I like the cold the chill ….but not the part that eventually breaks my heart.
John hasn’t changed.
His wedding band gleams amidst the fleshly walls of their bodies. The ring is understated, devoid of any embellishments or details.
Perfect for John.
Eden knows many misunderstand him as someone who prefers subtlety.
She knows better.
John cannot love — enjoy, embody, embrace — completely. He cedes to his reservations. But despite the plain ring, its simplicity, the band symbolizes his commitment.
To another woman.
The band ascends in kind when John when reaches to close the space between them. The ringed hand takes on a life of its own. Eden feels as though it comes from someone else.
A coy albeit foreign passerby.
A willful and modest siren.
An incisive chaser.
A stranger.
Who belongs to someone else.
Whose belonging speaks to a lack of her own.
The ring brands Eden. Its coldness spears her intimates, but she finds herself drawn to the chill — this unspoken, impending sacrament that marks him as that of another — as if it’s a secret part of him that gleans pleasure from only her.
It slides towards and away from his knuckle.
Eden dreamed that she and John would have a wedding.
Photographers who crooned their prompts as they hauled a titanic flash.
Bridesmaids with groomsmen.
Heartfelt toasts from immediate relatives.
John would tear up once he heard the vows she wrote, then his face would split into a grin after he discovered she’d actually written most of them a long time ago when she found herself awake and dreaming as he slept.
Everyone else would cloud over. Their love, in perpetuity, would outshine their traumas and reservations.
They’d be on top of the world.
In their own world.
Just like old times.
Eden continues to write in the present. She puts pen to paper. The ink flows freely, drenched in glum hues, as she monetizes word for word. She writes not only to earn, but to allay the anguish that engrossed her. Writing also affords her some likeness with her namesake, a modern queen, whose poise, inherent to royals, refused to succumb to despair. Eden’s own resolve to persevere comes from this regal bearing. A queen sustains grace and tenacity because she aspires to a higher purpose. She rises above storms that threaten to consume her and reigns over subjects who she shall overcome.
Which makes for a peculiar spectacle.
The kingdom is a clever masquerade that conceals the ruins of an unrequited love. It casts a deceptive charm upon the observer.
Except John.
After all this time, he still knows that Eden cannot live or love without explanation. She strives to plan all she can, and the best laid plans hold conviction: anecdotes and astrology, pessimism warranted by the iniquity that continues to prevail. Even as love takes her, she grasps it as someone unsure of it — to have it herself, to have it returned — yet longed to make it real.
Eden wonders if John ever missed her. He always liked to look in her eyes. There was a lure in visual depth that drew them closer, deeper, as his gaze met hers.
But she remains unnerved by this. The eyes expose. The unyielding connection formed through them leaves her unsettled, yearning for refuge. If she looks away, she can steal behind the crown. It’s harder to bare the truth than it is to model a mantle.
John can see within; how her walls crumble — draped with ivory, like a bride layered in white — adorned with the patina of ages that appear as remnants of a bygone era. He sees she is disguised, imagined, obliging all that is imposed by onlookers. She conspires with nature itself; sylvan runners encroach to conceal the true extent of the decay.
Eden is dead inside.
But that’s the thing about being dead. It marks her from the artifice that permeates the living. For all his discernment, John lacks detachment. Eden has plenty to spare. She can’t help but face untruths. Acuity pierces every pretense. She grasps the banality of life with a wisdom borne from demise.
Love is just business. Nothing personal. In his heart of hearts, John must know this too. He pleases, even indulges wholly to oblige. Maybe later in life, he will discover solitude is more of a prison than a refuge. Being alone is to content oneself, occupy oneself, to their individuality. The John who left her cut things short.
But Eden had always known that shortcuts led to dead ends. So she left him alone.
Then John realized that his heart had nowhere to go.
Eden recalls his elderly proprietor. The old man had insisted against a caretaker, and when asked if he had or needed aid for relief, thought to himself, then replied: “I don’t think so, if I can manage myself, when someone cautions me against something or someone.”
