ten point five.

“Well, what can I do? How can I help?”

“You can make sure you get it right, no matter who it’s with,” he said. “Be sure that you love him- whoever he is- so much, so truly, that there are no cracks and gaps in your heart where someone else can sneak in. Work hard every day to keep it like that. Pray to God every night not to let it happen. Just get it right.”

ten.

It comes as no surprise when she goes for a second glass of wine, he thought.

He’d been watching her all evening, observing her every move. After an evening of walking through the streets of their small town, viewing paintings and photography, drawings and sculpture, he noticed how her eyes would drift. There was always a slight frown on her face, and honestly it was quite disconcerting.

An evening of free wine, cheese and art should cheer her up. He had hoped taking her out would take her mind off the things that were weighing it down. Despite the cheap booze and fine art, she still held onto the thoughts that had been cluttering her metaphorical closet.

It’s probably why she hides behind that camera, he thought. He was watching her again, smiling when she went off and took pictures. It’s the only time she can let go. By observing others and capturing those moments, she’s taking a bit of history and keeping it for herself. Nothing goes through her mind except for f-stops, aperture, ISO and composition.

They’ve made their way throughout the city, and as they walk up the steps into the final gallery, there’s a bit of boxed wine left.

A piece of art shows two lovers side-by-side, embracing passionately.

It comes as no surprise, he realizes, when that second glass is held tight in her small hands.

nine.

It takes time to put a puzzle together, she thought to herself at breakfast.

Earlier that week she has contemplated purchasing a 2,000 piece puzzle that, once constructed, would be a picture of New York City’s skyline. It was beautiful, she though, but complicated.

As he sat down with his coffee, and that familiar smile entered his eyes, she remembered the puzzle and recalled why she didn’t make the purchase.

Puzzles were frustrating, and at times were easy to give up on. She couldn’t see herself giving the puzzle the time it needed to be figured out, didn’t see herself committing to New York’s skyline.

It was rather selfish and unfair to the puzzle. What had it done to her?

He began his conversation, sipped on his coffee. The steam was overwhelming; she worried about it burning his lips.  As she listened to his words, his delicately thought out words, she knew he would be fine.

Growth is a beautiful thing, and puzzles are complicated. But there’s a beauty to the pieces, a magic to their fit. To witness it as it comes together to make a picture, she thought, was a gift of patience.

He deserved someone who would pick up his box, eager to see the bigger picture inside.

A perfect mate for his 2,000 piece puzzle.

eight.

He was not afraid to cry.

Despite years of torture from friends in grade school, the bantering and words thrown at him from his brothers, and the shame he saw in his own face as the tears fell down from his eyes, he was never afraid to cry.

From a young age, his mother had taught him that allowing himself a moment to let the salt-filled tears slide down his face was normal and healthy. When he came home from school, emotions overwhelming his first failure (in his mind), she held him in her arms and gently cooed words of love and acceptance.

Years went on, and the boy learned to put on a stone cold face. He wouldn’t allow himself to cry. In those high school years of confusion and misunderstanding, he didn’t give in. He wouldn’t cry; tears stained his face too many times in his youth.

He didn’t realize at the time, he was still in his youth.

His mother asked him one morning, as she was brewing coffee, why he didn’t allow himself to feel.

“I am feeling, mother,” he told her softly, “But the tears won’t come.”

His mother looked into his blue eyes, the eyes that reflected her own, and poured herself a black cup of joe.

“When you know love, when you discover the ache of longing and the pure rapture of being one with a person,” she said, “you’ll remember the feeling of when you were young.”

He took these words with him as he left his home.

Time went on, years went by, and he found himself here. With her.

And he wasn’t afraid to cry.

The sun began to set, the band began to play, and as she sang along and held onto his hand, he lied back in the grass. He couldn’t stop time from taking her away, and he couldn’t stop this ever fleeting moment from slipping through his hands.

The words of his mother found him at this moment, and he cried. Tears of joy, tears of sorrow, tears of love and happiness.

It was in this moment that he discovered his heart.

seven.

“And one day we’ll pick the flowers that grow in our front lawns, scatter the leaves on our front porch and plant the seeds our mothers gave to us,” he says to her.

Delicate fingers run across her forehead. It’s a Sunday morning, and she has herself placed in that nook between his head and shoulders; a place reserved solely for her. He has saved it for years in search of someone who would fit perfectly; the missing piece in his grand life masterpiece puzzle.

Her soft lips turn into a smile and the sunlight catches his brown eyes.

This is how it should be every Sunday, he thinks to himself.

Two more hours until he has to leave for work. Two more hours until responsibility calls him.

He plans to spend those two hours huddled here, in this hidden place he calls home. For two hours, nothing will pull him away from this moment.

“When it rains it will feed the seeds and our plants will blossom into a beautiful garden,” she tells him.

He laughs and places a kiss on her cheek.

Yes, this is how every Sunday will be.

six.

He coughed.

“What was that?” she asked, looking up from her book. Her eyes had been concentrated on the words and verses of the book she held dear to her heart.

“It was nothing, merely a cough is all,” he said, his eyes concentrated on the hair that fell in strands when she would look down to read.

“No,” she continued, “You said something. What was it?”

