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Nothing prepares you for losing the love of your life. The slow burning ache of realizing the last bit of hope, the slightly ajar door that you were hanging on to, has finally closed.
Because if he was honest with himself, in the previous instances of losing her, Conrad had never quite entirely allowed himself to stop hoping. Because when it comes to a once-in-a-lifetime love, it can never truly be over. It just gets buried, captured in time, and the flame gets hidden away. But it never fully dies out. And that's the beauty of it, for all the pain and the ache it causes, that it stays there, in an ethereal garden we keep in our heart, hidden away under lock and key.
And it had been a precious place Conrad could visit, if only in his dreams or—if he dared on a particularly gloomy day—where he could consciously wander through and let himself be consumed by overwhelming melancholy.
But today... today.
Today feels different. Today feels like the place got taken away, destroyed violently by a tidal wave and swept away from him, leaving only soil as the last remnant of the beautifully catered place that used to be there. And yet he kept burning, but there was nowhere to hold it anymore, and Conrad didn't know what to do with that.
So there he was, sitting in what felt like the most desolate and bleak airport to ever exist, red seats all around him an ironic symbol of his current state, his mind replaying everything, exploring the millions of paths not taken, pondering where he went wrong and if there had ever been a way for it to be right, or if he was always meant to end up here, thoroughly broken and in what felt like the end of everything he ever dared to believe in.
And it appeared to him with utter certainty now, that this small garden of hope he had carried all this time, had been what kept him going until now. He had built an entire world around it. A composure of a well-adjusted put together man, going through the motions of life with perfect confidence, perfectly diverting from the heartache eating at him. So perfect in fact, he managed to fool even himself.
Because the truth of the matter was, what had kept him breathing —he had to admit with ridiculous clarity—was that cherished hidden part of his mind where their connection was dormant but still alive, waiting for them to find each other again: a distant dream he kept, always too far to grasp, but never fully out of reach.
And it's only now that this part of him was being taken away that he realized how much he had been relying on it. How much he had built and intertwined his life with it, a comfort place he could always count on, having quiet conversation with it, as if to manifest it in his reality, even if he was the only one maintaining it. As long as he was tending to it, it couldn't disappear.
And so he did.
And it was painfully obvious it had been his way of coping with the ache—that profound belief it was still there, that he didn't have to mourn it, that he could hang on to it like a lifeline, that he could pretend it was only waiting, never lost.
And there was a beauty in the way he would gladly take care of it—carefully maintaining it, nurturing it even. And every, however small, fragment of her he could get, he would feed into it, and with the desperate need for it to be ready to bloom in full colors if she ever would brush the threshold and attempt to push its door again.
And so Conrad could stay focused, he could dedicate himself to his studies, he could walk through his own life and embody anything he needed to be, and he could wait—he was good at that.
And at one point the beautiful sanctuary that he delicately cared for would blossom again, and when that happened, he would be ready. He would just have to be patient.
Dreams only die if you stop believing in them. And Conrad wasn't one to let that go. Especially when it came to her. He had made that mistake before, he wouldn't do it again. Ever.
And this unconscious belief had proven to be a life force that carried him to that point.
But now, now—
His body had seemingly shutdown. The tears had dried out since leaving the club, he didn't even remember when it stopped. And he felt a profound sense of loss and unbalance, like his entire life had no bearings to stand on anymore, and everything he worked for simply collapsed on itself. There was nothing to care for, everything was simply gone.
He felt empty, numb. His mind was blank. Even his generally reliable analytic brain short-circuited under the flood of information rushing through his head.
Which is why when he looked up and saw Belly walking toward him, the only thought that arose was that he was having a breakdown of some kind, his brain trying to find a way out by providing him with a coping mechanism: It seemed all it could come up with was the image of Belly.
Conrad smiled internally at the irony as the image of her approached him, seemingly walking in slow motion, her eyes tired and fixed on him.
He was losing his mind. Yet he couldn't help feeling a certain level of comfort in this moment—from this soft vision of her which wrapped his heart with a noticeable warmth.
But then the vision was standing in front of him, and spoke.
“Hey,” she said tentatively, almost like a question.
And his body jerked upright as his mind tried to process the information in front of him. His body was probably betraying him in a million ways—his heart was suddenly beating so fast it might as well be a panic attack—as he looked at her in disbelief and he allowed himself for a suspended delusional pocket of seconds to think his wildest wish had been granted: that she had somehow chased after him and had chosen him. But—
“I don't have a lot of time, I'm boarding,” she continued.
Of course. Of course.
