His Personal (Lover) Assistant

I had felt strange when I woke up later that, after crying. I felt like a woman, almost, mood swinging so violently. Just before, I was thinking I could be happy without Gerard. And just a few hours earlier, it hit me that I was almost nothing without Gerard.

Which seemed pretty damn fucked up, seeing as we’d never actually been together in the first place. No, instead, we were just something immaterial, something hopeful, something broken and fragmented. We weren’t even whole – not together.

I took pills.

They’re the strongest dose, the most expensive pills, there to stop any pain. Like a headache. But in my state of mind, I believed that they would help with heartache too. I was a mess. But I knew that. A fucked up mess, because I believed that life without Gerard might be a better life.

Because I let happiness slink away when realisation hit me harder than the stupor I was in after he kissed my lips those simple forty-eight hours ago. It hit me that my heart had been shredded. Shredded, because I wanted what I simply couldn’t have. Gerard.

It didn’t seem fair that in the months since I’d met him, I’d never gotten what I wanted. I was always this close, my fingertips touching the edges of what I wanted, threatening that if I was lucky, I might be able to grasp onto it and keep it – but I never did.

Always that close.

Now, two weeks later, I was still a zombie. I was moving, I was breathing, but just barely. I was living for nothing. I could off myself in the next minute, and it wouldn’t even hurt me. Love was fucked up. First you couldn’t have what you wanted, and then you still went through all that heartbreak.

Almost as fucked up as me.

“Frankie, I’m worried about you,” Ray said that evening. I looked up at him, blank gaze.

“I’m fine.” This was my robotic answer. The automatic answer. The answer I gave, because, you can’t be heartbroken over something you never had.

At least, that’s what my mind continued to tell me. It told me that you can’t feel this stupidly broken and shattered over someone who was never yours. My mind is what controls my body, you see.

“But you’re not,” Bob said. “You’ve barely spoken. You were supposed to take Ainsley to visit your mum yesterday, did you forget?” He finished, looking even more concerned. I snapped out of my half-trance, and I looked at him for a minute, before standing up from the couch, and grabbing my keys.

“Frank…” Ray whispered, watching me slip on my shoes. “Frank, where are you going?”

But I didn’t respond.

Because I didn’t know.

--
It seemed like an endless road as I drove. With no idea where, with practically no money – living off unemployment – and rather low on cigarettes, it seemed like I could go nowhere. But at the same time, I could go anywhere.

I had an open road, and a full tank of gas – that could get me at least two hundred miles further. And instead, I ended sitting in a field, the car parked off on the side of a dirt road, as I lay in the middle of the field, staring up at the blue sky.

Blue. A perfect sky. A perfect breeze sweeping across the perfect field, and all that ran through my mind was, Where’s my perfect guy? “Frankie?” I didn’t move, didn’t even flinch, as I heard my name.

Just stopped breathing. Just felt my heart jump up my throat, threatening to spill out onto the green grass below me. I was sinking, sinking, sinking, as I looked up and saw his pretty face staring down at mine. Dressed in simple jeans and a shirt for once, keys in one hand, the other hand curled into a fist, looking confused, almost.

“Gerard.”

It wasn’t a question – just a statement. Like, Gerard, you’re standing above me. in a way. Stating the obvious. He nodded. I continued to stare up at him, the sun causing me to see spots every now and then.

“What are you doing?” He asked.

“I don’t know,” I replied honestly, not taking my gaze away from him. “What about you? Why are you here?”

“I-“ he cut himself off, snapping his eyes away from me, and looking up at the sky for a minute. “I saw your car,” he finally whispered, flicking his eyes back towards me.

All the sudden my heart felt like it was going to implode, and something upon another realisation hit me like a brick wall, and I tripped, stumbled, and fell at it.

I had fallen for someone who – just two months ago, was a complete selfish asshole. He was loaded, married to the perfect woman, had a successful business, a nice car, an assistant, and a life.

I was just the assistant, one little spec of sand in the big ocean, until he scoped me out. He found me, and picked me up, and turned me into a beach of my own, made me a big detail in the huge picture. I was suddenly one of the only things he painted, one of the only things he washed over.

I didn’t even know it. He hadn’t even noticed it. Until now. My heart felt like bursting with love and confusion, as it hit me, the impact sending me over the edge, a grin spreading across my face at the simple reality.

“You were looking for me.”

Another statement spoke.

He looked away again, opening his mouth to say something, but what fell out was something between a choke and a gurgle, before he shut his mouth again, starting to fidget with the hem of his tight fitting white t-shirt.

I stood up, and wrapped my arms around his neck. “You were looking for me.”

“I couldn’t get you off my mind,” He seemed to find his voice again. “I couldn’t stop thinking about what you were doing, what you were thinking, if you were okay if – if it hurt as much for you as it did for me.
“It’s so weird, Frankie, because we’ve never been something. We’ve never actually said those three words when completely sober, or when we actually met them – have we? We’ve just – we’ve just fucked. Never been some item, none of that. Just fucked.
“And somehow – somehow we’re still something I can’t get out of my head.”

When he finished with his speech, I just stared at his pretty caramels. He stared back, biting his lip. I noticed that he was suddenly the weak one. So I did the one thing that I knew would keep me on his mind for the rest of his life, but not in a bad way.

I kissed him.

And fuck if I didn’t feel my heart finally explode from joy and fireworks, the grin spreading across both our faces enough happiness to last me a lifetime.

Happy endings might never be too far.