He misses her. Oh God, he misses her. He misses her more than an addict to their drug. He misses her more than an alcoholic to their vodka. He misses the smell of her - the faint whiff of coconut mingled with that sweet, flowery lotion she puts on every morning. He misses her eyes - those soulful, heartbreaking green eyes with the dark circle of darker, shadowy green around the outer rim. He misses her laugh - like the sound of a happy river lapping against sun-kissed pebbles. He misses the softness of her skin - the way it wrapped around him, the way it felt against his hands, the way her hips and collarbones are dappled with the faint spread of gentle freckles. He misses everything about her. He misses simply her.
His sky eyes glance down to check the face of his watch for the third time in the past two minutes. The seconds tick by slowly. It is 4:49AM. His plane leaves at 5:00AM sharp on a brisk Tuesday morning from Las Vegas, Nevada in the United States. He should arrive in Sydney, Australia in 15 hours and 56 minutes. He would get there at around 9:00PM Las Vegas time, but it would be 2:00PM in Sydney, Australia. From there he would have to drive 8 hours and 41 minutes to Melbourne, Australia. By then it would be 11:00PM in Melbourne. He'd gone over the statistics and times and arrivals in his mind a dozen times, each time thinking about what she might be doing at that time.
5:00AM in Las Vegas would be 10:00PM in Melbourne. She would probably be sitting on their couch, sipping some of her nasty green tea huddled under the woven cream blanket that always smelled like her. She might have her feet curled underneath her in a vain effort to keep them warm. No matter how hard he tried to warm them, her toes were always chilly and turned purple toward the end of the day.
9:00PM in Las Vegas would be 2:00PM in Melbourne. She would be at work at that point, teaching the Year Twos about the history of art and how to use paint and make sure it didn't dry out and splattering their painting wall with a little more beauty. Her hair might be up in a ponytail with a few chocolate strands curling against her pink cheeks or it might be hanging against her shoulders, unruly and perfectly messy due to her love of art and painting rather than the upkeep of her appearance.
11:00PM in Melbourne. She could be asleep from a long day at work, her face pressed against the silk of her pillowcase and her tank top riding up against her smooth stomach. She tended to sleep in a hazardous position, with her legs crossed every which way and her arms tucked under her pillow or curled against her cheeks. The blankets would be strewn in a tangled mess without him to straight them out and her hair could be covering her nose and mouth and flung across her eyes without him to tuck the soft curls out of the way.
The trip is restless and spent in half sleep. He dreams of her. He dreams of her mouth smirking in hidden laughter as crumbs stick to the corners of his lips. He dreams of her soft body curling against his in comforting closeness. He dreams of her freezing hand cocooned in his, her pale skin splashed with a collection of colors from her thoughts come to life. He dreams of her voice humming along to the song he wrote for her as it plays on the radio. He dreams of her lips pressing against his chest, working their way down. He dreams of her happy sighs as she talks about her job. He dreams of the last time the talked on the phone and the tearful way she wished him goodbye.
And when his weary bones find their way back to their apartment high in the sky and his guitar-picking fingers shakily insert the key into the lock, he doesn't have to dream of her anymore.
The voice so many adoring fans bought tickets for during his dreadfully long tour says her name softly, gently, as if it were a new secret song he has written only for someone special.
"Evangeline."
There is no reply.
***
There are nights that seem endless.
There are nights where the stars don’t shine so brightly, where thunder clouds orbit her thoughts. There are nights where each inhale is a battle, and each exhale defeat. She wills herself to stop breathing, but her lungs demand that the war continue. In, and out, the stars wink less - gentle asphyxiation to be her doom, the kiss of death her final embrace.
Until, come dawn, she wakes with a start. Every morning, sweat on her brow. Their covers on the ground, rarely to be remarried to the sheets - without him, the terror of her natural disaster goes unchecked. In her wake, chaos thrives.
The Second Years have learned not to ask questions in her class any more, not for fear of her furious voice, but for the tears that well and never fall from her heartbreaking green eyes. The lessons fade into silence, the color fades from her cheeks.
There’s blood rushing through her ears though, and there’s a void growing between her ribs. There’s an edge to her softness, a howl to her wind. She sleeps without a cover (for at least then she shivers instead of crying; she welcomes ice before the rain, takes winter as her mistress and leaves tempest out to dry), and rises in the morning with kinks in her neck.
The milk in the fridge has gone rancid, so she drinks her green tea black. He usually bought the groceries, he usually rubbed her shoulders free. Without him, she sits alone and broods in silence. Their record player stands in a corner, gathers dust and mourns the loss of its voice. She forgets to put socks on. She forgets to put her hair up.
