C. JoyBell C.
Separate Dreams
The following day I met Ember for our usual lunch date and asked her a question that had been troubling me for some time―I wanted to know if she ever married in that previous life?
"Why do you ask?" she replied, rather defensively, I thought.
"Well, it's a natural enough question," I parried, "I mean, you told me how devastated you were when I went away to Spain and never came back but never told me what you did during that time."
"Does it matter?"
I threw up my hands in frustration, "Well, it does now since you seem to be avoiding answering it."
"Okay, I never married, Blake. I did what I thought I'd never do―wait for a man to come back to me. Of course, you didn't."
I was shocked.
"Wait a minute, you're telling me you didn't marry hoping I'd return?"
"Don't pat yourself on the back, Guy―I took other lovers. I said I didn't marry―I didn't say I took a vow of chastity."
My brow was furrowed as I tried to piece together our fractured history.
"And you had no idea what happened to me?"
"That's right. I had too much pride to come after you. I wasn't exactly holding a torch for you the rest of my life."
"So, you never heard from me again?"
She nodded. "Yeah, you deserted me. I thought we had something, but I was plainly mistaken."
I stared out the window at a snow squall that had suddenly sprung up outside. The madly whirling flakes mirrored the chaotic pattern of thoughts inside me.
I turned back to face her. "So, help me out here―I thought the reason you sought me out was because I was the man of your dreams."
"You were the man in my dreams, Pal. Let's put it this way―I was curious. We had a thing going once―it didn't work out. But hey, twice in a lifetime could be a charm. If not, it'd just have to be an affair."
I was looking for answers but didn't expect a paradigm shift in the way I viewed our past life.
"Sounds like you've had a lot of time to mull over our previous existence and it's not all wine and roses."
"I never lied to you. I told you exactly what happened."
I shook my head trying to remove cobwebs blurring view of her.
"I saw you as the wronged woman and hated the way I was back then."
"And you were right to see things that way, but try living a lifetime having your dreams shattered and see if it doesn't harden you. Yeah, I'm jaded. I know you were trying hard to turn me into an alabaster saint―well, I ain't. I've got no high expectations, but I wanted you then and still want you now. If not marriage, I'll be your mistress."
She was definitely not the woman I thought she was. She was wronged, I'll grant her that. But the years were not kind to her in that previous life. She learned to adapt, but only by becoming hard. I guess I had stained glass windows inside me I never broke, even though I thought I had.
"This won't work with us, " I sighed.
She looked genuinely sad. "I should have known we'd end up here. I guess I got lost in those dreams and believed it might work this time."
I stood up. "You can't say we didn't try."
"What about Lise and helping her?" she asked.
I shook my head. "Right now, I can't even help myself. I hope you find someone you can trust, Ember. You don't deserve what happened to you, but I don't want to repeat the past again and just end up hurting us both."
I walked out into the dizzying snow, into the stuttering clarity of the sun trying to break through spiral gusts...
And left behind a broken dream, a shattered image of us.
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