Page 22 of Architecti
Funny how even as mortals, our lives seem long, and yet it’s not the decades that change everything, but the brief moments.The short words and shorter sentences that slip from our mouths like waves and sand.Smooth shores one second, waves obliterating us the next.
She flinches against my touch.
“You already know…?”I ask.
The silence that hangs between us is a dark, hungry maw devouring our relationship.
“It’s over,” she says.
Two short words.
One broken heart.
“What?”It’s all I have left.I’m gripping the bed sheets so hard my knuckles are stretched white over bone.
“Either I do it now, or my body does it for us in a couple of months.”
There it is.
The ugly truth.
“You’re sick?”It comes out like a question, but it’s a statement, an acknowledgement of what was held secret between us.Now it’s a bloated fact hanging as pungent in the air as her illness is in her body.
She flips over, her eyes colder than I’ve ever seen them.
“Not just sick.Dying, Midnight.So no matter what, it’s over.We.Are.Over.Today.Next week.In a couple of months’ time.Does it even matter?It’s done.You might as well get used to it.”
“Gods, Aurelia.You think I’d just fucking leave you?You think that I’d let you deal with this on your own?After everything we’ve been through?”
She rolls back over.“You need to leave.”
“Babe, please don’t shut me out.Not like this.What doctors have you seen?There has to be someone else.A second opinion.”
“Second.Third.And fourth.It’s terminal, Midnight.I won’t see next year.I wasted my life for nothing.”
I recoil.“We’re… We’re not a waste.What does that even mean?”
“I could have gone places.Done things.Instead, I tethered myself to you and spent what little time I had here dealing with you and your fucking emotions.”
My stomach hardens.My eyes grow cold with the press of wet tears.“You don’t mean that.”
“GET OUT,” she screams.
My chest cracks.Tears splash into the dimples my fingers make on the duvet.
Nothing can ever hurt like this.
Nothing.
She doesn’t mean those things.She’s hurting, and I understand that.
Aureliawillsee next year.
I’ll make sure of it.
9
Lucy
