Back to the Days When You Still Loved Me

Fiction

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

You cast long shadows when you walk, each footstep taking you farther away even as I try to catch your hand in mine. The cobblestones beneath my feet make me stumble, and the way you smile makes me feel breathless. Like I’m flying, like a balloon has caught in my throat, like you’re keeping me on the end of a line and leading me along to anywhere you please. Temptress, another age might have called you. Jezebel. You little minx.

You kissed me long and slow the first night we sat along the water. The lights from far-off boats cast the ink-black ocean with a sheen like diamonds rippling below the waves. As you bit my bottom lip — softly, a tease — I heard the tell-tale rumble of a laugh in your throat. It made me bold as I pushed you back, my body covering yours, and you didn’t say a word, just took my face in your hands. Your mouth said so much more than we had even in our whispered attempts at conversation.

You grew cold as summer bled into winter. You hated the way the water looked in December, the sky gray and chalky over ice-cold tides that would have left our feet frozen from just a touch. Even then, I could tell you where growing distant, like those boats that had first overseen the stirrings of our love affair, but I told myself it was just a phase. It was winter, everyone was depressed, no one wanted to…