It's Gonna Be Hard When I'm Gone

Any other day would have found me lying lazily in bed, my arms slung around her and me curled up against her side, loving the warmth and comfort. That’s all changed now; it’s gone, fallen far away from me.

This morning found me wide awake at the crack of dawn, drinking my black coffee and reading the news paper. I skimmed the headlines for a few minutes, before deciding none of them had captured my interest and discarded the paper into the waste bin.

My cell phone was off, and had been off for the last week and a half. My communication was cut off for the simple reason that I had no clue what I was supposed to do now that she was gone. Oh, how I remember spending every morning with her.

She walked up to me, a shy smile on her face as her arms wrapped around my waist from behind.

“How’re you this morning, love?”

“Excellent. You?”

“Just perfect,” she smiled once again, resting her head gently on my shoulder.

“Also excellent,” I laughed, pouring my coffee into the cup and pulling away from her gently
to sit down at the table where she sat across from me.

“Did you sleep well?” she asked, her eyes focused directly into mine.

“Always when I sleep next to you,” I replied, a small smile catching my lips as I sipped my coffee.

“Good to know.”

Her eyes were far away from me, in some distant palace of her mind. It wasn’t often that she drifted like this, and it scared me.

“You okay, dear?” I asked, snapping her from the distance.

“Fine, love” she smiled, her hands interlacing with mine across the table.

My mind was tricking me. These flashbacks were getting more and more frequent. I needed them gone. I needed them gone now.

I shook my head, snapping it from the trance as I took one last sip of my coffee before putting the cup in the dishwasher and maneuvering through the mess of my room to my bathroom. A shower was a definite need.

Stripping down and throwing my clothes in the hamper, I stepped in to the steam and scalding hot water. It burned my skin for a moment before I became used to the temperature. Not hot enough, I thought to myself as I turned the knob to a hotter setting. The scalding water helped me wash her off my skin, out of my mind.

I finished my shower in a mere fifteen minutes, which was a record for me, especially with this new found way of forgetting her.

I dressed casually today. A simple attire of jeans and a v-neck t-shirt. I didn’t have any special place to go, so why make myself look pretty? No point in that now that she’s gone.
Stepping outside, I felt the cold air biting at my cheeks and the tips of my ears. Damn this Ohio weather, I thought as I hopped into my Jeep. Somehow, I could still smell the perfume she used to wear on the seats. It was killing me, suffocating me, just as being in a closed room of carbon monoxide would.

“I hate this, I hate this, I fucking hate this!” I shouted to myself as I pulled out of my neighborhood.

I turned my cell phone on as I stopped at the intersection. It instantly started beeping and I saw the list of alerts coming in. 10, 20, 30 missed alerts in 30 seconds. People must have really been trying to get a hold of me.

I called my voice mail and set it on speaker phone, listening to it as I drove to Starbucks.

“Kyber, where the fuck are you? Nobody has heard from you in weeks. Hit me back!” Jason, my flamboyant homosexual best friend. He must’ve missed his little lesbian counterpart.

I pressed 7 on the key pad and it went to the next voice mail. It was blank. I keyed through 7 voice mails before arriving at the last one.

“Hey,” my heart stopped. It was her, “I just wanted to make sure you were okay and stuff. I mean, I know you’re taking it hard. Your phone is off and it’s never like that. So um… call me back or don’t, I mean, it’s up to you. Whatever’s best? I’m sure I’ll hear somewhere that you’ve attained communication again. Stay safe. No stupid stunts.”

The voice mail clicked off, and my heart restarted. Had she really been worrying about me?