Of course, John found fault with this — which Eden found ironic. John wouldn’t have used those exact words, but he still held the same principle. He was intent to make do, merely appeased, as if maturity was marked by acceptance.
But as John grows older, a profound sense of loneliness and exclusion takes root. He outgrows his humility. He finds himself compromised by the amenity of those who purvey and cultivate. Likeness holds newfound importance as he yearns to connect.
Then Eden will cross his mind.
Maybe then.
Only then.
Eden takes his hand. “I used to watch you sleep,” she admits. “I mean, not in a creepy way. I just thought you looked nice. I wanted to make the most of it because I didn’t know if one day, I’d never see that again.”
John knows why she shares this. He understands that every word carries purpose and intent even though her insecurities sometimes incline her to ramble. The admission also speaks to how youth is a vanity project, unwittingly excessive, that comes undone. Throughout their relationship, as Eden opened her heart and home, John suspected that she strove to leverage his presence and affection, only to conclude that there was a lack thereof.
Her imperfection validated this conclusion.
In time, Eden realizes this was why him telling others they broke up deeply bothered her. Because while she had been most unnerved by his eyes, she also shrank beneath the eyes of others. This narrative carried to those who had drawn conclusions of their own, likely in his favour, given how he never thought twice say they were no more.
Everyone had to have known it wasn’t a mutual decision.
Not that John cared.
Well, it wasn’t that he didn’t care. He just never thought about it.
Eden was the one who thought — overthought. She thought more than enough for the both of them. Her pride had been likewise.
In any case, John came to his own conclusions. The same ones, she imagines, afflict countless others as a sign of the times, but the collective wisdom gained from the experience offers nothing to those who grapple with them in the present. John must’ve learned this the hard way, too little, too late. Eden became resigned after she agonized to no avail. She took great pains to take her heart into consideration, only to have John break it the moment she made to relent.
Eden had to hand it to him. She pegged him as the type who obliged, but John was only purgative to a point; and in the end, she proved expendable.
More than any courtesy or conscience, people were driven by their fears. Real love tasked their insecurities. It needed intimacy. It called for vulnerability.
Eden thinks of John’s fiancée. She wonders what the relationship between them is really like, what curious urges there could be in either of them to cast her between them like this, and whether it inclines a fear of her own.
John can’t be jealous of Cain.
Eden’s sure of it, but there are times when she likes to imagine.
When Eden suspends her disbelief, envy wove around John’s heart like a serpent. Cain cut at it like a knife. John would find himself before a door that materialized. Beyond, he would find Cain and Eden together, oblivious to him even after he stole in. There’d be Cain against her.
Kissing.
Touching.
Spearing.
Amidst a plethora of erotic manuscripts.
A word, a phrase would stray to temper their embrace.
Neither man could know that Eden was actually having an orgy on script; thrashing amidst the words, the stage set, in lures that tantalize their tidings; something she hasn’t known in reality, something she can only imagine.
Like the love she dreams.
Cain gives her something to remember. But when it came to John, she could never forget.
Eden turns. “I should leave.”
“Should?” He murmurs. “You sure about that?”
“I was always sure — and what difference did that make?”
John frowns.
“I really am happy for you, John,” she sniffles. “I mean, I’m happy you’re happy.”
“Happy people don’t cry.”
“Sure they do,” she says. “You’ll see at your wedding. I’m sure your parents will be thrilled. I mean, I’d think they’d be.”
Eden never met them.
But she met Cain’s.
Virtually at first, then at a cookout in-person. Eden recalls his mother whose crimped hair and incisive eyes swam over a tight smile; and how his father — casual, portly, clean albeit unshaven — hovered close behind. She lost count of how often they exchanged glances. First, they were tentative, then they were polite. They softened as she regaled them with movie facts. By the end of the call, they softened some more. Hearty hugs and appraisals then affirmed their respects.