Three months in and she’s forgotten when it ends. She eats cereal instead of meals, and goes to work in yesterday's outfit. Three months in and she keens for his return in brutal noiselessness. The strum of his fingers across the string of his guitar come unbidden to her mind, the lullaby of his voice hallucinogenic. Her eyes close when his lips meet her neck, shivers spiraling down her spin from a man who’s miles away. Tears meander down the hollows of her cheeks, comfortable in their well-worn tracks. Her hands open and close around his hips, his face, his shoulders. She clutches where he should be; he is not there.
It could be any day of the week, and she wouldn’t know. What she does know is that he’ll be home tomorrow. Her eyes sit motionless, transfixed on a door that will not open today. She feels the rasp of his stubble against the softness of her inner thighs and sees his finger curling around a strand of her untamed hair which he uses to bring her mouth onto his. She sees his sky blue eyes raised to her forest green ones from just below her naval. She feels his calloused hands tightening around her waist.
She shakes her head.
A box of chocolate cereal lays where it had fallen last week. She steps on a piece when she finally moves: walks to the fridge, nose crinkling at the smell. Her hand scribbles messily along the slope of a paper, toes curling against the coolness of their tile. “Maybe my toes wouldn’t turn purple if we hadn’t ordered tile from Antarctica,” she had once bantered. He replied by purchasing a carpet.
A pile of his clothes lays strewn across their couch, and onto her shoulders tumbles his favourite autumn-sweater, a caramel-orange that catches the green of her eyes. A pair of his over sized sweatpants follow suit. She dirties the sleeves of the sweater with her tears - she forgot to buy tissue, too. With a sniff and a whimper, she throws some essentials (including the woven cream blanket he had gotten her their first Christmas together) into a bag, but in her delirium she cleans nothing.
As an afterthought, she fingers her favourite record of his and slides it beneath the player that rejoices in its revival. The melody of his voice meets her ears like snow meets the ground; light at first but unbearably heavy after too long.
She leaves the apartment clad in bare feet, the record still playing softly for his return, although by tomorrow it will be naught but a scratching noise.
Scrawled across a yellow post-it note and stuck to the fridge:
“Alistair:
6/23 Beaconsfield Parade, Port Melbourne, Vic
I love you
It’s not paradise without you in it
So this time
Please
Stay.”
***
Her voice doesn't rush to meet his ears. The tidal wave of her love doesn't drown him. There is only the forlorn scratching of a record player who has sung it's song. There is only the whisper of the Australian breeze blowing through a window left open, a window left forgotten.
He is struck with silence. The ghost of their reunion that played in his mind for months is dancing around the room. Her mouth greeting his own in a sweet touch, his eyes tracing the pattern of freckles scattered against her collarbones, her chaotic green eyes soothing the loneliness in his chest. In the silence, he finds only silence. He doesn't gasp or cry or sigh or murmur her name again. He doesn't fall to the floor. He doesn't rage or scream or curse the ground. He stands in the doorway, the only light coming from the hallway behind him.
His shadow is cast against that icy tile beneath his boots. He glances down at it. Everything moves in slow motion. He doesn't know what to think. The tile. She must be asleep. Sky eyes glance to the right. Her shoes are still here - sure they are hazardously slung against the wall, scratching the beige wall - so she must not have left.
He wanders deeper into the quiet. He calls her name again, singing it in the softest of tunes, singing her name after the song he wrote about her with the same title. "Evangeline." Still, no reply. Still, no sound. Still, only silence.
His heart quickens. He flicks on a light, casting a dull glow that gradually gets brighter with each second. It illuminates the chaotic mess that took over in his absence. Her shoes are not the only things flung in dangerous abandon. The dishes pile up in a tower so high he is surprised it hasn't collapsed. A collection of bills and papers and dirty, used napkins all cover the kitchen table like a tablecloth.
Without his peaceful order to keep her in line, his darling has overtaken with her reckless wilderness.
He doesn't mind a bit.
He does, however, want to find her. He doesn't notice the note on the refrigerator as he passes by, too absorbed in locating her so he can hold her close and breathe in that flower-coconut mixture and kiss her chapped lips and work the tangles out of her curly hair with his fingers. He is too absorbed in the dream and the mystery and the thought of her.
He goes to their room and forced the flashbacks away. He needs her. He loves her. He wants her. He must find her. Their room is empty. Everywhere is empty. He searches high and low and with each second that passes his pulse rises, his heart beats faster, his stomach drops a little more, his mind becomes more anxious.
"Fuck," he whispers to himself. Then he sees it. A little yellow note among a sea of endless disorder. He barely reads the whole thing. He rips it off the metal, reads it over again - pale eyes searching for her mystery, relieved to see her finicky handwriting, memorizing the address scrawled beneath his name - and instantly begins to rush around.
His equipment and clothes won't be there until the morning, but he doesn't care. He grabs his well-worn, comforting guitar out of the corner of their room - pulling off a shirt or two of hers in the process - and slings it into its case and over his back. He grabs her collection of lotions and perfumes she uses daily, as well as her trusty art case.
