God, it hurt.  Still.

That look she had given me before I left.  I’d tried so hard not to see her but when my eyes were blinded with our lovemaking I glimpsed the woman I adored.  The woman I had given seven years to without so much as a backward glance.  And, despite my anger, choking my heart with bitter fruit, I couldn’t help but cling to that vision of our lives stretching ahead of us; our future yawning into the abyss of what lay beneath.  In the truth of revelation, Bette had shown me the woman I wanted.  Craved.  And I hated myself in that moment of wanting more than I hated what she had done.

Drawing in a long breath, I heard it rattle into my lungs, faltering over the tears that were still unshed and unwelcome.  I brushed the back of my hand over my eyes; eyes I knew were reddened and puffy and tired.  God, I was tired.  I was so tired of the hurt and grief and I wanted it over.  Sniffing, I almost laughed at myself, at what a pathetic picture I must make, sitting here in my car crying aloud with nobody to see me or hear me.

Glancing around, I realized that I had driven in a square around the sleepy blocks of our neighborhood – my old neighborhood – and ended up just a few houses down from the one I had left minutes before.  There was probably some greater sense of irony in that; in the unconscious efforts I had made to come back to her although my physical self was doing everything it could to get away.

Feeling more than a little ridiculous, I sat there, wondering what on earth to do.  I could drive away, taking with me the taste and scent of our lovemaking and scrub it off my tingling skin with the arduous care one takes over these kinds of tasks.  Or I could go back in there.  Finish what I had started.  Finish what she had started.  Clear my drawers, kitchen and my conscience in one final gesture.

She had been crying when I left; I knew that.  And in knowing, I felt responsible.  I had been the one to make her cry; I had been the one to lie in her arms; her body wrapped around me.  I had been the one who told her that I loved her, even now, even then.  I had made her cry when she begged me to stay and I refused, out of my righteous sense of pride and justice.  I hated seeing her that way, broken and alone without me.  Sometimes it was hard to remember that she had been the one to bring it all upon herself.  And me.  Oh…I could never forget what she’d brought on me.  And wasn’t that all part of the problem?  If I couldn’t forget, then how could I ever hope to overcome the stabbing pain of remembering?