You tell me it will be okay. You look at me like you always do with your beautiful blue green eyes but this time there is sympathy in them. Why is there sympathy in your eyes when there should be sympathy in mine? I don’t want it to but the tear squeezes itself out of my eye and makes a dark track down my face. He takes it away with a gentle kiss, his lips pressing right below my cheekbone.
“It’ll be okay,” he says in a soothing voice, “it will all be fine I promise.” Why didn’t you keep your promise?
**
A year ago, last April, we were just friends. Best friends to say the least. Everyone treated us like siblings, we were always together. Our parents always made enough for four even though we were both only children. Everything was perfect. Or so I thought. Then it got more perfect. On April 10th 2009, he must have read my mind, and he finally told me that he liked me more than a friend. My heart soared above the clouds and I felt like that was my lucky day. I was 17 years old and the guy of my dreams who just so happened to be my best friend had just told me how much he really liked me. I, of course, told him that I returned those feelings. He asked me to go to dinner with him and not just at his parent’s house anymore. He asked me to a really fancy restaurant.
He picked me up at my house in his old Mustang that we fixed together as one of our many projects that we did. We just finished it last year. It was the second time I had ever seen him in a suit. The first was at his Aunt’s funeral. She had lived with them and was like his older sister. It was a car accident. A drunk driver had gone through a red light and she was on the receiving end of the blunt impact. This time though, Michael’s face glowed with joy, as my smooth silky dress that stopped right before my knees pressed against my skin and felt like ocean water caressing me gently when I sat down in his car. He didn’t say anything but you could tell what he was thinking by the way his fingers lovingly touched mine as he drove to the restaurant. The candles illuminated us both and I looked admiringly at him.
“You look so handsome,” I said.
“Nothing compared to you,” was his reply. After we were done eating he took me out to the pier and we shared our first kiss. He lifted my chin up with his finger. It felt like a feather brushing my head up towards him and he gently tilted his head downwards toward me and he kissed me. Afterwards we sat looking as the waves washed onto shore and I rested my head gently on his sweet smelling shoulder. He smelled like the sea, being the surfer he was. His handsome dark hair fell gently over his forehead as he whispered for the first time,
“I love you.” It was way different from the texts we had shared saying luv ya, or 143. That was more like best friend or brother sister love but this time, he had actually said it. I repeated the short but so meaningful sentence and then nestled myself even closer to his sweet smelling body.
The next few months were heaven on earth. We had finally found each other, we were soul mates. I found a quote while I was reading a book. It said ‘at one time people were made with four arms, legs, eyes, and ears. Zeus was afraid that these beings were too powerful, so he split them in half making humans. It’s called a soul mate when you find that other half of yourself.’ I had smiled and tugged on his ear before kissing it and then his forehead and then settling on his lips.
Soon we had been formally dating for six months. The time had flown by so quickly. Michael was celebrating his first month of being at college and oh how I missed him. Luckily Florida State University was only four hours away so he visited every weekend but it didn’t seem right, not seeing him every day. Our plan was for me to join him as soon as the last day of my senior year was over. I was content with that plan. Then we might never be apart again.
He came for a surprise visit to celebrate our one year anniversary. We spent the whole weekend together never separating except for when he had to go home which often wasn’t until 1 or 2 in the morning. He would return soon after 9 a.m. One of those precious two nights he was here he took me to the same restaurant and we ate dinner. He took me to the pier again. This time he got down on one knee.
“Will you marry me, Abigail Marie Johnson?”
“Yes!” I said not even hesitating, but Michael was too gentlemanly for that.
“We will wait until you are done with college but then we will get married,” he said earnestly. I wondered how long he’d thought about this. Suddenly my throat closed and I couldn’t speak. All I could do was nod because I was so unbearably happy. The tears rolled down my cheeks as I smiled. I went home and showed my parents. They happy cried too.
**
You didn’t keep your promise. I thought as I looked at the gravestone that said Michael Anthony Jameson. He had held on to celebrate our fourth anniversary and then the cancer had taken him. I couldn’t be mad at him though he meant too much to me.
“I love you.” I whispered for the final time as I laid a white rose on his freshly dug grave.