Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 8

It's taken me six months to regain his trust: the last thing I want is to lose him all over again. I don't think I'd survive.
    "It was always you…" I stammer.
    "It was never me," he hisses. "Everyone else, but never me."
    "Not true," I answer sharply. "Not in here." I tap my chest.
    He pulls back to look at me, eyes narrowing. "Why are you telling me this? Why now?"
    I shrug helplessly.
    "Can't bear to see me with someone else, is that it? You don't want me, but you don't want anyone else to have me either?"
    "It's not like that," I protest, but weakly. A part of me wonders if he's right. Maybe I am that selfish, maybe I'm just so used to the idea of Paul being mine, loving me , that the rest of me is exaggerating how I feel about him out of spite.
    I remember all the nights I've lain awake and cried over him and my heart slams high in my chest. If I'm lying to myself, it's body and soul. Even in the darkest days when I thought it was hopeless, when I truly believed that I'd never see him again, I tore myself apart with grief. That's gotta be the most fucked-up version of selfish I ever heard. I wasn't jealous, I was devastated.
    "I didn't know," I confess.
    "I fucking told you." His face is twisted, snarling. Something primal in him rises to the surface. I know it's defensive, I know he's only trying to protect himself by shutting me out, but my inner caveman wants to rise to the challenge, claw and fight like animals, beat him into submission and drag him back to my den for a hot, rough claiming.
    I don't. Instead I crumple on the seat, boneless, spineless. "About me," I clarify. "I didn't know about me." I don't expect him to understand.
    He blinks, disarmed. "But now you do?"
    I nod sadly.
    "What do you know?"
    I look at him. He wants me to say the words. Actually say them out loud. My throat rasps like sandpaper and I swallow with difficulty. Knowing is one thing. What I'll admit to myself and what I'll admit out loud to my best friend and a curious cabbie are two completely different things.
    He sees my hesitation and his mouth sets in a grim line. "You're full of shit," he sneers as the cab lurches to a stop.
    Instantly his hands are on the door, halfway out before I realise that he's moved. Blind panic overwhelms me and I dart forward, catching his sleeve and pulling him back. Our mouths are crushed together and his whole body's rigid with shock but I have to do this, I have to let him know somehow that I love him. He softens in my arms and with a moan opens to me as I slide my hot tongue between his lips to taste him.
    Too soon he breaks away, refusing to look at me as he stumbles onto the pavement and up the steps to his front door. I'm crouched on the floor of the cab, framed in the open doorway, and all I can feel is the heat of his mouth pressed to mine. He fumbles with the key and I hear the loud snick of the lock echo in the silence of the night. He steps into the darkened hall and the door closes behind him with a finality I find chilling.
    Reluctantly I pull the cab door shut and climb back onto the seat, not meeting the inquisitive eyes in the rear view mirror as I give the driver my address. I lean my forehead against the soothingly cool window and watch the dark house as the car turns and drives away. In one of the upstairs rooms, I'd swear I saw a curtain twitch.
    ****
    I crawl out of bed on Sunday with even more reluctance than usual. I've never liked getting up in the dark. I shower and pull on my jogging gear, dressing as slowly as a man awaiting sentence. My peers have already judged me and found me wanting.
    The park's empty when I arrive, the grass crisp and white with a late frost, my breath billowing in clouds around me as I stamp my feet and rub my numbed hands together at the gate, waiting. I know already that this is futile, that he's not coming, that this time I never will see him again. I can't say I blame him.
    The palest duck egg blue tints the sky like a wash as I accept the inevitable and begin my lonely circuit of the park. I used to enjoy running: the sense of freedom, the pleasurable pull of healthy muscles as they warm and work, endorphins kicking in as my body relaxes and leaves my mind free to wander. These days I try to keep my mind occupied at all times.
    I fall into a rhythm, lulled by my even breaths and the regular slap slap of my trainers on the asphalt path. I nod at an elderly dog walker, skirting a wide arc around his yappy little Jack Russell. He nods back,