It starts at the beginning: Yesterday

The Bill Withers track resonated within him as it sang his feelings from the speakers. He sat in front of the computer screen staring at the white page of the e mail to be composed. The cursor blinking at the end of “I’m so sorry...” He hadn’t got any further than that. He’d tried several sentences thereafter but backspaced them out. Nothing sounded right. Nothing could convey how he felt and nothing could ever make her understand.

Yesterday, he’d watched her standing at the old black doors. She’d been early but he was earlier, stationed from afar. Waiting. He’d known it was her straight away, before she’d even reached the place and stood still, trying not to look too nervous whilst fiddling with her hair and smoothing her dress. Such a pretty dress, just like he’d asked her to wear. But that was yesterday.

His brother had given him a lift into the city to meet her, thrilled that he was going on a date with someone and noticing the change Katy had made in him. A reason to smile again. Katy had given him so much joy over the last few months. More than he’d ever felt in his lifetime. There was just...something about her. Not just the way they clicked or how she read his mind or that they had the same sense of humour, there was something more. An invisible connection that can only be felt by the two it belongs to. He imagined it was akin to being filled with the holy spirit; one of those once in a lifetime feelings. An energy, a drug, a love that surpasses the normal notion of what love is. Bigger than space. The other things hadn’t mattered like how you looked or what you did because those things didn’t matter. They were transient and did not define a person. Katy and he had grown and entwined on a much deeper, more fulfilling level from the inside out. The kind of connection he’d only ever dreamt of and believed he’d never find and when he had, he was terrified of losing it. But that was yesterday. Now, as he sat staring at the screen where she and he had once lived, terror survived like a giant, ugly beast because she was lost to him by his own hand.

See, he hadn’t told Katy everything. He hadn’t wanted to spoil what they had and didn’t want her to reject him. And whilst he believed she wouldn’t there was always something holding him back. Fear from past experience. Trusting someone to continue loving you without attaching society’s labels, that once stuck on you, were all that people could see. He wanted her to always feel like she did now and hold on to that above all else. There was already enough judgement in life. Despite all that, he’d decided that he just had to see her and take a chance. He’d instigated the meet and told her it was time because there was going to have to be a time, eventually; a physical manifestation necessary for their evolvement.

He’d asked his brother to stop at the shop on the way in where he’d purchased a single pink rose. He’d written on a label he’d made earlier- “Because beauty deserves company.” and tied it round the stem. As he had watched her standing there he could have cried at how perfect she was. For him. Just like the angel that wrote from behind the screen. But it didn’t matter how much love he felt because the panic and stress began to overwhelm him. The flower shook in his hands and his throat threatened to strangle him from the inside out. His lungs squeezing in, refusing breath. Dancing lights before his eyes and drumming in his ears. He tried to calm himself using the techniques that had been taught to him but it wouldn’t work. Every time he looked across the square at her the doubts fornicated and bred, feeding him with negativity and bleeding unworthiness into his brain. “She can’t love you.” The judge inside him berating and beating down it’s hammer. Verdict: Pointless. Fear, the victor.

He’d waited as the sun sank into the sky and his angel disappeared into the shadows. The chill of the evening nothing compared to icy pain destroying his soul as he’d watched her vanish forever. Just like the line on the computer screen, so weak and insubstantial, now blurring in front of him as the tears filled his eyes. He lowered his hand from the keyboard and released the break on his his wheelchair, rolling away into the darkness of his bedroom.