Fanfare Read Online Free Page B

stranger.
    “I’m not staying here tonight. When I come back on Sunday, you won’t be here. Take whatever you think is yours.”
    His eyes narrowed as he watched my world unravel with the gaze of a detached observer. “Don’t worry. You’ll find someone else. You’re very easy to like.” This was the moment in my recurring nightmare where I really wished I had held a sharp object in my hands.
    He turned around quickly and walked down the shadowy hallway towards the front door. I forced my feet to stay glued to the carpet. Dramatic visions of me sprinting after him into the darkness and collapsing on my knees in the wet grass flew to mind.
    Please, Ryan! Don’t do this to me! Don’t destroy us!
    No. Never. He could not take my pride from me too.
    The room grew colder, as though he had taken all the warmth away with him. Alone in my anguish, I fell to the floor and dug my nails into the carpet to prevent them from clawing at my skin. Cold. Dark. Suffocating. The vision blurred. . . .
    I woke in the darkness the same way I always did: with a gasp. The tightness in my throat and pain in my cheeks were now predictable. I tried in vain to stop the vicious cycle from completing yet another circuit as the hot, stinging tears coursed soundlessly down my face. I couldn’t prevent them. If I did, the pain would remain and grow until it consumed me. I lay still in my bed and breathed deeply to silence the rapid thud of my pounding heart. Sometimes I wondered if my subconscious recreated this scene to remind me that my heart still worked. If it did, my subconscious was seriously fucked up.
    I silently moved aside the sheets and padded through the darkness to my bathroom. The cold water was soothing on my cheeks and neck. I turned on the light and stared at my reflection. I had a small face with dark brown eyes rimmed in thick lashes that stood in contrast to the lighter bronze tone of my skin. My mahogany-colored hair hung past my shoulders. I was pretty—nothing to write home about, but definitely not a troll. This was one of the trite things I said to myself from time to time in an attempt to move past the pain of reliving my own personal anguish . . . a mini-therapy session with me, myself, and I.
    I bit my lower lip as I continued to peruse my swollen face and red eyes. This was going to be one of those nights. Maybe this recent bout of subconscious self-flagellation was brought on by my conversation with Tom. I was unusually happy those few moments on the phone with him; it reminded me of the good times in my relationship with Ryan when we would stay on the phone until sanity left us, and we laughed together at nothing.
    Taking a deep breath, I walked over to my desk and pulled out my cat-o’-nine-tails. The innocuous box shook in my hands as I lifted the lid. My pain returned, renewed. The engagement ring glittered in the shadows as the light from the bathroom caught its faceted prisms. I was unable to toss it, just like I kept the letters he had written to me when he was deployed in Afghanistan. The pictures and other mementos had been burned or thrown away not long after it happened. I had agreed to do that mostly for Hana. She needed that therapy since I refused to let her even speak to Ryan for fear I would lose my best friend to a prison ward.
    I lifted the sparkling lie from the box and put it on. It still burned my skin, but it wasn’t self-flagellation if you didn’t feel pain. Gita would probably beat me if she knew what I was doing. Hana would just go to the bathroom and cry. I stood there and tried to summon a semblance of the happiness I had felt when the lie rested on my finger in earnest. A time when not even the birds could touch me as I flew through the air on a high of self-content: the best drug in the world.
    It had become harder and harder to retrieve those sentiments. This was what everyone meant when they said “Time heals all things.” I had personally amended that statement in my mind. Now it