Then he is running, sprinting, careening out the door and into the inky darkness. His feet trip heading down the stairs - he is too urgent to wait for the elevator - but he catches himself before her precious paints are spilled against the dull gray cement. He is nearly shouting the address to the cab driver, urging him to drive fast. He has waited too long to see her. She has waited too long to see him.
Finally, finally, finally, he gets there. And he climbs out of the cab - guitar slung behind his back, perfumes and lotions in a makeup bag in one hand, brushes and paint and water colors and markers and pencils in the other hand.
And he whispers her name again, like a quiet song. "Evangeline?"
***
She spends her first night in their new home alone, begins nesting without her mate. She’s already found an artistic little bowl for their house keys, and hung a particular painting she knew he liked above the mantle of their castle-like bed. When her fingers are not busying themselves at one place or another around the house, she sits on the bed, chooses the side that will be hers, and imagines the two of them in it. She sees his midnight hair tousled from its gelled style, sees the rise and fall of his bare, sloping chest, sees the bareness of her own pressed against it. She sees them instead of the thunder clouds - she sees beyond her own hopelessness.
And yet, when the moon rises and the clock climbs higher and her fingers have danced upon every surface of the abode, the freckled woman does not sleep on their bed. Instead, from within the bag that holds her essentials, Evangeline pulls out the woven cream blanket, lays herself on the electrically heated tile she had purposefully installed, and sleeps.
Her breathing is not longer an asphyxiation unto itself.
She wakes in the morning without any kinks in her neck.
That final day of waiting is spent in either chaos or serenity: she dances to his music clad in naught but the lacy green underwear he got her for valentines day; she cleans and recleans the house; she tries to cook dinner but ends up throwing it out when it burns and ruins the pot; she sits in the silence and watches the door. The flimsy woman fluctuates from frenzied to fearfully calm.
And as the clock finally mounts to 11:00pm, she begins to panic.
The thread of her mind becomes unwound, the light snowfall of her mind becomes a blizzard. The phrases of her thoughts become fragments of delusional false-realities. Her hands begin to shake and at 11:06 she prepares for the worst, prepares for a life alone in a house where all she can see is him. Tears retrace their old homes on the planes of newly hollowed cheeks, and she jumps to her feet to go to the back balcony.
At that moment, the door opens.
Her name splits the silence as the first voice raised in song split the bonds of speaking.
Her legs are around his waist before she even remembers running to him, her paints are running wildly across the floor, her foundation shatters upon impact. She doesn’t care. Her lips are between his, pushing and pulling in a desperate attempt to make up for the months lost to time forever. Her fingers pull at the onyx hair at the back of his neck, her legs tighten around his slim waist. Her lips never leave his, she doesn’t remember coming up for air when he has always been her oxygen.
Gentle asphyxiation no longer haunts her.
His shapely nose slams into her cheek as the too rock back and forth like a house in an earthquake, her nails slide underneath the collar of his shirt. His calloused hands do the same, finding the softly freckled skin of her back holding to her as though to let go would mean death. It’s fire and it’s lightning and for once it’s not over, god, it’s not over - it’s only begun.
“Alistair,” she whimpers into the madly pulsing crook of his neck, her lips and tongue working there, sliding over his tanned skin, branding him as hers after such an eternity of apartheid.
A tear drips down her face, and she raises herself to gaze into his sky eyes, the intensity of hers insurmountable. It kills her not to kiss him again, but she refrains long enough to say:
“I bought a house so you can never leave again, I love you, I love you, I love you.”
And with that out of the way, she plunges back into the depths of his oceans, immerses herself in the warmth of his waters, and, her tears are washed away.
***
The sound of the ocean rushes against his ears. The pathway up to the wide front porch is set in stone, with the front lawn looking more like grainy sand mingled with patches of thin tufts of shoreline grass. The house looks gloomy and unpromising from the 11:07PM nighttime, but he notes the scratched white paint, the forest green window shutters, the equally forest green front door with its screen door, and the elderly pair of rocking chairs situated on the porch. It looks, to put it simply, a beach home he could bring up children in and grow old with his wife in.
The steps don't creak when he walks up them, but his heart might have easily supplied the sound in that absence. The door is unlocked, and his stomach jumps from within his nervous body. Sky blue eyes dance from the nearest window back to the front door, then to the covered porch ceiling. This must be the worst case of stage fright he's ever had before. His mind races with a million thoughts. She could have moved on. She could have left him this house a parting gift, a miserable echo of the life they could have had if his career hadn't exploded so suddenly. She could be waiting just inside, ready to love him forever. She could be asleep in their new bed. She could have led him on a wild goose chase. There could be another note on another refrigerator leading to another place.
She could be, she could be, she could be.
All he wants is her.
