How Do You Keep Love Alive?

Tears were pouring down her cheeks like rushing rivers out of her eyes.She sniffled, sucking back in the heavy snot that congested her nose, and wiped at her face, the remnants of old make-up she’d forgotten to take off when she’d gotten home from work that afternoon staining the back of her hand and arm. She looked like a wreck, a mess, in fact. Her hair was disheveled and her eyes were puffy and red. She had mucus dripping out of her nose and the tears just wouldn’t end. Her wails were less than pleasing to the ears. They were like the screeches of nails scratching on the chalk board, loud and piercing. It was deafening. He didn’t know how much longer he could take it. He was losing his cool. His hands shook at his sides as he licked his lips, his eyebrows nearly touching in the middle as a conspicuous scowl found its way onto his face. He was counting Mississippi’s in his head, muttering them inaudibly under his breath. He closed his eyes and spat out a “Ten Mississippi.”

They were fighting again, and they were at the part where he’d just made her cry. He couldn’t count how many times this had happened in the past two months. He didn’t know what had happened. They were so happy back then, so carefree and in love. Then, for some reason, their relationship had taken a sharp turn and had nearly fallen off a cliff. The fighting wasn’t an occasional occurrence. It didn’t just happen once in a while, when they were both in a bad mood and needed to blow off steam on each other. It was starting to happen every night; whenever she got home from school and work, they were immediately at each other’s neck, yelling at the top of their lungs, accusing each other of something or the other, telling each other to do this and that. It was a vicious cycle that had become routine.

“I-I can’t do this anymore,” she wailed, throwing her arms above her head. When he opened his eyes, all he saw in front of him was a disaster. Adelaide looked awful, and if he hadn’t been so upset with her, he probably would have felt bad. He probably would have wanted to make it all better and held onto her, pulled her into his arms and told her everything was going to be okay. But he just wanted her to stop. He wanted her to shut up and leave him alone. He’d had enough.

“Are-Are you…Are you even listening to me, John?” she asked him, placing her hands on her hips and letting out a shaky breath. John looked at her indifferently, still counting numbers silently. “I can’t do this.”

John rubbed at his tired eyes. He’d had those God-awful eye-bags since he came back home from touring. They were from these late night arguments, the little tuffs they got into. He couldn’t remember what it was like to sleep comfortably, on a soft bed beneath a warm down comforter like the one upstairs in their bedroom. He’d been sleeping on the sofa these past two sad, tiring months—the sofa he knew was about as uncomfortable as sleeping on cardboard, but after sleeping in the seats of the van and in the little bunks on their bus, it was at least now bearable, but not by much. Tired lines etched into his skin below his droopy, bloodshot eyes and he felt as though his lips had been permanently curved southward in the saddest of frowns. He couldn’t remember what it was like to smile. He hadn’t smiled in ages; he’d frowned and scowled and had grimaced and let out shaky, exasperated sighs, but he hadn’t even laughed once in far too long a time.

God, he missed laughing. He missed feeling happy, because he didn’t know what it was like anymore. Months of fighting and yelling and hearing those pointless tears run down her face had drained the last bits of energy he had. He was off of tour for Christ’s sake. It was supposed to be spent happily with her, with his loved ones, resting and relaxing after a long, tiring three-month period of sleeping in little compartments that made you develop claustrophobia and playing gigs every night, meeting a million and one fans, signing autographs, posing for promo photos, driving in that stupid bumpy bus and playing stupid video games for hours on end. He wanted peace, quiet, sleep.

“John, look at you!” Adelaide yelled, wiping at her make-up-smeared face, glaring at him through the messy clumps of mascara on her long lashes. “You’re not even—God, just look at me. You’re not listening to me; it’s like what I’m saying doesn’t matter. Did you hear anything, at all?”

He blinked once at her, and that was enough confirmation for her to start rambling on about how he never listened to her anymore, how he always just wrote her off one way or the other. He was far too tired to deny anything she was saying. He didn’t have an ounce of energy to even yell a single word back at her now. It would only be just a waste of his breath, and he didn’t want to waste his breath any longer.

