Autumn Leaves

He tried to close his eyes and get some sleep, but every time his eyelids fluttered shut, he saw only her face. He saw simply the first time he had laid eyes on her in a crowd of people on Oxford Street, smiling as the wind blew her long, tawny hair in flurries around her golden, freckled skin through the crowd. Every detail his memory brought forward was a perfect replica of that moment, from the crisp autumn air to the way her lips curled into a crooked grin, like she was on top of the world. It was the moment where he knew his life would never be the same.

He flopped onto his back and stared at the ceiling in the dark. The four walls of his empty room seemed to be closing in on him, and the shadows cast by the nearly bare tree outside his window seemed to haunt him and send chills up and down his spine. Had it really only been two years ago that she stumbled accidentally into his life? A part of him had always felt like she had always been there.

Now, lying alone, he could feel her absence from his side no matter what he did to try to forget it. His green eyes flickered over to her side of the bed, where the blankets were still tangled and tossed about, just like she had left them yesterday. The room seemed so empty without all of her clothes and belongings scattered about. He used to tease her about the clutter she caused, but he missed it, along with all of her other little quirks. It only took it being gone a day for him to feel completely unable to function without it.

The dark shadows seemed to form her profile across the wall, and he tossed his arm over his eyes with a miserable sob. She was somewhere halfway across the world by now, probably back to her hometown in the States. Just thinking about the distance between them was making it terribly hard to breathe. He couldn't help but think that it wasn't supposed to be like this for them. They weren't supposed to end.

From the minute she entered his orbital, he just knew in his head that she was it for him. It all seemed so simple to him, after he worked up the courage to ask her if she wanted to get some coffee with him before her classes. Talking to her was like talking to one of the guys, who knew him better than anyone else. He could still hear her adorable American accent as she explained she was studying in England for a semester. Her easy, contagious laughter from that first day still echoed in his ears, making him long for that afternoon again, back when things were still so easy, and he could still make her laugh.

It was an unusually beautiful autumn night for England, and the clouds had given way to a clear, star-filled sky. Each one mirrored the happy, mischievous glimmer in her warm chocolate eyes when he finally asked her to be his girlfriend a handful of dates later, his voice shaking and palms sweating. She had given him a beam so big her cheekbones moved her glasses farther up her nose.

Ever since the band had taken off, he had watched his friends struggle to maintain normal relationships amongst the craziness of touring, but with him and her, there had never been any complications at the start; he hadn't really seen any at all, actually. They wanted to be together, and so they were. It was as simple as that.

He could still feel his heart beating out of his chest and her breath against his neck when she told him she was transferring permanently to London. It was a snowy day towards New Year's Eve, and the crystalline flakes peppered over them as they stood in the middle of Leicester Square. He stroked her hair and kissed all over her face, and she gave him that breathtaking, crooked smile exposing the gap between her teeth that he loved so much. He loved her more than he had ever thought possible in that moment, and he was sure that she felt the same.

Looking back, he had never realized how much she sacrificed to be with him. She picked up her whole life on the other side of the world to be near his home, even though he was away touring more than he would have liked. Sure, he had spent lonely nights on the road without her, but he had the boys. It never occurred to him that while he was out singing to the crowds, she was alone in their apartment, all of her family and friends an ocean away. She never let him know how completely alone she felt. He should have realized it, though. He spent every moment of nearly two years memorizing every single detail about her, so how had he not seen it?

There was so much that he missed while he was daydreaming towards the grand scheme of things. He spent so much time planning out their happily ever after that he neglected their present, where something was seriously wrong. Somewhere along the way, the light had disappeared from her eyes, and her smiles became mere ghosts of the countless ones she had worn at the start, back while she was laughing so hard people tables away stared at them. Somewhere along the way he started to lose her, and he didn't realize it until the girl he met on a busy London street was too far gone.

His body heaved with sobs as he pictured her face just a day ago, so different from what he remembered. It really hit him then, as she watched him with her eyes blank and her freckles standing out against her suddenly pale, porcelain skin. Her spider lashes hadn't even batted as she told him in her soft, whisper of a voice that she was leaving London, and they were over. He barely comprehended anything she was saying, because in that moment, everything that had been slipping away and changing while he was away suddenly stared him in the face.

He pleaded with her not to leave, promised that things would change, but her rosy, chapped lips remained tightly closed. One crystal tear escaped her eye and crawled down her cheekbones as he knelt before her, begging her to stay. Her hand in his felt cold, more delicate and fragile than it had been a few months prior. He stood helplessly as she tugged her hand from his, picked up her suitcases, and floated out of his life.

He watched her from the window with tears pouring down his face until she disappeared like the scattering red and yellow leaves that fell from the trees. So quickly, she was gone from his life, and yet her presence suffocated him at the same time. He could still feel her in his bones and in the air that he gasped desperately at. She was gone, but she was still everywhere, because she had been, and still was, everything to him.

He gritted his teeth and clamped his eyelids tighter together as his body trembled in grief. His hot tears splashed against the pillowcase as he mourned everything that had left him right along with her. The wind hummed to him against the window, and the sound reverberated through him like her soft whimpers as she begged him to let her go. Even the thought of that was beautiful enough to shatter the broken pieces of his heart.

She was gone, and there was no one to blame from himself. And just like the tumbling leaves, no matter how far he reached and grasped at the air, he couldn't hang on to her for more than a fleeting moment.

Maybe, he realized, his body shutting down with sleep, a fleeting moment was all some people got with love. He would never know, and so as long as there was a chance for them, he would never stop chasing after the falling leaves.