woman came in. A woman I knew. This other woman was my ex. We'd broken up because she was moving across the country to go to college, which I understood and had upset me until I met Rose, but to see her in front of me again was something I wasn't expecting. And she didn't expect to find me working there, either.

She waited for me to go on my break so she could talk to me. And what happens when she doesn't know you're no longer single and she takes you to the women's bathroom? She pins you to the wall and kisses you. That's just what she did.

So what happened when I went home that day?

Rose and I fought. We fought because she picked up the scent of another woman's perfume lingering on my body, and it clearly wasn't just me, because I rarely wore perfume. And when I couldn't keep it in because she was pressuring me, I broke down and told her what had happened.

I'll never forget the way Rose's voice sounded when she said, "And you just let her kiss you?" She was vulnerable, angry, and became quiet.

I decided to pack my things and go to my parents' house. It wasn't until I was about to walk out the door when Rose asked me where I was going. I told her our relationship was going to be paused. We didn't call or text each other, didn't visit each other, or anything. When I would go to work, Rose never visited. She'd only walk past the windows and I could feel her looking in at me, and on one occasion, I turned at the right time and we briefly made eye contact. I wanted to run after her, but I didn't want to risk losing my job. If I followed her, she and I would've likely reconciled much sooner.

When I was back in my childhood home, I'd hide in my bedroom and cry, and I would look out the window and pretend that Rose was going to bring a ladder over and climb up to my window. But the reality of it was that we were having a long fight without seeing each other. At night I would stare up at the ceiling and ask myself why she didn't let me speak, and I began to curse her like maybe she'd feel my frustration.

One day, I got a letter from her that essentially asked me to come back because she wanted to formally apologize for misunderstanding me. As I read it, I could hear her voice in my head. One of my teardrops fell onto the paper, and the letter I hid under my pillow but didn't read it again. She didn't send another letter, but I knew she was mentally begging me to come back. During the nights she'd spend her time doing what she did, I remained in my bedroom, with the curtains shut, and I would drink about two and a half glasses of wine while scrolling through social media on my phone.

Then she finally texts me something similar to what she wrote in her letter, like a treaty of some sort because she wanted me to acknowledge that we needed peace. I began to write a text back to her, telling her that she had to trust more freely, but I didn't send it because I knew I had to do the same. Why didn't I trust myself when my ex got the two of us alone? I couldn't answer that myself. All I'd known was that Rose knew I read her message. And I made it worse because I didn't respond. It became the longest month of my life, and I'm sure Rose felt the same, and eventually, I had enough.

The conflict began to turn into something bigger. Since that month felt so long, I started to believe that Rose felt betrayed. What could have been going through her mind all that time? I was sure she thought that we were now broken up, and I'd gone back to my ex, and she was going to forever be destroyed. But I didn't want her to think that. On the final night, I cried myself to sleep at the thought that I'd never see her again because I didn't say anything, and she thought she'd never see me again. I thought she finally lost any of the patience she still had and was going to give up because I made her wait.

And then I woke up to the voicemail.

"Beth?" her voice softly said. I didn't want her to feel like she had nothing else to do but to send a voicemail, but her voice was what I missed hearing, and it was just the sound that would break the silence between us.

When I'd gotten myself ready that day and had deleted the voicemail, I went back to her without calling her first, like she asked me to, because I wanted her to be surprised to see me. I knew she heard me open the door, and I knew she heard my footsteps. But I didn't see her. I went to our bedroom and she was lying on her side of the bed, hugging the pillow I would lay my head on. She finally turned her head, and she saw me. She reached her hand out, and I approached her and held it as I sat next to her.

"Beth," she said.

I leaned down to kiss her and then she ran her fingers through my hair, and when we smiled at each other, I vowed that I would always be hers.

"How did we survive this?" I asked her. "It was only one month, but it felt like it lasted forever."

"I don't know how, but I'm glad it's over. I never stopped thinking about you. About things we've done together. All the memories came back at once and I just never stopped wishing I would see you again."

"Well, I'm right here. And I'm not going anywhere again. I'm going to stay right here and plant that memory garden with you."

She continued to look up at me and placed her hand on my cheek. And I never stopped telling her that I would always be hers.