They hadn’t spoken a single nice thing to each other since he came back. They were always at each other’s necks, John couldn’t fathom how he hadn’t yet murdered her in her sleep, or vice versa. God, what he would do to sleep in that bed again—to sleep in that bed with her again, happily, peacefully. They hadn’t slept together in almost half-a-year. The sexual frustration was finally taking its toll on him. He missed how she used to dress for him, how she would wear her sexiest lingerie and smile devilishly at him some nights before he would chase her up the stairs and meet her with kisses and hands that would ravish her perfect body. She didn’t dress up for him anymore; always wore sweat pants or basketball shorts and basic t-shirts that never showed off her curves. Before, she would wear low-cut shirts that exposed her cleavage, giving him a little sneak peek of what he would find in his bedroom that night. She’d wear tight pants that stuck to her skin and showed off every curve of her leg and made her ass look amazing. Her skirts were always short and made her legs look like they went on for days. How he wanted to run his hands down her soft, smooth skin and feel them curl around his waist as he picked her up and kissed her with as much passion and love as he could muster. But those were their happier days, when they were in love and were barely fighting. That was when they kissed just because and told each other ‘I love you’s and when he would whisper sweet words to her and tell her she was beautiful.

He missed her touch. Oh, did John miss her touch. It used to light his skin on fire, melt him into a puddle of mush. She was always so delicate and knew how to work her hands over his body. His skin tingled at the thought of her running her fingers down his chest and tugging at the ends of his messy brown hair. He missed so much because it was all gone. What was left of them were petty fights that lasted all night until she had enough of him and walked the length of the kitchen towards their bedroom and slammed the door shut, locking him out. Then, he would fix himself on the couch and turn the television on lowly, hoping to forget about the entire night and try to get a good night’s sleep, though it was a hopeless thought.

“John, could you at least try to pay attention to me for once?” she exclaimed exasperatedly. John looked up again and stared blankly into her once brilliant eyes. To him, they had gone dull and lifeless—exactly how he felt. “I don’t even know why I’m putting up with this shit! God-damn-it, John will you please just—”

“Why are we fighting again?”

Adelaide closed her mouth and then stared confusedly up at him with a skeptical look in her face. “What?”

“I mean—why do we keep fighting? Ever since I came home, you’ve been strangling me and yelling at me and…and I hate making you cry,” he said quietly, taking a seat gently on the chair at the dining table.

“John—you’re…I-I can’t…You’re making no sense—We’ve been over this a million times. I just…” she couldn’t find the words, but John waited patiently for her to continue. It was the first time in three hours that they were speaking somewhat civilly to one another. He didn’t want to mess it up. “You're so disagreeable. I can’t even speak to you without feeling like I’m talking to a wall.”

“Why is it me?”

“John—”

“Do you still love me?” he questioned once more, looking at her with expectant eyes. He didn’t know what he was going to hear, but he wanted her to tell him she wanted to fix this. She wanted to keep them alive.

Adelaide sighed and shook her head. John’s face dropped and so did his heart. It slipped past his ribcage and fell into the pit of his stomach. He felt it slowly stop beating and then he felt asphyxiated.

“You don’t?”

“I’m confused, John. I’m…Im just confused now.”

“I don’t know what to do either, but I-I miss you,” he admitted sadly. Adelaide made to speak, but John silenced her with more words. “I miss us—the happy us, the happy John and Addie that everyone thought was just the perfect pair. We were the perfect pair, Ad, and now, now we’re a mess and I want to fix it.”

Tears started pouring down Adelaide’s cheeks again. Rushing and rushing and they wouldn’t stop. She could hear her heart breaking in her chest and she felt the pain in her gut, a physical pain she didn’t think she could feel. She clutched at the sides and bowed her head as a bout of sobs overcame her, over and over again. John wanted to go to her and touch her, hug her, make everything better. He wasn’t mad anymore. Just sad. He felt absolutely forlorn; this wasn’t supposed to happen. This wasn’t supposed to happen to them. His hands shook again at his sides and he felt the first few tears run down his own cheeks. Adelaide was still crying. She couldn’t stop herself from crying, from feeling that painful feeling that had her head feeling like it was about to burst. She couldn’t do it anymore. She knew she couldn’t and that killed her inside. It was going to kill John, too.

“I can’t,” she murmured.

John didn’t know two words could hold so much power. They hit him hard, like a punch in the gut. He thought he would stumble backwards from the blow of those two words, but he just sat there, frozen and crying softly to himself. Adelaide left the kitchen still crying and left for the bedroom. John remained sitting at the table with tears falling gently in his lap. He heard the click of the lock and then got up. He pushed the chair into the table and left the kitchen, too, turning the light off as he passed the switch. Then, he fixed himself on the couch and turned the television on. He sat there in the dark, staring vacantly at the box, and let the rest of his tears fall. He didn’t know what to do, but he knew he tried and he couldn’t keep their love alive. And it broke him. It broke Adelaide, too. That lonely apartment with a thick invisible wall separating him from her remained quiet the rest of the night, until the morning when John woke up and Adelaide was gone.