Perfect Stranger

Autumn

The chromatic leaves from the expiring trees were diffused across the expanse of grass between them and the wind seemed to push her toward him, the earth itself aiding their meeting. He was waiting for her as a drought waits for rain and she was a cloud heavy with promise. They were not going to merely cross paths, they were charging full-steam directly into one another.

Sarah was a fiery, passionate, proud woman with chestnut brown hair that was as wild and untamable as she was. Aaron was charming, mischievous, and handsome in a terribly classic sort of way. The moment they locked eyes, they were drawn closer by the mere discovery of each other, as though they knew what they would become. He caught sight of the book she held against her chest and when he inquired how she was enjoying it, she provided a cheeky but insightful response. He’d been as enchanted by her sharp tongue as she’d been by his keen sense of wonder.

It’d been The Odyssey- the book she’d held in her hands when they met- and she couldn’t help but wonder if she were about to embark on her own odyssey with this perfect stranger.

They fell in love in October, their love blooming in beautiful contrast to the deadened trees that lined the endless curving roads.

Winter

The crisp fall breeze turned into painful, frigid gusts and familiarity started to settle in between them, for better or worse. They did not know what it was between them- they had nothing in common, their friends all disapproved, and things never seemed to be easy. Still, they loved.

Her upbringing was clean and proper, upheld by luxuries afforded through her family’s social position. He was scrappy and resourceful, a scavenger born into poverty and a family that did not want him. She rode freely through life on the waves that always favoured her and he slunk through life in the crevices that good fortune would allow him. She enjoyed reading indoors and he enjoyed running outdoors. Still, they loved.

There was no logical explanation for the fierce connection they shared. Still, they loved.

While they spent their days exposing and exploring their souls, there remained something closed off in Aaron, something deep and impenetrable that he kept from her. Sarah longed to pull at the loose strings of his past and unravel the secrets he would never reveal. He longed for her to understand that there were no secrets, only shamefully hidden truths that he wasn’t ready to go looking for. He wasn’t hiding anything from her that he wasn’t also hiding from himself. But they were young and invincible and they pretended that to simply love was enough.

One evening, on one of the hazy days between Christmas and the New Year, they settled into crooked chairs on the pier of a gleaming lake. With nothing but woollen blankets and hot toddies in a comically large thermos, they laughed the sun away until the stars were twinkling in tune to their conversation. When the temperature dropped below freezing, they were sustained by the warmth in their chests. Fish would jump over the surface of the water in brief glimpses and they delighted in the soft plunk that followed each brief sighting in the black night. In a fever of foolish frenzy, they got it into their heads to jump into the lake, though only on the condition that they did so together. Sarah’s body was pins and needles the moment the water enveloped her while Aaron went rigid but was otherwise exhilarated. They swam back to the shore and ran to gather their things with little squeaks and yelps of mixed joy and discomfort. In his rusted Chevy, Aaron ran the engine, blasted the heat, and let the car idle. He pulled himself into the oversized blanket that Sarah was trembling under and their aimless giggles were more powerful than any winter could have been.

Just a few short weeks after that idyllic night, Aaron silently and spontaneously embraced Sarah with such delicate tenderness that her heart ached. He buried his face in her endless hair and his body remained still while the smallest of quivers emanated from his very soul. She wrapped him tightly into her, hoping to hold all his pieces together with just her love. Silent tears fell down his thin nose and dampened her hair. Her whispers of inquiry were met only with continued tears that dissolved into sobs that wracked his body.

She never discovered the source of that breakdown. Instead, she watched as he cried himself into slumber and when he awoke, it was like it had never happened at all.

Sarah knew that there were demons in him that she couldn’t protect him from and that, perhaps, was what hurt the most- to love so entirely and to know it wasn’t enough to save him.

Spring

Aaron thought that his pursuit of faith and love would be more powerful than the despair and hate that lived in his bones. With everything in him, he loved Sarah. Perhaps he thought that was always going to be enough to override a lifetime of unfaced battles within himself- or maybe, like so many of the other unthinkable truths that he couldn’t face, he kept it buried where the rest of his fears and ghosts resided.

Sarah could feel that she was losing him and her fear came out in emotional ways that she loathed. The further he slipped away, the stronger she held on. From an outsider’s perspective, it seemed they had nothing to worry about; her friends assured her that he was just busy, overworked at the factory, or that her fear of abandonment was causing a flurry of panic unrelated to anything concrete.

Still, she knew him and the worry ate away at her with every passing day. He laughed less when they were together, withdrew from conversations, and stopped saying “I love you” but remained more physically affectionate than ever, his head frequently burrowing into her neck with silent, unexplained sorrow and his hands desperately seeking hers nearly every moment they spent together.

One day in early April, they walked through the park where they’d first met six months prior. Aaron smiled politely at Sarah’s stories and they shared an inviting picnic on the overcast spring day while something nameless pressed on their love, suffocating it. When they approached a blooming garden, Sarah was captivated by the beauty and lept toward it, absolutely delighted by the token of beginnings. Aaron kept his hands in his pockets while she pranced excitedly around and watched her with one corner of his mouth upturned. There were any number of vibrant poppies, lovely pink and yellow roses, scarlet tulips, and a couple of leafy plants abundant with fruit that was not yet ripe enough to identify. The beauty was humbling. Right as they were leaving the bucolic scene, he spun her around and kissed her before she could say anything smart. It was slow, long, and devastatingly soft. When they pulled apart, his thumb was trailing her ear and she could feel a flower freshly placed there.

His lips formed a hard line even as his eyes softened upon her. In those hazel eyes, Sarah saw it all: his joy, his sorrow, his conflict, his love, his past, and- for some reason- utter anguish at his future. Her stomach churned but before she could further search his soul, his hand fell away and his body turned from hers, leading them soundlessly out of the garden and back into that rusted Chevy.

When she got home, she extracted the flower from behind her ear- it was a golden marigold with all the colours of the sun and it radiated a warmth that felt like pure joy. She envied the flower as she pressed it into the pages of The Odyssey. Oh, to be eternally beautiful within the embrace of art.

By the time May came to a close, that marigold was all that remained of their love.

Summer

Sarah never knew what happened to their love and truthfully, it haunted her. The blinding white light of the afternoon sun shone through her window panes and she shut her eyes against it, using her oversized hoodie to aid in blocking the light. If it wasn’t the light within Aaron’s soul, she had no patience for it. It was torture, losing him and never knowing why.

Aaron wanted to tell her everything. He wanted to explain how ardently he believed in his own damage and its capacity to ruin everything he touched. He wanted to explain that he couldn’t bear watching her wither away beneath the presence of him. He wanted to explain that he’d loved her too much to allow her a life with him.

But he said none of this and, instead, sent her on her way with no understanding of the conflict within himself that led him to abandon the purest love either had ever known.

His friends told him he was being stupidly self-righteous but he knew himself and he knew they were wrong. In the weeks following their breakup, he pushed himself into the monster he’d been so afraid of becoming, the bitter and cruel one whom he’d been sure would have hurt Sarah. If he became that monster, he was right to have pushed her away after all. Surely, if he let that side of him win, at last, the pain would all have meant something.

While he clung to his desperate rationalisations of a choice he felt martyred him, Sarah never understood how love could ever not be enough. They didn’t stop loving and so why should they try? How could love possibly lose? It destroyed her heart and her foolish romantic exuberance.

Years passed and seasons changed and that marigold- like their love- never withered away, even when they became, once more, nothing more than perfect strangers.