And then, with the quietest of beckons with his voice, she is there. The paints and expensive make up is splattered and mixed against the white birch flooring. She is pressed against him, and his hands are on her warm smooth back, and her lips meet his in an electric explosion. While he suddenly can't breathe, she is finally finding the air to breathe. The reckless pattering of his heart stills into a peaceful relief. She is here. Brunette curls and green eyes and freckled body and smooth skin and cold feet. He holds her close and breathes her in, lets her tongue and magical lips work their way against his neck. Her hands touch him and he quietly hums a groan against her cheek.
She says his name and it is the most calming of rains against the desert of his ears. He soaks in the sound of her voice, capturing the sound like an exotic butterfly and tucking it against the grooves of his heart. He holds her closer, sticks his nose in the slope of her neck and shoulder, and heaves in a deep sigh of her coconut-flower smell. His hands roam over her hips and back, memorizing the curve of her back and the tightness of her hips and the threateningly teasing band of her bra.
Her next words startle him. She bought them a house. It wasn't a parting gift, nor a wild goose chase, nor an echo of what could have been. It is what it will be. He laughs, then, curing the disease of worry that had been festering in his chest. He doesn't explain his laughter, only choosing to kiss her with the most fervent of kisses. He is shuffling further into the darkness of the house, into the silence, closing the door behind him and making sure he doesn't trip on the spilled items lest he drop his precious cargo.
He whispers a verse of one of his top hit songs - "Falling Sparks" - against the warm familiarity of her lips.
"Two falling sparks, one willing fool...
And I, I always knew that I would love you from afar"
Then he kisses her again, with a softer touch then before. "Evie, my love, you are simply impossible," he says gently. Sky eyes dance with mingled amusement and amazement at the woman in his arms. She is his drug. She is his passion. She is the inspiration behind every song he writes. She is the reason he cleans her messes, brushes her hair, rubs her shoulders, paints her toes, and cooks her dinner. She is the mirth to his melancholy. She is the firework that comes before his sparkle. She is the surprising sound of the gunshot before the expected rush of his red blood. She is his weakness. She is his strength. She is the reason he breathes each day. She is the reason he sleeps each night. She is his sunshine, his light, the moon in an otherwise cloudy sky.
He holds her close to his body, her warmth against his chill from the nighttime air, and walks deeper into the house. The hallway is small yet comfortable, and a flight of stairs lead up to a floor he doesn't yet know. He sets her down once they are clear of the paint and make up mess, but keeps his hands against her hips. "Care to show me where I'll be loving you for the rest of our lives?" he whispers.
***
Sometimes, while he was away, she would wonder whether he would fall for another; for a sun to match his moon, when she was only the stars in the background of his music. Her fingers would trace the bones he loved most (collar bones, hips, spine) and pretend they were his; a moment later, she would pretend to be his false lover. Left in the darkness of his departure, the flicker of her stars grew weak, and as they are wont to do, some flashed a final goodbye and burst into nothingness.
With the whisper of his lyrics against the smooth planes of her skin, new stars are born. His chill against her warmth reduces the fever of her mind which is bound to be her downfall someday; the droplets from his ice sooth the raging of her fires. There's ecstatic laughter falling almost silently from the gardens of her lips, and her flowers bloom upon contact with his own. There's a melody to the chaos of their song, a rhythm that only they can hear.
"But I've been living on the crumbs of your love,
And I'm starving now."
She murmurs the next line of his song without hesitation - for hadn't it been on repeat since that long-ago farewell? She wonders whether his fans swooned when he sang those words in their direction; but she dwells no longer on the subject, for the destination of those words were her heart. And they have certainly arrived.
"You're right, I am impossible; and you love me for it." Her lips smash into his, their teeth clicking together accidentally, but in a way that made her weak in the knees. Her breathing is ragged when they break apart. "And I love you, too, baby." She tousles his inky locks, and kisses his forehead; she may speak for him now and again, but after the months of apartheid and loneliness, she knows that even in silence, she needs him desperately.
Giggling girlishly then as Alistair navigates his way through the uncertain darkness of their new home, the slight woman wraps herself even more tightly in her lover's embrace. Her thighs ached with the effort of holding on so desperately, but he is her air and she hasn't inhaled in far too long. When he sets her down, her legs feel relieved, but it's all she can do to not leap into his beautifully construed arms a heartbeat later.
Grinning like the love struck fool she has been since setting eyes on her sky-man, Evangeline laces her fingers in his and tugs him up the stairs.
"Well, you'll love me no matter where we are in the house..." Her artist's hand pushes back a large, white-birch door, similar to the flooring down below. The room within unravels beautifully, an echo of her talents, and of how she knows exactly how he likes things. "But this is where you'll make love to me." She smirks. "Soon."
With a teasingly light kiss on his cheek, she leads her lover through every room, offering peaks into their seemingly imminent future with coy comments here and there; after all, the stars may glimmer, but up close, they burn.
