Infinite

There was nothing more to say than I loved him. And I still love him. And I don’t think there will ever be a day when I don’t love him. I don’t how it’s supposed to end when it’s this way, but I feel it like death, and I know he’s gone.

It was late when I decided to call him for the last time. Arch was sleeping upstairs, sprawled out under his comforters and completely at peace with the world that I had yet to make any sense of. I was in my living room, sunk down into the couch cushion like I hoped it would swallow me up, turning my phone over and over in my hand to keep my mind on track. Three weeks, that was how long it had been since he left, and everyday I called, trying to bring him back.

The image of him and I together lingered on my mind and I brought it up on my phone as I thought about what I was going to say to his answering machine when it picked up instead of him. I'd been silent so far, too afraid to speak to a rehearsed, calculated version of him. It was a machine; mechanical, much like Ronnie was pretending to be.

But tonight I had a reason to call that didn't involve just me, something to tell him and something to say to explain that I understood why things turned out this way, and I hoped that he did too. It felt like we were sacrificing something for nothing, and that’s what it seemed like to everyone watching. None of them could understand what had happened, and if we wouldn't have felt it ourselves, neither would have we.

I dialed his number before I could convince myself that it was the wrong idea, and it rang for a few moments, the only noise in my house, before Ronnie woke up on the other side of the country and saw my face flashing on his screen. The phone cut out mid ring, a voice that was barely his picked up instead. "Hey, you've reached Ronnie, leave a message." The deliberateness stung.

“It’s me,” I spoke, “I know that you don’t want to talk to me, it would be impossible not to figure that out, but I promise that this is the last one. I won't call you anymore. I just wanted you to know that they’re allowing my case to go to trial against Abigail. It's going to start in a couple weeks and Arch really wants you to be there. I said I’d ask, but I didn’t promise him anything, so don’t feel obligated.”

I pulled the phone from my face as I stalled, trying desperately to hold back my emotions. All I could see was images of him on the back of my eyelids. They read like a novel that I would never open again. I brushed tears away as I remembered what it felt like to map the tattoos on his skin with my fingers. “I love you,” I said finally, pulling my knees to my chest, “I can't handle it if we end up this way..." I paused to push away the words preparing themselves on my tongue, "But do what you have to, I'll understand.”

When he left my father's house, he left everyone. He stopped answering any calls, went silent online, and it was almost as though he didn't want to exist to us anymore. It took three days before he turned up on the tour bus without a word or explanation. He went back to them, but he was lost to me.

They said he looked normal, like nothing had happened at all, and I wondered if they could see him the way I did. I wondered how I could feel the difference in him from here, if they couldn't feel it at all. He hadn't told anyone about the baby. I didn't know how I was supposed to.

Nobody asked what happened when they called to let me know he was home again, because perhaps they knew that there was no explanation that either of us could give them. And I think Ronnie knew, like I did, that Chance wasn’t the reason we weren’t together. But it would take more than three days for him to accept it.

Being together had changed us in a way that neither of us expected. He had lit my bones on fire and I was burning from the inside out. He wasn't there to douse me with water or save me from anything at all, only to burn beside me. It was as though he was created to make me love him. Every move he made struck shivers down my spine and when he looked at me, completely at ease with his world, I could barely remember how mine had been before him.

We were wildfire; burning impossibly bright and ravaging everything around us. Our friends compared their love to ours, putting on us the pressure of keeping ourselves together for the sake of them. We were burning up all the oxygen, childishly believing we could survive simply off the taste of each other.

But god, I would never stop loving him. We consumed each other like I had never seen before and I doubted if anyone could ever feel about someone the way we felt. Nothing else mattered when he was with me. Nothing was important besides the sound of his voice and the weight of his fingers on my skin. We were in love with the idea of being lost forever.

I knew I would never get over that, get over him. How could I? It would always be right there, staring at me from the depths of my memory, reminding me of how far we’d come and how fast we burned out. And it hurt, it hurt like hell to know that we would never have it again, and I wanted to go back to the beginning and start over, pretend the past was a place that could contain us forever, but I couldn’t, and neither could he. What we wanted didn't matter, there was no more oxygen left to sustain us.

But I took refuge in the fact that I would always be able to love a piece of him without any reservations or guilt or regrets. I would see the best of him in in what we created, and I hoped to god that our child would be everything he was. I wouldn't have to let go or move on. I wouldn't have to pretend that there had never been anything between us at all. I wouldn't have to explain what happened or why I never really let go. I was grateful for this, and my reasons were selfish and unfair and wrong, but I couldn't help but feel relieved. Somehow, this made it easier.

I didn't believe that I would feel anything like him again in my life. Because I felt him in the bottom of my lungs, in the vertebrae of my spine, and in my blood as it sparked something in my veins. I knew that Ronnie was the lost half of my soul in someone else. But we both knew there was a time for us, and we both knew it was over.

"I love you, Ron," I spoke, whispering the words to him in the dark, "god, I love you."

When I pressed my finger down against the glass to end the call, my world felt different, and somehow I felt okay. In the span of three years, three weeks, and one message, I had learned to change the things that I couldn't accept, and to accept the things that I couldn't live without. I couldn't live without him, and somehow I knew that was the point he was trying to make this entire time.

It just seemed like the universe had other plans.

I dialed again.

"Hey, Chance. I'm sorry that you haven't heard from me. Do you think you could come over? There are somethings we need to talk about."