Chapter Text

"My God," Marjorie whispers to herself, her voice breaking as she begins to weep. Tears would suddenly begin to stream down her cheeks, and she would become stuck in her position as she stares endlessly at the one thing she lost.

It began two months before, when her husband was home after a day of work and she decided to surprise him with the news. Their two-year-old daughter had been down for a nap when Marjorie told her husband, James, that she was pregnant and was excited to have another child after they'd wanted to try for another. Her family and friends wouldn't know until just days before everything would unexpectedly go wrong.

And on that very day, with her husband at work and her daughter napping again, Marjorie began to feel some cramping that she immediately thought was odd, but ignored and suspected it would pass quickly. But it would only increase and become unbearable, it finally would cause her enough discomfort that even lying in bed couldn't soothe her body. She felt nauseous, making her think she was going to experience regular morning sickness as it'd been a symptom she always had in her first trimester, but when she couldn't find the urge to hurl, she would only discover the feeling of a leak that was similar to the start of menstruation. She carefully peered between her legs to find the one thing that would keep her trapped in her bathroom until her daughter would wake. 

She knew what was happening without previous experience, but didn't take any action with her current state of distraught. What she could only do was stare at her very small child in the toilet, realizing just how little time had really passed since conception, and how much more time was needed before it truly would've, could've, and should've been the child she wanted to have. She stared at it until she heard her daughter waking up, and she first cleaned herself up.

Her daughter would play while she grabbed her journal and wrote a message to her lost baby; she had already gotten an idea of what she wanted to do to remember it. 

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. You were just the smallest thing, but you were still something bigger than the whole sky. The time I had with you was cut very short, but you were so much more to me. Of all the things life has to offer to me, you were one thing I always dreamed of. There's a lot of things I can live without, but never would I have thought that I would have to see the day where I would realize I have to live without a child of my own. I don't know why you were taken away from me, but everything I had wanted for you has left with you. But it's all over and you won't be here, but I know you'll always be my little one.

She tore the piece of paper out and rolled it up before finally sealing it with a miscellaneous piece of a ribbon she found, making the letter to her infant appear akin to a message in a bottle. When her husband came home, she broke the news to him somberly. As she broke down as she recalled the sight of the child she lost but never would have imagined to see at such an early time, and he consoled her. Their daughter was confused at the sight of her mother crying, and her father would only tell her, "Mommy's just sad today."

Two days later, they went out into their backyard with a bundle of black balloons that they were going to release into the air. Marjorie unraveled the message she'd written and read it while occasionally glancing up at the sky that was not at all partly cloudy, as though she knew from somewhere else, her child was there to listen to her. She rolled the letter up again before they all released the three balloons together, one for each of them.

In her bedroom she placed a small wooden chest where she stored some of the little memories she currently had, and knew she never would have more to add. Inside it was nothing more than the letter, a few photos of the sonogram of her baby, and a tiny white T-shirt for her daughter that said "Big Sister" which had recently been used to announce the pregnancy.

On every night for about three weeks, Marjorie would gaze out her window and stare at the moon as it was in perfect view of her bedroom. Sometimes her husband would leave her be, other times he'd approach her and let her cry on his shoulder.

"I've got a lot to pine about," she told him one of those nights. "In both ways. I'm sitting here, wondering why I couldn't have another baby, and I'm wondering when I can have another baby again. Having my own family is all I want. But why does it have to be so difficult?"

Since then, she was typically the last to fall asleep. She would struggle to fall asleep, but often woke because her mind remained restless. As she lied in her bed, she turned her head towards the window, its curtains shut, but she would gaze like she could visibly see the sky.

In a whisper so faint that there was almost nothing but the mere sound of her lips moving, she said, "I'm never going to meet you."

Chapter Text

I bought a coffee, went to work, and sat down at my computer in my office where I had to read emails to prepare for the next advice column in the magazine that I wrote for. Most questions I would easily answer, but on this occasion, there was one question that stood out to me and needed a bigger answer; it wasn't a question that I could answer with one or two simple sentences.

What do I do when everything around me is going in the opposite direction of how I want it to? I feel like everyone in my town is against me and I can't do anything right. It's like it's all one big mistake that I'm doing everything to fix but nothing is working—it only gets worse.

Please keep my name anonymous, thank you.