***
And thus, the romance of Alistair (written by Kuna) and Evangeline (written by Sid) comes to a temporary halt. I will update replies as Kuna and I write them! I would love to hear any comments you guys have, positive or feedback or whatever! I haven't gone through these to clean up the grammatical errors, so I know there's that; and there's some really powerful sentence fragments that I am in love with, but I think as a whole, for myself, it could be stronger. ANYWAYS I HOPED YOU ALL ENJOYED OUR ROMANTICALLY CHALLENGED STORY <3
His sky eyes glance down to check the face of his watch for the third time in the past two minutes. The seconds tick by slowly. It is 4:49AM. His plane leaves at 5:00AM sharp on a brisk Tuesday morning from Las Vegas, Nevada in the United States. He should arrive in Sydney, Australia in 15 hours and 56 minutes. He would get there at around 9:00PM Las Vegas time, but it would be 2:00PM in Sydney, Australia. From there he would have to drive 8 hours and 41 minutes to Melbourne, Australia. By then it would be 11:00PM in Melbourne. He'd gone over the statistics and times and arrivals in his mind a dozen times, each time thinking about what she might be doing at that time.
5:00AM in Las Vegas would be 10:00PM in Melbourne. She would probably be sitting on their couch, sipping some of her nasty green tea huddled under the woven cream blanket that always smelled like her. She might have her feet curled underneath her in a vain effort to keep them warm. No matter how hard he tried to warm them, her toes were always chilly and turned purple toward the end of the day.
9:00PM in Las Vegas would be 2:00PM in Melbourne. She would be at work at that point, teaching the Year Twos about the history of art and how to use paint and make sure it didn't dry out and splattering their painting wall with a little more beauty. Her hair might be up in a ponytail with a few chocolate strands curling against her pink cheeks or it might be hanging against her shoulders, unruly and perfectly messy due to her love of art and painting rather than the upkeep of her appearance.
11:00PM in Melbourne. She could be asleep from a long day at work, her face pressed against the silk of her pillowcase and her tank top riding up against her smooth stomach. She tended to sleep in a hazardous position, with her legs crossed every which way and her arms tucked under her pillow or curled against her cheeks. The blankets would be strewn in a tangled mess without him to straight them out and her hair could be covering her nose and mouth and flung across her eyes without him to tuck the soft curls out of the way.
The trip is restless and spent in half sleep. He dreams of her. He dreams of her mouth smirking in hidden laughter as crumbs stick to the corners of his lips. He dreams of her soft body curling against his in comforting closeness. He dreams of her freezing hand cocooned in his, her pale skin splashed with a collection of colors from her thoughts come to life. He dreams of her voice humming along to the song he wrote for her as it plays on the radio. He dreams of her lips pressing against his chest, working their way down. He dreams of her happy sighs as she talks about her job. He dreams of the last time the talked on the phone and the tearful way she wished him goodbye.
And when his weary bones find their way back to their apartment high in the sky and his guitar-picking fingers shakily insert the key into the lock, he doesn't have to dream of her anymore.
The voice so many adoring fans bought tickets for during his dreadfully long tour says her name softly, gently, as if it were a new secret song he has written only for someone special.
"Evangeline."
There is no reply.
***
There are nights that seem endless.
There are nights where the stars don’t shine so brightly, where thunder clouds orbit her thoughts. There are nights where each inhale is a battle, and each exhale defeat. She wills herself to stop breathing, but her lungs demand that the war continue. In, and out, the stars wink less - gentle asphyxiation to be her doom, the kiss of death her final embrace.
Until, come dawn, she wakes with a start. Every morning, sweat on her brow. Their covers on the ground, rarely to be remarried to the sheets - without him, the terror of her natural disaster goes unchecked. In her wake, chaos thrives.
The Second Years have learned not to ask questions in her class any more, not for fear of her furious voice, but for the tears that well and never fall from her heartbreaking green eyes. The lessons fade into silence, the color fades from her cheeks.
There’s blood rushing through her ears though, and there’s a void growing between her ribs. There’s an edge to her softness, a howl to her wind. She sleeps without a cover (for at least then she shivers instead of crying; she welcomes ice before the rain, takes winter as her mistress and leaves tempest out to dry), and rises in the morning with kinks in her neck.
The milk in the fridge has gone rancid, so she drinks her green tea black. He usually bought the groceries, he usually rubbed her shoulders free. Without him, she sits alone and broods in silence. Their record player stands in a corner, gathers dust and mourns the loss of its voice. She forgets to put socks on. She forgets to put her hair up.
Three months in and she’s forgotten when it ends. She eats cereal instead of meals, and goes to work in yesterday's outfit. Three months in and she keens for his return in brutal noiselessness. The strum of his fingers across the string of his guitar come unbidden to her mind, the lullaby of his voice hallucinogenic. Her eyes close when his lips meet her neck, shivers spiraling down her spin from a man who’s miles away. Tears meander down the hollows of her cheeks, comfortable in their well-worn tracks. Her hands open and close around his hips, his face, his shoulders. She clutches where he should be; he is not there.
