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That Winter Eve

The happenings of one winter eve.

By PS LuvellPublished about a year ago Updated about a year ago 3 min read
3

We drove up the snowy, winding road towards the cozy A-frame cabin. The preservation of familial tradition, not mine by blood but choice. Not much choice as fateful intervention. From the moment we met, one name had stained my heart. Yours. Your hand in mine was warm to the touch, but not in manner, no, it bore the frost of obligation, of habit. You should have known; 5 years together had made me fluent in your languages. The slide of your eyes, the tense of your shoulders, the tic in your fingers or in your jaws, and even veiled attempts to hide these are a children’s book in my hands.

I know how you feel before you have a chance to decide for yourself. Hadn’t you realized this? Didn’t you know this? 5 years together and you hadn’t learned even that about me?

We crunched through a buried path. Your customary smile fell as flat as your murmured, ‘welcome home, dear.’ The swoop of my legs into your arms was mechanical, stiff. I let out a giggle anyway. An enamored schoolgirl every bit as in love as the day we first came here. I can always match you act for act, but there is one difference.

I’m good at it.

I let you play your charade, sipped on my cocoa and let you beat me at cards, to the sound of your saccharine chatter and a cozy crackle. Any lost peepers would have caught an enviable scene of romance and connection. They wouldn’t have had the means to discern the chess match being played out in front of their eyes. I laughed and I smiled in just the right way and by the evening’s soft close, I could see the fire rekindled, the faintest spark, there in your eyes. A sign of victory in tomorrow’s dusk.

This weekend was to mark either your redemption or your demise. I had a preference, but the choice belonged to only you. I had one last card to play. I smiled at you sweetly as I handed you a silver wrapped package, bound in blood-red ribbon, a message in itself if one had the wits to look.

I stunned you to silence with my gift, my final act. While I had had only ever one name tattooed on my heart, soon, there would be two.

Ebullience bound your tongue. Of that, I was as sure of as the significance of each of your treads.

I.

Was.

Wrong.

In 5 years, I had never learned you at all. An Aesopian miscalculation wrought from vanity and imprudence. A spectacular undoing!

In all my arrogant imaginings, I had never believed myself to have had as little value to you as you proved I had. I had never believed I had mistaken the fire of and passion for that of ownership and control.

I had never believed I would lose.

These thoughts are my constant companions. They lay beside me in the icy dirt, keep my preserved lungs breathing. My eyes are blind, but I see more, I see everything. I have seen every callous step over my resting place, every warm kiss upon her cheek, the familiar cooling, and the glint in her eyes.

Once you’ve tired of her, you will bring her, the fox to my cat, the rewrite, my proxy, to resume our match. On the 1,825th recurrence of this day, you will hold her hand as you lead her to the door, you will swoop her up in your arms and carry her over the threshold, you will plan her end and she will plan yours.

Just as my blind eyes see all of that, they see that in the end, on the 5th anniversary of our death, it will be you laid beside us.

1824,

We drove up the snowy, winding road towards the cozy A-frame cabin.....

Short Story
3

About the Creator

PS Luvell

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100088173587257

https://www.tiktok.com/foryou?lang=en

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