The question was among the first I added to a list of those that I was going to answer, and it had been one that was the most obscure and unexpected. Never had I received a question that would have such a lengthy answer, but in the end the answer had to be long enough because of the deep thought I entered after reading it over and over.

I turned on the oil diffuser on my desk, allowing it to emit a faint lavender scent that I always used when I needed to stay focused and not stress. And then I began to think about how to answer the question when I got to it—I needed to think about it while answering the others first.

Dear reader,

To start off, you should mentally face each of those factors and find out how which is more appropriate to tackle first. When you manage to resolve each of them slowly, you're already progressing greatly. But if you feel that everything keeps worsening, that may feel like a trap. If it does feel like you are in a trap and cannot find a way to free yourself, you may already be in the trap.

I paused and finished drinking my coffee before I stared at what I'd already written. And I deleted it.

Dear reader,

Run. Look at a map, pick somewhere you want to go, and run. Don't look back.

And that just seemed like I was just telling them to give up and not try at all. I didn't like how I wasn't trying to use a friendly tone, but it rather made me sound stubborn and lazy. So I pressed undo until my original answer was back, and I decided to try to finish it from there.

It is always best to stay strong throughout these situations—even if giving up always seems like the easy way out. One thing you may want to consider facing is your town itself, not yourself. Are you happy with your current living situation? Is there anything surrounding you that may be causing you distress or a lack of peace? If so, it may be time for a move. In fact, you may have already considered doing so as an escape. Where would you like to be? Is there a certain place you can see yourself living in? It just may be home to you.

If you find a new home where everything seems right, and is very different from where you previously were, and you can't immediately recognize yourself, then that means you did it right.

Again, I paused. That very question had minor information that I recognized as being a very similar scenario in my own life. I didn't send the question in to myself, but it made me feel like someone knew exactly what was happening to me.

I thought of replying to the email instead, and writing something such as, I think it may be best to find someone else to seek advice from. One person you should never seek advice from is someone who's falling apart.

But what I did not realize is that while the sender chose to remain anonymous, I still knew their real name. And who they'd been was someone I'd known. Someone who wasn't in my situation. They sent in the question because they wanted me to give myself advice. What I'd already written to myself was advice I didn't know how to take.

While this may be a difficult decision, I continued writing, you can sometimes snap when you have to. If you feel that it's absolutely necessary, it may be the best way to go. Lots of people experience these moments where they feel like they need to reinvent themselves in order to make everything how they would like it to be. Moving to a new home is a common method, especially in confusing situations. But if you are sure you would prefer to start fresh in a new place with new people, just remember it's alright to not answer anything and everything you're asked. Your secrets, at times, can be a great luxury, and they are one thing you pack as a necessity wherever you go. And you should tell them sparingly. When and if life gives you some of its worst again, always aim directly back at the devil, and do not miss. Your shot matters.

I saved what I wrote, and soon the work day was over. I would begin to walk home, trying to communicate with myself and come to a conclusion about what felt right. When I passed a bar on my walk, I turned back. And I drank and I drank until I voluntarily cut myself off. I had a fourth glass in my hand, but immediately decided that I didn't want it. I hadn't become drunk but almost wanted to be so that for a moment, I could try to forget my day and my current life, but I stopped myself because when I remembered what I'd written, I took the best and worst from it. There were still people I needed right where I wanted them to be. Some of my life had already been where I wanted it to be, but have I had enough of it already?

My new advice column was published within the next month. When I heard about the reception regarding that question that had in fact been a reflection of my own life, I fled. I fled but did not flee for long. I took the time away for mental health reasons and because I wanted to find out if running to a different place was what I truly needed. I wanted to have a house to go to, and have it be more than just a home, and I wanted it to be a kind of house where I could go and someone would be there waiting for me. Not a home that's empty and all alone, and nobody is ever going to be there besides myself. Inside of my hotel room in another city, I couldn't resist my urge to pace like I couldn't back home. The friends I had were friends I still wanted, but did they still want me? Did they still care?

Did I still care?

I found the magazine on a table at a local café one of those days, when I'd still been away, and I went straight to my advice column, and read my own answer to what was practically my own question. I must have read it three times in a row. And still, I could not find an answer within my answer. I needed another guiding light and I had to find it somewhere.

All along I was my own guiding light. And that light shined so bright, yet I never knew where it was going to lead me.