It could be any day of the week, and she wouldn’t know. What she does know is that he’ll be home tomorrow. Her eyes sit motionless, transfixed on a door that will not open today. She feels the rasp of his stubble against the softness of her inner thighs and sees his finger curling around a strand of her untamed hair which he uses to bring her mouth onto his. She sees his sky blue eyes raised to her forest green ones from just below her naval. She feels his calloused hands tightening around her waist.
She shakes her head.
A box of chocolate cereal lays where it had fallen last week. She steps on a piece when she finally moves: walks to the fridge, nose crinkling at the smell. Her hand scribbles messily along the slope of a paper, toes curling against the coolness of their tile. “Maybe my toes wouldn’t turn purple if we hadn’t ordered tile from Antarctica,” she had once bantered. He replied by purchasing a carpet.
A pile of his clothes lays strewn across their couch, and onto her shoulders tumbles his favourite autumn-sweater, a caramel-orange that catches the green of her eyes. A pair of his over sized sweatpants follow suit. She dirties the sleeves of the sweater with her tears - she forgot to buy tissue, too. With a sniff and a whimper, she throws some essentials (including the woven cream blanket he had gotten her their first Christmas together) into a bag, but in her delirium she cleans nothing.
As an afterthought, she fingers her favourite record of his and slides it beneath the player that rejoices in its revival. The melody of his voice meets her ears like snow meets the ground; light at first but unbearably heavy after too long.
She leaves the apartment clad in bare feet, the record still playing softly for his return, although by tomorrow it will be naught but a scratching noise.
Scrawled across a yellow post-it note and stuck to the fridge:
“Alistair:
6/23 Beaconsfield Parade, Port Melbourne, Vic
I love you
It’s not paradise without you in it
So this time
Please
Stay.”
***
Her voice doesn't rush to meet his ears. The tidal wave of her love doesn't drown him. There is only the forlorn scratching of a record player who has sung it's song. There is only the whisper of the Australian breeze blowing through a window left open, a window left forgotten.
He is struck with silence. The ghost of their reunion that played in his mind for months is dancing around the room. Her mouth greeting his own in a sweet touch, his eyes tracing the pattern of freckles scattered against her collarbones, her chaotic green eyes soothing the loneliness in his chest. In the silence, he finds only silence. He doesn't gasp or cry or sigh or murmur her name again. He doesn't fall to the floor. He doesn't rage or scream or curse the ground. He stands in the doorway, the only light coming from the hallway behind him.
His shadow is cast against that icy tile beneath his boots. He glances down at it. Everything moves in slow motion. He doesn't know what to think. The tile. She must be asleep. Sky eyes glance to the right. Her shoes are still here - sure they are hazardously slung against the wall, scratching the beige wall - so she must not have left.
He wanders deeper into the quiet. He calls her name again, singing it in the softest of tunes, singing her name after the song he wrote about her with the same title. "Evangeline." Still, no reply. Still, no sound. Still, only silence.
His heart quickens. He flicks on a light, casting a dull glow that gradually gets brighter with each second. It illuminates the chaotic mess that took over in his absence. Her shoes are not the only things flung in dangerous abandon. The dishes pile up in a tower so high he is surprised it hasn't collapsed. A collection of bills and papers and dirty, used napkins all cover the kitchen table like a tablecloth.
Without his peaceful order to keep her in line, his darling has overtaken with her reckless wilderness.
He doesn't mind a bit.
He does, however, want to find her. He doesn't notice the note on the refrigerator as he passes by, too absorbed in locating her so he can hold her close and breathe in that flower-coconut mixture and kiss her chapped lips and work the tangles out of her curly hair with his fingers. He is too absorbed in the dream and the mystery and the thought of her.
He goes to their room and forced the flashbacks away. He needs her. He loves her. He wants her. He must find her. Their room is empty. Everywhere is empty. He searches high and low and with each second that passes his pulse rises, his heart beats faster, his stomach drops a little more, his mind becomes more anxious.
"Fuck," he whispers to himself. Then he sees it. A little yellow note among a sea of endless disorder. He barely reads the whole thing. He rips it off the metal, reads it over again - pale eyes searching for her mystery, relieved to see her finicky handwriting, memorizing the address scrawled beneath his name - and instantly begins to rush around.
His equipment and clothes won't be there until the morning, but he doesn't care. He grabs his well-worn, comforting guitar out of the corner of their room - pulling off a shirt or two of hers in the process - and slings it into its case and over his back. He grabs her collection of lotions and perfumes she uses daily, as well as her trusty art case.
Then he is running, sprinting, careening out the door and into the inky darkness. His feet trip heading down the stairs - he is too urgent to wait for the elevator - but he catches himself before her precious paints are spilled against the dull gray cement. He is nearly shouting the address to the cab driver, urging him to drive fast. He has waited too long to see her. She has waited too long to see him.
