She'd loved me every day for ten years now and in a way, had put her entire life on hold for me. I knew I needed to let her go. Maria needed to be set free from me, so that she could fulfill her destiny. A tear formed in my eye as I though about her trekking through some jungle, beating off wild animals with a stick or something super-cool like that.
I needed to release her from my grip, so that she could go off and fly.
I slipped out the bed that morning and picked my clothes off the floor. I climbed into them quickly as I heard a sound coming from somewhere in the house. The last thing I needed was to bump into Mr. Glover like this.
I knelt at her bed and stared into her face. She mesmerised me. She was sleeping so soundly that I didn't want to wake her. And if she was awake, it would just make it that much harder. I feared that if I looked into her eyes again and heard her voice, the revelation I'd had last night would leave me.
I leaned in and kissed her softly on the lips. I kissed her on the forehead and then took her hand and held the back of it against my check.
"I love you," I whispered softly, before getting up and climbing out the window and walking towards my new life.
Maria- Epilogue
I was awake when he'd kissed me and told me he loved me, but I was afraid that if I opened my eyes and looked at him, I would beg him not to go. I would cancel my entire trip and stay in bed with him forever.
So I let him walk out. He climbed out of the window that morning and climbed out of my life too. Well, the life that we knew anyway. By the end of today he would be living in another state and going to another school, and starting a whole new life without me. I would still have to go to the same school though every morning without him. I would have to wake up every morning, knowing that he wasn't just across the grass. I wouldn't be able to climb through his window whenever I wanted to chat and was feeling bored...
Soon we would be separated by hundreds of miles.
Sure there were phones, but it wouldn't be the same. And then next year... I was going away. We were both starting new lives and they weren't with each other. Never in my worst nightmare, had I ever imagined this for us.
I rolled over onto my back and felt the hot, wet tears running down the sides of my face and onto my pillow. Was I doing the right thing letting him go? Everything about it felt wrong. Every tiny, microscopic fibre in my body was screaming at me that this was WRONG.
But I also knew that it was at times like these, that one has to listen to reason and logic and not follow your beating, screaming, breaking heart. I quickly reminded myself that I had done the right thing. This was the right thing, no matter how painful it was. It was the mature and grown up thing to do, even if it felt like a piece of my soul was being torn out without any anesthetic....
My heart was breaking and crumbling and the pain was almost unbearable. I turned over and smelt the pillow that Mike had been sleeping on. It was still warm and smelt like him. I grabbed it and pulled it closer wishing it was him and remembering what it had felt like when it had been him.
You hear that corny phrase, 'making-love' and you think it only applies to people in day time television shows and romance novels. But it doesn't, because that's what had happened last night with Mike and I. He had been so gentle and every touch and kiss and move had felt like pure love. Pure, undiluted love. Love in it's purest form.
I buried my face into the pillow and bit it, it was all I could do to stop myself from screaming from the pain.
I had just lost the love of my life and no one could make me feel better right now...
I opened my eyes and climbed out of bed and grabbed a gown. I opened the door to my room quietly and ran down the passage. I opened the door to McKenzie's room and slipped in. She was already up and as soon as I stepped through the door she held her arms out for me to fall into.
I fell into my sisters arms and she wrapped me up tightly and I cried silently into her shoulder. Mike was gone, but at least I had something else back.
I stopped crying and rested my head on her shoulder. She started to rub my back in such a familiar and reassuring way. And then I remembered the last time she'd done this. We were eight and I had fallen out of the tree. My mother had rushed me to the ER and I'd had to get ten stitches in my knee.
Mackenzie had sat behind me on the doctors table the whole time rubbing my back. That had taken ten minutes. I wondered how long she would have to rub my back now while my heart somehow stitched itself back up.
"Maria..." She whispered into my ear, "if it's meant to be, it will be."
Eight months later... Maria
She stood there looking into the fountain. The bottom was covered in copper coins, in some places there were so many that they had formed themselves into piles. She was fingering a coin between her fingers.
