Only You

please

I've decided to go. 

Just leave. Take my car, erase the memories inside it, and drive for a while. 

This town will be the death of me, haunted by thoughts of Cate. God, God I miss her. She's my angel. There are multitudes of discarded letters crumpled in the bottom of my bag. They all begin with passion, burning out into a plea. A plea to be in her arms. A plea to see her. I am weak. So weak for her. 

I think she must have gone away. I've been working in the store again, gathering up what money I can get, and not once has she dropped by. Sometimes I'll see a flash of golden hair on the curb, or a glimpse of her red coat turning the corner. But it won't be her. It'll be a ghost in my eyes. 

I'm not supposed to feel so starved this way. I'm not supposed to be so tired. 

It's late in the afternoon, and the air is sharp and cold. The sky is a clear, icy blue, a blade of silver plunging so swiftly into the world. No sign of snow. 

I'm driving down the street, my head nodding absently to music, watching nothing, seeing nothing. And then--

"Jude!"

I stop the car. Cate walks over to me. Her hair flies idly around her face, wisps of sunlight. She leans an arm against the top of the window opposite me. Her eyes stare into mine, taking me in, maybe she's wondering if it's really me, maybe she's seen my ghost too many times to be sure like I've seen hers. 

Perhaps I had dreamed too hard. Maybe the fire had burned too bright, and had forged a living form of her. But my thoughts have melted away like the wasting snow in the gutter as I look into her face, slightly flushed from the cold, her locks of hair covering one eye the way it did that night. 

"Hello," I say finally.

Suddenly her face contorts in a way I'd never seen before. For a second I think she's going to laugh. I'm shocked when she looks away, a dark tear running down her face.  

"Do you mind if I..." her voice is broken. 

I open the door. She pulls herself in, and sits there for a moment, breathing shakily. 

"Cate?" I ask.

She looks at me and smiles. "I've missed you," she whispers. 

My breath seems to turn to dust as I look at her. My heart feels like a trembling orb of glass. I want to reach out, touch her, make sure she's real and really saying these words to me. 

"Where have you been, Jude?" she asks. "Hiding away all the time...it's not kind."

"I'm sorry," I say. What else could you say to this broken angel? Whether you hurt her or not, you can't deny she deserves the world. 

But my words freeze, left in the raindrops frozen in time. Strange, I think, how people can pass by outside, as easily and casually as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening, when a world was tearing apart at the seams and being rebuilt in this car with Cate and I. 

"I'll be out in a second..." she says. 

"No, stay." She looks at me, an unbroken code written in her blue eyes. "Please, Cate."

She nods, and I realize I have hurt her. I've hurt her by trying not to hurt her. A rumble erupts in my head, rocks spilling over a crevice. How could I tell her that all I'd ever wanted was to be by her side, always? How could I tell her that after hiding from her so long? 

Instead I take her hand in mine. "I'm not afraid anymore," I say. 

She smiles again, and I would have walked through hell for it. "Darling, you never were."