The tension rushed between them, like a river overflowing and ebbing its way over its banks. He looked at her hands and she lay down her book. Indecisive, to say the least, he had chosen her and her love of the world over the other girls he knew. He coughed, yes, but he would (should have) have said those three words that had been at the tip of his tongue for the past three weeks.

“A cough, my dear. That’s what you heard.”

She would be a fool to say that she heard the words. And despite their time together, rare and sporadic, she hid those words close to her heart. Did he say it? Would he say it?

The sun was beginning to set, and the couple resumed their picnic on the grassy hills of the country. It was a day excursion for two, and slowly was coming to an end. As he watched her read, and as she studied her characters, an overwhelming sense of joy flooded his heart.

The great advice from those he looked up to, and to writers of the past now struck a chord with his young heart. And at last he knew, when the wind kissed her cheek and the pollen flew around her. He grabbed the book from her hands, set it down gently on the blanket, and took her chin in his palm.

“I love you,” he said, his eyes filled with a tender emotion only known to those in love.

And she knew. When she saw the smile in his eyes, she knew.

She loved him, too.

five.

Never before had she missed someone like she missed him.

He wasn’t her lover and he wasn’t her significant other. Yet, he was the person who in times of need, she relied on. On the night when someone held onto her and didn’t let her move, forced her to feel the heat of his skin against hers, his warm smile erased the pain she felt. And even now, when the trials of life became too much, it was his laughter and humor that comforted her.

Life is a slow passing of time in which every moment matters, and every moment she ignores is a moment lost.

As much as she wishes to be home, having coffee with the one person who knows her, wishing her time away is truly a waste. This moment, this opportunity is very much so a once in a lifetime opportunity.

The traffic on the way to work is usual, yet she savors those moments when she can reflect on the morning, with the cool breeze kissing her face. Morning disc jockeys jest with each other on the airwaves, and her roommates dance their stress away.

Life is truly beautiful, she thinks to herself as she stares at the rising cost of gas.

In three week she will have coffee with him and reflect on their time apart. In three and a half weeks she be wishing her time away, looking forward to the place she’s come to call home.

Of course she misses him, but she’s beginning to wonder what she will miss more:

A place that offers her everything she’s wanted in life or the person that knows everything she wants out of life.

four.

I wasn’t lying when I said I had cried.

Tears are something reserved only for those rare occasions wherein no other forms of expression suffice. There are no words to describe that moment when you realize that everything you’ve built up and all that you’ve come to believe is a complete and utter lie.

Perhaps that’s where the tears came from; that small part of myself I had hidden away and locked in a part of myself I reveal to no one else.

As I lied in my bunk, my tear-streaked face reflecting the city lights from outside, my roommate walked slowly into the room. She presumed I was asleep. Be it out of fear of loneliness or be it the need to connect (and in the end, are they not the same?) I rolled over and allowed myself to be seen.

She knew. Without words being spoken, she knew.

“He hurt you, didn’t he?” she asked me from below. I slowly sat up, wiped away my tears and smiled.

I had no reason to be crying, I thought. I was living a fantasy and now, finally, I could come down and discover my surroundings. At last, I could see through it all. This dream was a reality and I was living it. No boy is worth my tears. Unless they are tears of joy, my lips shouldn’t recognize the taste of salt that comes from my eyes.

“No,” I laughed. “I let it happen, but it’s okay now.”

I wasn’t lying when I said I had cried, and while those tears were a production of pain and resentment, the sunny skies of California have a peculiar way of clearing those clouds away.

three.

It’s snowing again.

She thinks that if she were to write about her life, turn her story in a movie, no one would watch. Because it’s snowing again, and she’s lying on the floor listening to the songs that remind her of him.

February always leaves her cold inside, her bones frozen to the marrow. Red blood cells lies dormant in her veins, her heart aching with lack of sustenance.

Mending this broken heart is another task on her list, between taking the cat out and running to the store to purchase milk. The hierarchy of what needs to get done and what should get done removed, her list is scattered about on post it notes.

She is resigned, however, to sit in the company of her shadow, cast serenely on the wall by the lone plum lamp sitting silently on her desk. She is weak, she is lazy, and she is a liar. Too weak to confront her needs, too lazy to let the tears fall down her face; she lies to herself when she pretends she doesn’t miss the warmth of his body, the soft smiles she would receive, and the love that filled her heart.

So she lies on the floor. Her body is as small as she can make it, knobby knees protruding as she curls ever so slightly on the carpet floor.

From the corner of her eye, she sees the white blanket that has covered the ground, flurries of it flutter in the air.

“Perfection,” she says, her voice barely a whisper. “It’s snowing again.”

two.

“You’re not him,” she whispered, rolling over in the bed.

The sun filtered through the blinds, dust motes glistened in their mid-air dance. The covers were held tight in her fragile fist, held tight against her face.

He searched the topography of her body, for she was a map and he the cartographer. She was foreign to him no more.

Despite the body next to her, loneliness consumes her entire being. She is awake.

The sheer nakedness of the situation rushes over her, drowns her with its impending crash. The covers are pulled up tight, the light hitting her hair, the amber locks strewn across the pillow. Tears highlight the freckles on her cheek.

“You’re not him,” she whispers desperately as she watches the sun rise.