The cruelest trick was to fall in love while traveling.
We fell for it so bad in Paris.
It was almost perfect.
We just felt good together.
Really good.
I decided I had to leave.
She didn’t understand.
She wanted me to stay.
I left.
Across the world to Seattle.
She was sad and alone.
I wished I’d stayed.
We didn’t really know what to do.
We tried to go back to our lives.
Tried to hang on to what we had together.
It didn’t work.
We were too far apart.
She let me go.
She moved on.
She had too much to focus on.
She didn’t want to be in love.
Something came loose in my head.
I started to think about her constantly.
I realized I hadn’t done enough.
I’d made her let me go.
I told her I’d move to Paris.
Which was too much for her.
She didn’t want to force life.
I told her I’d do anything to see her.
She didn’t think it was a good idea.
She started to feel weird when she thought about me.
It was my fault.
I was romantic.
I wasn’t realistic.
I didn’t know what to do.
I wrote her a story.
About how we met.
And how we fell in love.
And how much I missed her.
I wanted to write our story.
But I didn’t get it right.
It wasn’t our story at all.
It was mostly about me being sad.
And it was terrible.
She cried when she read it.
It didn’t change anything though.
She’d already given up on me.
And I thought she might be seeing someone.
I begged her.
I had to visit her.
I had to see her.
I was hurting her.
She was being strong.
I was making it hard for her.
She wanted to focus on the things that mattered.
I said that what we had mattered.
It mattered a lot.
I wouldn’t move on.
It meant more than the words when I said “I love you.”
It wasn’t something that went away.
I wanted to be in love so bad.
She asked me to stop.
She said she didn’t feel the same way she felt before.
I didn’t understand.
How could love like that just evaporate?
It was that special.
I wasn’t thinking like it was real life.
I was thinking like it was a movie or a book.
She was still burned into my eyes.
I told her I’d really move to Paris.
To show her how much I cared.
It scared her.
She thought it was crazy.
It was crazy.
How could I move to Paris for her?
Like she was a girl in a movie.
She wanted to see me when it wasn’t all about her.
If that was even possible.
And maybe when she wasn’t seeing someone.
I just wished I hadn’t left.
She knew I didn’t really have a choice.
Or if I did I already made it.
It’s why she moved on.
I didn’t want me leaving to be the end of our story.
I only wanted to see her again.
She was scared of what that would mean now.
It made us think a lot.my
I thought about how good she felt in his arms.
How natural it was to be with her.
She thought about how I came into her life.
And then left it just as completely.
And how she went back to normal.
And how now I didn’t want to lose her?
She didn’t know what to say.
She wasn’t mine to lose.
I’d made things so much worse.
She didn’t want to talk to me.
She did want to.
But she didn’t want to talk to me.
Not when I was trying to make her say it.
Words she couldn’t say.
“Obviously, come to France.”
Words that meant impossible duty.
Words that might as well have meant forever.
Especially not when I was stalking her friends on Instagram.
She was pissed off.
I had no business in her life.
She had her own life and dreams.
And she was with someone else.
And I kept trying to be in love with her.
It was sad at first.
Then annoying.
Then infuriating.
Then leave me alone.
Then shut the fuck up and never talk to me again.
She really wanted us both to be happy.
Now that meant never talking to me again.
I made it that way.
I was love blind.
I couldn’t be happy without her.
I wanted it to be like it was before.
It couldn’t be like it was before.
I left.
She moved on.
I was across the world.
That’s the way it was.
The love atrophied.
And then I killed it and turned it into hate.
She hates me now.
And all I can do is remember our time together.
Almost perfect.
And easy.
And short.
And wonder if things had been different.
And if I’ll ever see her again.
I picture it in my head a lot.
So that it’s always happening.
Over and over in different ways.
She’s walking up to her street from the Bir Hakeim stop.
I’m waiting for her on the corner by the Eiffel Café.
We smile really big when we see each other.
But we’re nervous.
We finally get to have that moment.
When no one knows what’ll happen.
That’s how I like to think.
But what I know is you can build love and you can break it but you can’t build it back.
I might never meet a more perfect match than Céleste.
But she hates me now.
And she’ll never talk to me again.
And it’s my fault.
I remember Scarlett Peters.
And Chloe Moore.
And evil Emma.
I remember all the things I always forget.
And I think how instant messaging is my mortal enemy.
And I think how it will probably kill me someday.