Finally, finally, finally, he gets there. And he climbs out of the cab - guitar slung behind his back, perfumes and lotions in a makeup bag in one hand, brushes and paint and water colors and markers and pencils in the other hand.
And he whispers her name again, like a quiet song. "Evangeline?"
***
She spends her first night in their new home alone, begins nesting without her mate. She’s already found an artistic little bowl for their house keys, and hung a particular painting she knew he liked above the mantle of their castle-like bed. When her fingers are not busying themselves at one place or another around the house, she sits on the bed, chooses the side that will be hers, and imagines the two of them in it. She sees his midnight hair tousled from its gelled style, sees the rise and fall of his bare, sloping chest, sees the bareness of her own pressed against it. She sees them instead of the thunder clouds - she sees beyond her own hopelessness.
And yet, when the moon rises and the clock climbs higher and her fingers have danced upon every surface of the abode, the freckled woman does not sleep on their bed. Instead, from within the bag that holds her essentials, Evangeline pulls out the woven cream blanket, lays herself on the electrically heated tile she had purposefully installed, and sleeps.
Her breathing is not longer an asphyxiation unto itself.
She wakes in the morning without any kinks in her neck.
That final day of waiting is spent in either chaos or serenity: she dances to his music clad in naught but the lacy green underwear he got her for valentines day; she cleans and recleans the house; she tries to cook dinner but ends up throwing it out when it burns and ruins the pot; she sits in the silence and watches the door. The flimsy woman fluctuates from frenzied to fearfully calm.
And as the clock finally mounts to 11:00pm, she begins to panic.
The thread of her mind becomes unwound, the light snowfall of her mind becomes a blizzard. The phrases of her thoughts become fragments of delusional false-realities. Her hands begin to shake and at 11:06 she prepares for the worst, prepares for a life alone in a house where all she can see is him. Tears retrace their old homes on the planes of newly hollowed cheeks, and she jumps to her feet to go to the back balcony.
At that moment, the door opens.
Her name splits the silence as the first voice raised in song split the bonds of speaking.
Her legs are around his waist before she even remembers running to him, her paints are running wildly across the floor, her foundation shatters upon impact. She doesn’t care. Her lips are between his, pushing and pulling in a desperate attempt to make up for the months lost to time forever. Her fingers pull at the onyx hair at the back of his neck, her legs tighten around his slim waist. Her lips never leave his, she doesn’t remember coming up for air when he has always been her oxygen.
Gentle asphyxiation no longer haunts her.
His shapely nose slams into her cheek as the too rock back and forth like a house in an earthquake, her nails slide underneath the collar of his shirt. His calloused hands do the same, finding the softly freckled skin of her back holding to her as though to let go would mean death. It’s fire and it’s lightning and for once it’s not over, god, it’s not over - it’s only begun.
“Alistair,” she whimpers into the madly pulsing crook of his neck, her lips and tongue working there, sliding over his tanned skin, branding him as hers after such an eternity of apartheid.
A tear drips down her face, and she raises herself to gaze into his sky eyes, the intensity of hers insurmountable. It kills her not to kiss him again, but she refrains long enough to say:
“I bought a house so you can never leave again, I love you, I love you, I love you.”
And with that out of the way, she plunges back into the depths of his oceans, immerses herself in the warmth of his waters, and, her tears are washed away.
***
The sound of the ocean rushes against his ears. The pathway up to the wide front porch is set in stone, with the front lawn looking more like grainy sand mingled with patches of thin tufts of shoreline grass. The house looks gloomy and unpromising from the 11:07PM nighttime, but he notes the scratched white paint, the forest green window shutters, the equally forest green front door with its screen door, and the elderly pair of rocking chairs situated on the porch. It looks, to put it simply, a beach home he could bring up children in and grow old with his wife in.
The steps don't creak when he walks up them, but his heart might have easily supplied the sound in that absence. The door is unlocked, and his stomach jumps from within his nervous body. Sky blue eyes dance from the nearest window back to the front door, then to the covered porch ceiling. This must be the worst case of stage fright he's ever had before. His mind races with a million thoughts. She could have moved on. She could have left him this house a parting gift, a miserable echo of the life they could have had if his career hadn't exploded so suddenly. She could be waiting just inside, ready to love him forever. She could be asleep in their new bed. She could have led him on a wild goose chase. There could be another note on another refrigerator leading to another place.
She could be, she could be, she could be.
All he wants is her.
And then, with the quietest of beckons with his voice, she is there. The paints and expensive make up is splattered and mixed against the white birch flooring. She is pressed against him, and his hands are on her warm smooth back, and her lips meet his in an electric explosion. While he suddenly can't breathe, she is finally finding the air to breathe. The reckless pattering of his heart stills into a peaceful relief. She is here. Brunette curls and green eyes and freckled body and smooth skin and cold feet. He holds her close and breathes her in, lets her tongue and magical lips work their way against his neck. Her hands touch him and he quietly hums a groan against her cheek.