Even now, it’s bittersweet. She still loves John more than Cain even as the contrast between them deepens, but sorrow overshadows the moments that could’ve been.
Should have been.
“It’s funny,” she muses. “After you, I never thought I’d be with anyone else.”
“Why are you?”
“I guess I just got lonely.”
“So did I.”
“Yeah, but you were the one who left,” Eden scoffs. “You threw in the towel, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember. I also remember telling you I shouldn’t have,” John smirks. “Do you remember?”
Eden turns her back on him, but she looks over her shoulder. She feels obliged to hold his gaze when he trains his eyes on hers.
Of course, she remembers.
Summer had started. The season coaxed seeds to sprout. There was a scent of leaves that basked in the warmth of the sun. All the way from her apartment on the top floor, she could smell the perennials laid by management. A hint of citrus and spice wafted from their pistons.
Eden stilled as John stood before her.
A pulse infused the air between them.
They watched porn beforehand. She undid his belt when he touched her hair. When he looked in her eyes, she looked back.
Her gaze remained fixed on his. Every blink made his cock throb as it sprang towards her. She took hold, wrapped herself around him, like a sinuous vine.
The flesh was hot and hard in her hands. He swelled past her lips, then against her cheeks, and once more as she licked his glans. She felt his chest rumble when her head bobbed up and down.
“Now, say, ‘Eden, I regret throwing in the towel’…”
In this moment, Eden and John are guilty. They want to feel bad, but urgency subsumes any regret. Reality cedes as they ache to feel every imaginable caress.
The look in his eyes scares her. It’s like the vast expanse of the ocean, but she doubts love swims between them. Just dark pools that lure to a profound abyss.
The realization tears her apart.
She knows that her gaze betrays what he makes her feel.
What she’d always feel.
But Eden bites her lip to contain the admission.
A merciless heat sears through her veins. It ignites as John takes a seat. Every breath he takes undoes her. His memory is contained from head to foot.
She feels herself cave.
She hates how much she needs this.
There’s a mirror to his left. Against the wall, it stands to reason and contains the taut breadth of their figures. John and Eden resign themselves. They cease to be who, what, they are.
Anxious.
Avoidant.
Taken.
The bodies are just reflections personified in the looking glass.
Eden nears to kneel.
Unbuckles his belt.
Teases the rim of his boxers.
Reaches to uncover the shaft.
She wets, then parts her lips, knowing what’s to come.
Grasping her hair, John thrusts forward. She laves at the pendulous sex, then pauses to suck his fingers as she does the phallus. In the mirror, Eden sees his ring comb down her scalp as she draws more of the erection into her mouth.
As John narrows his eyes, the margin between the lashes closes to thicken like a frame. He withdraws to lean back on his knees and reaches for hers. His fingers walk down and lightning cracks in their wake. They linger at the corners of her mouth, draw along the soft part of her lips that close when their eyes meet, then withdraw, prod below.
Eden feels like she’s in a movie. They take leave of their clothes like their senses. She and John fall prey to a fever that only sex can break.
She stares past the crescents of his arms to the alabaster that stipples the ceiling. “I’m yours, John, so do whatever you want.”
John grasps her ankle, places it on his shoulder, doesn’t break his gaze as he draws across her clit. A finger strays to the interior moisture. It hastens, then stills when she whimpers.
John murmurs. “Your turn.”
Eden feels her cheeks burn. He looks at her so intently that she obeys without hesitation. She reaches to stroke past, then into the furrowed mound. Tremors rake within, but he resumes once her sex starts to clench.
His kiss finds hers in a concord of tongues. He snakes a hand behind her calf, plants the other on her navel.
Eden is shameless. She grasps the column of his shaft, smirks as he winces when she brushes the crown.
“Fast or slow?” John rasps as she draws him closer.
Eden resolves to hold his gaze. “Whatever you want.”
“What do you want?”
I want you. I’ve always wanted you.
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