“Leave him.”
His words lingered in the space between the off-white walls, his elbow grazing his propped-up knee as he leaned his head back, his eyes on her. His sharp eyes cut through the dark room that was only lit by the city lights outside the high-rise window, the glass causing ripples of light over his skin.
Feeling the pull of his gaze, she looked away.
“Leave him?” she asked. “And then what?”
His fingers twitched. “Come back to me.”
She laughed, twisted and breathless. “Leave one affliction for another? I’m foolish, but not that much.”
He stood, the rustle of his coat heavy, its possible warmth tempting even from where she stood. There was an echo as his bare feet tapped across the floor, the hem of his dark denim scraping across the floor as he came closer.
“You forgot how I made you feel,” he said. “Deep and endless. Complex and layered. He made you feel simple. Childish.”
She turned her back on him, keeping her eyes on the city lights below. She did her best to ignore his reflection in the window beside her.
“I liked feeling simple,” she answered. “Everything was on the surface, so easily seen. I was seen. The more complicated and complex I became, the more invisible I became.”
“You lost your depth.”
“I lost my need to fill the emptiness with things that appeared deep. That’s all.”
Denim scraped across the floor behind her.
“For a short burst of time I remembered why I endured you,” she continued. “Why I pushed past you… why I survived you.”
The sound of denim stopped behind her, his breath steady behind her ear.
“But he said he was happy without you,” he replied. “And look at how good his life is. He never needed you to begin with. He never wanted to share happiness with you.”
Her breathing shallowed, eyes burning, body tensing; afraid to take in a deep breath in fear she would shatter in every direction.
“You weren’t made for happiness,” he said. “You were made for me.”
“I don’t want you anymore.”
“I exist whether you want me or not.”
She felt him linger at her back, his deep scent pushing past the walls she had created to keep him out. But he was familiar. There was something about his presence that felt safe and addicting, despite the consequences.
His heavy hands came to her shoulders, his fingertips teasing the straps of her top.
“I exist before and after those short highs of happiness,” he whispered in her ear. “I even exist in the greatest highs. No matter what you possess, I can strip you of it.”
He slipped the straps off her shoulders, his breath cold as his lips grazed her neck. She shivered, frozen in place.
“I’m far more intimate than happiness,” he continued, his lips tasting her neck. “I’m deep. I motivate you, push you, and inspire you. I create you.”
Her muscles slacked and he wrapped his arm around her waist, holding her up.
“I can’t stand you anymore,” she admitted.
“You have nothing left if you don’t have me.”
“Leave.”
“Even if I leave, happiness won’t come.”
“If you don’t leave, then happiness can’t come.”
With one hand around her waist, his other hand came up to reach for her neck. She straightened as his fingertips grazed her throat, gently pushing her head back against his chest.
“That’s fine,” he whispered. “Because I’ll be back when you have everything you’ve ever wanted. When he says he loves you, I’ll be the doubt and insecurity that paralyzes you. When he puts a ring on your finger, I’ll be the arguments, the frustrations; the devastation of affair, the threat of divorce.
“And when you’ve settled your differences, when you know he loves you more than life itself, I’ll be there in old age when he can’t remember you. I’ll be in the hospital when his body is drenched in disease. I’ll be at the funeral when your love lives on longer than his.”
His hand fell from her neck and his arm then wrapped tight around her chest, constricting the rest of the air from her lungs.
“Don’t you understand?” he continued in her ear. “Even if your greatest happiness, I will still exist. There is no life without the consistent, persistent existence of pain, my darling. I will always be next to you, mixed into your joy, into your happiness; forever mingled into your own creation, into your own existence.”
She sucked breath into her lungs, his embrace too strong to breathe, her will wavering.
But she had lived with him too long. She knew him too well.
“Then exist,” she breathed out, challenging him. “Exist if you have to. But don’t tell me how to exist. I exist with you, as I exist with everything else. I was made with you… but I was also created out of everything that wasn’t you.”
His arms loosened, air coming back to her lungs for a dizzying moment. The world spun, her head dropping and eyes closing to get her bearings as she put her hand against the glass.
“I was created in chaos,” she said. “And I was created in divine. And though chaos always exists, so does the divine. I will never escape either one, so I simply accept you both.”
Her eyes opened, and she turned around to face him. His sharp eyes stared back, lips flat, nothing in him that noted submission, but also nothing that noted dominance. He simply stood, waiting for her to acknowledge him.
She looked back at him, the whites of his eyes oddly beautiful, the shape and curves of his face bold and soft – an indescribable yet dangerous warmth coming from his breath. Her hand came to his face, grazing his cheek, feeling his jaw.
“You are part of me,” she admitted. “You created some of the greatest parts of me. But I pushed past you for something greater. Something greater than pain… something greater than happiness, even.”
He glanced down at her hand on his skin before meeting her eyes once again.
“And what would that be?” he asked.
She didn’t answer at first, her mind searching for the right combination of words to answer both him and herself.
“Existence,” she finally said, the word echoing through her thoughts. “To be a rare entity that can pass between pain and pleasure; a soul that can live in both realms of chaos and divine.”