Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 8

don't know how to do this, I've never had to hide before. Now all I want to do is run away as fast as I can, tend my wounds in private. I wish I could take it all back but it's too late for that now, Pandora's Box is open and what spilled out was me: my guts; my soul; my bloody, aching heart.
    "Please," I beg, my lips barely moving as I choke out that tiny, needy word, "it hurts."
    He reaches across the table and grips my hand, almost unsettling the cup. I grip back, our knuckles white-on-red. I stare at our clasped fingers, wondering if the gesture is significant.
    "I know," he sobs, before dropping my hand, standing and fleeing.
    ****
    Two weeks with no contact from him and I'm a wreck, barely human. Outwardly I go through the motions of my sad, empty life, but inside I'm dying. Everywhere I go I see him, a symphony of parts– his hands, his nose or lips or ear. Every time a stranger looks back at me, frowning eyes that aren't bronze; aren't bronze at all. I thought I'd plumbed the depths over the years that the gnawing ache inside me was something I'd learnt to live with, just an old wound that festered and occasionally flared. I know now my suffering hadn't even begun. I used to think 'lovesick' was just an expression, until I cried so hard I retched. Kneeling on the cold tile floor of my bathroom, tears running down my face and my sides sore from sobbing, watching the remnants of the only pitiful meal I'd eaten in two days float in the bowl before me, I prayed for the first time in my life.
    I don't know who or what I was praying to, but I clasped my hands and I begged for peace. For one day without hurting, for one night of dreamless sleep, for even an hour free from hating myself for everything I'd done wrong. If not peace, then numbness. I longed for shock to take over, to go onto autopilot, to shut down and stop feeling, because feeling hurt too damn much. I'm not some angsty teenager and I wasn't thriving off this, I was dying– just not quickly enough.
    Then the call came.
    I noticed the red light blinking on my answer machine when I got in from work on Friday, but it could have been there for days for all I'd paid attention. I hit play, finger hovering over the delete button in case it was a telemarketer– or worse, my mum, wondering why I haven't called. Curt's gruff tone rasped out and I almost hit the button in shock. Scalded, I back away and listen to the message. A party, he said, for his and Paul's one-year anniversary. I had to be there, Paul was keen that I go. It was to take place the next night at the usual bar.
    I shuffled to the kitchen, found a bottle of vodka, and proceeded to get very, very drunk.
    I wake up on Saturday afternoon feeling like something took up roost in my mouth and a brass band is practicing in my head. There's no way I'm going to that party– no way . How the hell can I sit there and make merry and celebrate the fact that the man I love is in love with someone else? Why the hell would Paul be sadistic enough to put me through it?
    I crawl out of bed and stumble through the detritus of the previous night littered across my lounge, wincing in the bright sunlight that streams through the uncovered windows. I stub my toe and send a bottle skidding across the carpet, step carefully over my teenage photo albums, vowing to box them up and ship them to my mum's as soon as possible, and hobble into the kitchen, where I consume about three gallons of water and my patented cocktail of over the counter painkillers, guaranteed to eliminate even the fiercest hangover.
    I drag my sorry, self-pitying ass into the shower and stand limply under the hot jets, letting the water slowly rehydrate and revive me. My stomach growls queasily but holds, no doubt because there's nothing in it to throw up, the twinge in my abdominal muscles informing me I already took care of that at some unspecified point in the early hours.
    When I finally start feeling more human I scour my skin until it's pink and glowing, wash my hair and brush the fuzz off my teeth. I towel myself roughly, smearing a hand through the condensation that fogs the mirror to confirm that yes, I do look like shit warmed up, and pull on a pair of black boxers.
    Stepping back into my ruined lounge, I note with grim satisfaction the gathering clouds blotting the spring sunshine outside. Melodramatically pleased that the weather at least is sympathetic to my plight, I expend the effort to clear up, grimacing as the glass bottles