The Stars Are Fading Away

My wish is coming true
Erase the memory of your face

I don’t really know how I felt. Maybe surprised. My life was so much the same without Wren. He hadn’t really been a part of my life for awhile, I realized. Only a presence, constantly there, lurking.

Mason was always there from the start. In a way, I loved him more than I had ever loved Wren. It had first been a friendly love, but now… Maybe it was turning into something more. I had depended on him for so long, more than I had ever depended on Wren. We were hesitantly together. Together, because Mason considered us together, and hesitantly because I was hesitant. I still wasn’t ready for that yet. And he was fine with waiting.

I was so thankful for him.

The motions of my life were much the same. I was upset less, and I could spend more time with my friends. I was happy, finally. It was what I had craved for so long.

I didn’t know where he had gone. I didn’t care. Mason told me that Derrick looked for him, wanting to teach him a lesson. He went to the apartment, but had found nothing. Literally nothing. Everything was cleaned out, boxed up and taken away. He was really, truly gone, like he had never been there before.

And now, sometimes, I find myself thinking of the past, before all this. When nothing like this had ever happened to me, and I never thought nothing ever would. When I first met Wren.

I never thought of these times. Ever. It was what had trapped me, it was what had given him the power and made me love him.

Because in the beginning, Wren was a good person. He was sweet. He did all the right things, all the right moves. He never pressured me. He had a hard outer shell, and I believed I had penetrated it. Why it broke me so hard, why I couldn’t run. Because he didn’t get angry back then. I slowly learned that he did have problems. Childhood problems, ones I never fully learned. He started drinking, and then he started getting angry. I thought I could help him.

Maybe I had helped him. Never in the way I had imagined.

I had loved him. And maybe a part of me still did, but it was behind me. I had moved on.

It had been an ordinary day as I lifted my shirt, about to get into my pajamas. I fleetingly caught sight of myself in the mirror, and my gaze held. I don’t know what drew my eye to it, but realization came over me.

I looked at myself, and there were no bruises. All of them that had danced over my ribs and chest.

They were gone.

end.