She says his name and it is the most calming of rains against the desert of his ears. He soaks in the sound of her voice, capturing the sound like an exotic butterfly and tucking it against the grooves of his heart. He holds her closer, sticks his nose in the slope of her neck and shoulder, and heaves in a deep sigh of her coconut-flower smell. His hands roam over her hips and back, memorizing the curve of her back and the tightness of her hips and the threateningly teasing band of her bra.
Her next words startle him. She bought them a house. It wasn't a parting gift, nor a wild goose chase, nor an echo of what could have been. It is what it will be. He laughs, then, curing the disease of worry that had been festering in his chest. He doesn't explain his laughter, only choosing to kiss her with the most fervent of kisses. He is shuffling further into the darkness of the house, into the silence, closing the door behind him and making sure he doesn't trip on the spilled items lest he drop his precious cargo.
He whispers a verse of one of his top hit songs - "Falling Sparks" - against the warm familiarity of her lips.
"Two falling sparks, one willing fool...
And I, I always knew that I would love you from afar"
Then he kisses her again, with a softer touch then before. "Evie, my love, you are simply impossible," he says gently. Sky eyes dance with mingled amusement and amazement at the woman in his arms. She is his drug. She is his passion. She is the inspiration behind every song he writes. She is the reason he cleans her messes, brushes her hair, rubs her shoulders, paints her toes, and cooks her dinner. She is the mirth to his melancholy. She is the firework that comes before his sparkle. She is the surprising sound of the gunshot before the expected rush of his red blood. She is his weakness. She is his strength. She is the reason he breathes each day. She is the reason he sleeps each night. She is his sunshine, his light, the moon in an otherwise cloudy sky.
He holds her close to his body, her warmth against his chill from the nighttime air, and walks deeper into the house. The hallway is small yet comfortable, and a flight of stairs lead up to a floor he doesn't yet know. He sets her down once they are clear of the paint and make up mess, but keeps his hands against her hips. "Care to show me where I'll be loving you for the rest of our lives?" he whispers.
***
Sometimes, while he was away, she would wonder whether he would fall for another; for a sun to match his moon, when she was only the stars in the background of his music. Her fingers would trace the bones he loved most (collar bones, hips, spine) and pretend they were his; a moment later, she would pretend to be his false lover. Left in the darkness of his departure, the flicker of her stars grew weak, and as they are wont to do, some flashed a final goodbye and burst into nothingness.
With the whisper of his lyrics against the smooth planes of her skin, new stars are born. His chill against her warmth reduces the fever of her mind which is bound to be her downfall someday; the droplets from his ice sooth the raging of her fires. There's ecstatic laughter falling almost silently from the gardens of her lips, and her flowers bloom upon contact with his own. There's a melody to the chaos of their song, a rhythm that only they can hear.
"But I've been living on the crumbs of your love,
And I'm starving now."
She murmurs the next line of his song without hesitation - for hadn't it been on repeat since that long-ago farewell? She wonders whether his fans swooned when he sang those words in their direction; but she dwells no longer on the subject, for the destination of those words were her heart. And they have certainly arrived.
"You're right, I am impossible; and you love me for it." Her lips smash into his, their teeth clicking together accidentally, but in a way that made her weak in the knees. Her breathing is ragged when they break apart. "And I love you, too, baby." She tousles his inky locks, and kisses his forehead; she may speak for him now and again, but after the months of apartheid and loneliness, she knows that even in silence, she needs him desperately.
Giggling girlishly then as Alistair navigates his way through the uncertain darkness of their new home, the slight woman wraps herself even more tightly in her lover's embrace. Her thighs ached with the effort of holding on so desperately, but he is her air and she hasn't inhaled in far too long. When he sets her down, her legs feel relieved, but it's all she can do to not leap into his beautifully construed arms a heartbeat later.
Grinning like the love struck fool she has been since setting eyes on her sky-man, Evangeline laces her fingers in his and tugs him up the stairs.
"Well, you'll love me no matter where we are in the house..." Her artist's hand pushes back a large, white-birch door, similar to the flooring down below. The room within unravels beautifully, an echo of her talents, and of how she knows exactly how he likes things. "But this is where you'll make love to me." She smirks. "Soon."
With a teasingly light kiss on his cheek, she leads her lover through every room, offering peaks into their seemingly imminent future with coy comments here and there; after all, the stars may glimmer, but up close, they burn.
***
And thus, the romance of Alistair (written by Kuna) and Evangeline (written by Sid) comes to a temporary halt. I will update replies as Kuna and I write them! I would love to hear any comments you guys have, positive or feedback or whatever! I haven't gone through these to clean up the grammatical errors, so I know there's that; and there's some really powerful sentence fragments that I am in love with, but I think as a whole, for myself, it could be stronger. ANYWAYS I HOPED YOU ALL ENJOYED OUR ROMANTICALLY CHALLENGED STORY <3