Letting him in, again

A short story on the pain of letting your first love just, exist

She presented herself as a challenge to him. She was closed off, and he eyed up the task of opening her up - revealing her thoughts, her demons, her secret. As he worked his way closer to the tightly wound knot that was her heart, he began to realise the darkness that lay within; a lifetime of repressed emotions.

He made every effort to get to know her better, trialling small talk that never worked, edging closer to her side by the day. She revealed curved smirks when he was not looking, yet one fateful day, he caught it.

He exclaimed like a pirate that found his X that marked the spot; he had cracked her code.

When she reciprocated the fever of love, he began to feel insecure. He did not face a challenge anymore, instead, a proposal. A proposal of something greater than anything he had known before, love.

She noticed his withdrawn intentions, how he did not edge so close anymore. He felt colder to the touch, he seemed more interested in another mystery; her fever was not enough for him anymore. She pressed, she pressed until he begged her to stop the pressure - he left.

Once again, her vault was locked.

As the distance grew between them, the girl watched her skin turn colder around the idea of affection, her heart grow weary at the thought of being held. But, he unlocked new chests, his quest for mysteries to solve continued - as if in search of his prize, he placed his trust in many other projects.

They watched him leave once they got fixed, too.

Ice cold to love, a heart frozen over from the warm ache she once knew, she began to think about him again - in fact, no other love ever crossed her mind.

But he did not think the same. His heart had skipped through many other meadows, sniffed many other flowers of love. He had trodden through the grass of heartbreak on more than one occasion - loss did not seem to phase him.

Deep down, he still thought of her, his first love. His first mystery, the deep vessel he burned to solve, he longed to uncover. She never knew his desire.

As he grew, and she did too, he recalled the time they spent together - the light they had, that burned too bright, too quick. Merely a star in the plentiful sky, he struggled to place how this feeling would ever return.

As he shuts his eyes at night, he watches that smirk. The corners of her mouth upturning, the glimmer in her eyes when he recalls something she once said, the curl in her toes when he made her laugh. He could not ever let her go.

She listened as his laugh faded from her memory, and the sound of his voice was a forgotten symphony. She looked at herself in the mirror, and imagined a life of walking along that same road, the one he lived on. He could not plague her anymore, she could not ever let him back in.

So he watches his child grow up, whilst she watches time pass by. They may never cross paths, they may never know each other again. But for one second, she imagines maybe they will.

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