Finding Atlas

I couldn't read his expression at all. It's like he was purely emotionless, and I'd thought that maybe all I had said was just all in my head, maybe we were just trapped in time and silence and none of us ever said a word. Maybe nothing was said and nothing was done. But I knew I wasn't lucky enough for that to be the case, because all the words I'd said moments before were a shout into a void and I wasn't sure Atlas heard what I needed him to hear. Atlas didn't say anything, so I guessed he didn't feel the same.

"All right, um, I, uh, I'll just go then. Sorry for not giving you your space, you won't have to worry about that anymore." Frustrated tears were threatening to fall as I bit them back and tried to hold all my emotions in until I got to my car. I walked out for what seemed to be the last time, the door closing with a defeated click behind me. I sat in my car for what felt like hours, waiting, hoping that his front door would open and he'd come out with something worth saying but I should have remembered that life was no dream.

I actually didn't cry in my car. I drove home, just a few blocks away, but home seemed forever away. The realization didn't strike me until I was curled up in my bed with a mug of hot chocolate that tasted nothing like Atlas's.

I'd lost Atlas. I'd really lost him, and I barely had him in the first place. Atlas felt like the dream you could almost touch, the dream that was centimeters away from your fingertips that just faded away into nothing, making you question if you ever had it in the first place. So I cried, which was something that happened to be a usual occurrence at the time. I cried for God knows how long––the sun set, Grace came up to tell me it was time for dinner and kissed me on the forehead, but I never went down.

Eventually, my mom came up the stairs and knocked gently on my door.

"Andromeda? Sweetheart, may I come in?" I hated for her to see me like this. I was supposed to be the strong one in the family, and now I was the one who was constantly breaking down like it was nobody else's business. Atlas wasn't even mine to start with, why was I acting like this?

She curled up next to me under the blankets and held me as I cried quietly.

"I almost had him," I whispered to her. "I could feel it, I almost had him. And I let him slip right through my fingertips."

"I know, darling, I know."

I fell asleep that night and dreamt of finding him again. The next morning, and the morning after that, and the morning after that, he was still out of my reach.