Conrad scanned the airport hall left and right frantically, trying to make sense of what was happening while attempting to ignore the pit in his stomach and the turmoil in his mind. It seemed the words couldn't form in a coherent way as all he could mumble was—
“Wh... where... what...where's Jere?”
“I'm leaving for Paris,“ she said, looking quickly back to the gate where she came from.
It was immediately clear to him there wasn't enough time to go into the depth of it.
His face was probably still asking a million unspoken questions, but he wasn't about to waste that time by asking them, so he did the only thing that was the easiest and the hardest thing to do, he simply looked right at her.
Her gaze found his. “Listen,” she took a deep breath. “Conrad, I'm sorry,” she paused, “I'm so so sorry—for all of it.”
And the sincerity in her eyes could undo him right now, if he weren't already a mess of broken pieces.
And then her arms reached up.
And before he could register what was happening, she hugged him with such tenderness and truth that he melted into her immediately. It seemed for a second that the world had just stopped buzzing around them, that all was forgiven and everything was healed and true and whole again.
He let everything he felt and couldn't express into it, and hoped she could feel it. And he felt himself dissolve into million pieces, and if he had any tears left, they would cascade down his face, because he hadn't felt so vulnerable and himself than in this moment in a very long time.
And it felt like a confession and a goodbye. And like the fucking levee broke with everything pouring in that moment, and they didn't have to say what it was because they inherently understood it. And Conrad would trade his entire life again and again to feel that reality: her head cradled in the crook of his neck and his hand on her back and the smell of her and the incredible soothing warmth of her on his heart and—
The final boarding call sounded. They were already on borrowed time.
And she pulled away. Her hands still grazing his arms as she slowly retreated from him.
She turned to look at her gate, then back at him, but his eyes never left her. When she turned back, he saw hers were glassy, yet they carried that quiet determination of something decided but not quite entirely embodied as she murmured—
“I have to go.”
“Okay.” was all he could muster as his body was readjusting to its cold and painful state.
“Okay.” She mirrored.
She attempted a soft smile and seemed to brace herself for whatever came next.
Her gaze lingered on him as her feet started to move toward the gate, and Conrad's brain tried to readjust to the magnitude of the moment and the fact that these might be the last words he may say to her. He couldn't let it be a pathetic “okay.”
“Belly ?” he managed in a broken voice.
Her motion to leave stopped mid-way and it seemed she was fighting herself,like it was taking everything in her not to run to him or from him, or scream, or crumble.
And what do you say to the love of your life—who you’d confessed your undying love to, who had rejected you to marry your brother, who then seemingly didn’t marry him only to now be moving across the world to get away from you?
“Are you okay?” is what he went with. What a stupid question.
She shrugs. “No,” her voice cracking.
And it took everything in him not to hug her ferociously again, not to tell her that everything will be fine, and to please let him be there for her, that he would help her fix whatever was broken, whatever she asked really, that it was torture to let her go again.
But maybe this time she was the one genuinely asking him to.
And so he buried it all.
“Be safe out there, Belly, okay?” he said softly.
“I will.”
She offered a small genuine smile at him this time, and for a second, it felt like no time had passed since all those summers ago. Like they were just Belly and Conrad, in all their innocence, waving at each other across the beach, in a time where death and heartache was blissfully absent. And he wished that he could have said more, something more meaningful that could carry everything he felt, something of his she could have taken with her.
But no doubt, unknowingly, she already had.
As she finally turned and he watched her walk away, Conrad was reminded that he couldn't protect her anymore, that she was choosing a path—whatever it was and what drove her towards it—that wouldn't include him. Again.
And for the second time today, it felt like goodbye, only this time it was more like a harrowing farewell.
And then she was gone.
He was standing in an airport among those fucking seats again, and that momentary reprieve was gone, his brain working in overdrive trying to process everything and all the things he could have said, and everything came rushing back and he felt himself fall down to his seat with his hands automatically carrying his face in despair, his breath struggling to keep up, and his eyes blurring the view of the gate that carried the last image of her.
Conrad looked up aimlessly at the boarding gate until it closed, watched the plane retreat from its docking station, and slowly aim for take-off—and as the love of his life was flying away, it cemented his grief over that part of himself, the part of him that surfaced this summer, that cracked open on the beach a few nights ago when he'd poured his heart out to her, and his naive belief that love could conquer everything in the end.
His phone rang. Twice.
He ignored it.
Reality was bound to be crashing down soon, he knew that.
But for now, he just needed a fucking minute. A minute where everything didn't hurt like this.
But still he felt it, somewhere deep within him, that glimmer of a sun rising above an abandoned garden reigniting discretely, craving to burn everything. And it warmed his heart with devastating force, but he wasn't sure in that moment if he should let it consume him again or if he should close the door on it entirely.