These Are Their Songs

I couldn’t do it anymore. I just couldn’t. I was running through the apartment, packing whatever I could into the Kate Spade box that I kept under his bed. Well, it used to be our bed. I wanted to be packed when he got here, so I could leave quickly and as painlessly as I possibly could.

Jenny kicks the box under the bed at the memories that it contains. Even the look of it brings back that dreadful day. She hated that box now. She wanted to burn it, but every time she got close, she couldn’t do it.

It was the slamming door that notified me. Shit. Harry was here too. I was hoping he had found a bird on the way home, but he came in alone . . . with Louis. He would end up hearing the whole thing. But if Lou was drunk, then maybe it was best that Harry would hear. There was a note too. I had put it in the drawer with his braces. I knew he would look there soon enough.

When he saw me on the couch, staring blankly at the box by the door, he sat down on the table across from me and took my hands. It’s what he always did when he knew there was something wrong and wanted to talk about it. I couldn’t look at him. If I did, I would give in. Damn those blue eyes.

My hands were getting sweaty. I could tell. It always happened when I got nervous around him. “Lou, we need to talk,” I could already feel tears forming in my eyes. “I need to leave.”

His eyes were confused. The playfulness was gone and they were a deeper blue, like they always were when he was sad or didn’t understand something.

“I can’t be with you anymore Lou. I can’t . . . do this,” even preparing for this does nothing to help. I had spent nearly three quarters of an hour practising what I would say to Lou and this was not it.

I stood up and he followed me. It was barely audible, but I heard it. It was a sad, pitiful little whisper, “Don’t go.”

Turning back to face him, pecking his cheek with one hand on his other cheek and the other clutching the handle of the Kate Spade box, I whisper back, “I have to.” When I turn away from him and grab my hat from the rack where Lou keeps his sweater that I would always steal, the tears let loose and I slowly close the door behind me.

The Kate Spade box is currently filled with all the letters that Louis has sent Jenny in the past two and a half years. And there are plenty of them. So many letters, emails, voicemails and missed calls. Too many to count. She knew he missed her, but she couldn’t let herself fall for him just to say goodbye again.

Jenny knew she couldn’t handle saying goodbye to Louis again.