I heard a couple come into the otherwise
empty shop, they were giggling, whispering and obviously in love. The fresh new
kind that made your heart miss beats when your phone rang and gave your body
tingles just to be near them. I kept my head down, tried to avoid looking at
them, tried to preserve the idea that I’d recently adopted, that love couldn’t
exist as strongly as it appeared to be with them, that you couldn’t possibly be
so happy. It had been four months since I’d seen him. He’d told me it was really
nice to see me, that he’d see me soon. He would call me when he got back into
town after his rural rotation. He hadn’t called, and according to my
calculations he’d been back for at least two months now.
The couple was discussing which isle to
find the original version of The Little Mermaid, by Hans Christian Andersen.
I’d once told him about that version, where Ariel, actually named Marina,
turned into sea foam instead of human, her dead body floating to the surface of
the ocean after she couldn’t make the prince fall in love with her. She also couldn’t
manage to stab him in the heart, the only thing that would have broken the sea
witches spell and turned her back into a mermaid. It was actually kind of gross
and not at all suitable for children.
I tried to stop myself from flashing back
to when we in that tiny little book shop with the books overflowing on the
shelves and piled alphabetically covering most of the floor. The book shop with
the small isles that made us brush against each other if we stood side by side,
causing butterflies. The book shop that was as tiny as the amount of time we’d
spent together.
I couldn’t stop. I sat down on the floor
and let the memories flood me, my hair draped over my face and my eyes closed
so that all I could see was him. I thought of the time he’d kissed me in the
children’s section. We were next to the teddy bear in a shoe box behind
cardboard bars; the stores cute way of telling us that we’d be going to jail if
we stole their books. I thought of the time he’d wanted me to appreciate his
favourite book so badly that we’d sat in the isle while he read it out loud to
me. We’d stated until I was curled in a ball on the ground, eyes closed and
head on his lap. We stayed and he played with my hair and read to me until the
store owner asked us to leave. And then we went back to his house, and he read
to me some more.
I smelt him first and felt a hand touch my
hair. Dread followed, and then the sinking realisation that it was him, the one
giggling with the girl. How did I not recognise his laugh? I cringed at the
thought of any part of him escaping me. I looked up, feigning strength. It
didn’t last long, tears slowly escaped and trickled down my face as the reality
of the situation punched me hard in the stomach.
“You have a girlfriend?” I stuttered, not wanting to speak the words out loud. The
girl looked around the corner at us, assessing the situation. I stared at her until
she left. She went back to pretending to browse the isle beside where we were, but
was probably mostly trying her hardest to hear our conversation. I closed my
eyes. She was perfect. She had long blonde hair that fell softly around her
face. Her skin was tanned and smooth. She wore a short skirt and singlet top
without the excess skin looking cheap or tacky. She was flawless.
“I’ll just be a minute love” he spoke
softly to her and at the words I shuddered.
Then he was silent. I would have thought he
looked guilty, if he was capable of such an emotion. “This is our place. You
brought her to our place”. Gutted. He
remained silent, starting at me with those big blue lying eyes. All of a sudden
a rage overwhelmed me. What the fuck had happened to “When I’m ready for a
girlfriend, I want it to be you.” What happened to the promises, the hope, the
date he’d asked me on, for fucks sake. I was so angry. He was such a raging jerk.
He knelt down in front of me but said
nothing. “What?” I screamed “What do
you want?!” Causing the teenage girl
behind the counter to look at us, and not know what else to do.
He started to say my name, moving his hand
to my face and ran his fingers over my cheeks to dry my tears.
“Don’t touch
me!”
He moved his hand away quickly and sat in
front of me, looking at the ground. He tried again. “I was going to tell you, I
would have called…”
“Don’t. Don’t you even dare.” I whispered.
I don’t want to hear about how you intended on being a good person after the
fact. I don’t want to know that you’re sorry or about how bad you feel. You
don’t get to justify yourself, you don’t deserve the privilege. I don’t give a
fuck about how you feel, do you understand me?” He nodded.
“What about how I feel? What about calling when you said you would, what about me
waiting for what has seemed a whole lifetime, did you forget about that? What
about how time and time again you broke me, and about how I forgave you each
time because you were broken, too. It appears you aren’t so broken anymore, are
you? I stopped. I had gone from a whisper to yelling and I was ready to hurt
him, or me, I couldn’t tell.
I took a deep breath, controlled myself and
sighed. “Why did you give me hope, why?
Fuck. If you didn’t want me around, that’s all you had to say. But you didn’t
say that. You didn’t even hint that that’s what you wanted. Why couldn’t you
have just said that?”
I stood up and looked to my right. I pulled out a book from the shelf and threw it onto his lap. It was the original Little Mermaid. “It’s all yours.” And so am I.
I turned around and walked away.
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