365
I can’t get my head around it I keep feeling smaller and smaller I need my girl I need my girl
One year.
Three hundred and sixty five days. A series of letters that were kept only out of laziness, initially, but then in memoriam. A bottle of Scotch, untouched. The pillow her head once lay. One year. Three hundred and sixty five days.
Memories.
It's funny how they don't go away. The days went on, the ink faded, the scotch collected dust, and her scent dissipated. Henry Arnold's memory, however, was sharp as ever. It was unusual, too, considering how hard he tried to drink it blank. If he didn't remember so clearly how it felt to have her hold him, if her laugh no longer rang in his ears, if her taste didn't linger on his tongue -- maybe then he could push forward.
There wasn't ever any doubt in his mind, but Henry now understood just how unforgettable Ainsley Shafiq truly was. It was present in his every day, but this especially, the three hundred and sixty fifth day without, as he lay entirely useless and completely sloshed, his vision blurring. It didn’t stop him from studying the paper again, the letter he was thankful he never got around to throwing out. It was one in a series of letters that he forgot to do away with back in their time, ones he had found strewn beneath his bed or otherwise collecting a ring from its use as a coaster, sloshed with tequila or beer. Letters that were never treated well because Henry Arnold was not a sentimental being and did not save letters.
These were no longer ordinary letters.
I’m having dinner with my parents tomorrow, and I think you ought to come over to mine when I get back. –A.H. Shafiq
The parchment sat crumpled and worn on the table, the words and handwriting etched into his memory. He couldn’t recall his response. He certainly didn’t say no, but what precisely did he say? Was he crude, kind, cryptic, snarky? Henry racked his brain in an attempt to remember but eventually gave up, as he always did when the thought crossed his mind. He wondered where his letter had ended up, whatever he said. Did Bridget get it and read it? Had she set it in her room like things were normal? It didn’t matter, one way or another. There was no tomorrow, and there was no getting back.
He could hear her voice. In his head, the words in her last letter to him, running over and over on loop like a broken record, jumping from the end right back to the same spot. Never advancing, never changing. It was droning, enough to give him a headache. That might’ve been the tequila, though.
He took another swig, anyway.
There was never going to be another. Henry knew that within a day of being without her. No one could replace her. Ainsley got under his skin in a way that no woman ever would manage to do again. Maybe they were defenses being put up, maybe it was his fault for it. Henry didn’t care. If he were being honest with himself, which he decided was allowed after nearly an entire bottle of tequila on an empty stomach, he didn’t want to let anyone in again. It wasn’t because he was afraid of being hurt, of losing someone again. That sort of thing wasn’t his worry. Simply, Henry knew in the deepest parts of himself that she was tailor made to fit with him. She accepted the parts of him that were difficult, and challenged the parts that were underdeveloped; Ainsley kept him on his toes and made his mind bright; she encouraged him and supported him.
No one would do that for him anymore, and he didn’t want anyone to try. He wondered whether he took that for granted – those things he couldn’t get from just any shag on any night. Had he treated her well? He didn’t realize how much she meant to him when she was here. Henry knew that.
He also knew she deserved someone more than him – and that’s why he had strived to better himself. It was because of Ainsley that he wanted to connect with his family, to rediscover passion in his life. He didn’t admit it to anyone but himself, but it wasn’t long after the first time he fucked her that he stopped taking other girls home. Even his body knew, his hormones, that Ainsley was different.
He went for another swig, but the bottle was empty. “Fuck,” he muttered and his voice crackled because it hadn’t been used all day. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
And just like that, the memories blinded him. The time she was drunk in her office and he stopped on by; the first time they shagged at some stuck-up wedding; the first time she brought him to her flat; shagging on the roof shortly after; taking her flying; thinking firstly of her after his surgery. All of it, rushing at him in one wave that made his stomach clench and his jaw quiver. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair he should remember all of these things in their entirety.
He saw her writing and heard her voice; he felt her breath every place it ever passed across his skin and he could feel her body underneath his fingertips; he could taste her, smell her, remember how her lips felt by his ear.
His cheeks were warm and marked with tears and he wasn’t sure when they started, only that they wouldn’t stop. He slammed a fist against the tabletop, rattling the empty bottle there as a final drip sunk off its side, mocking him, making light of his tears, and he flung a hand against it until it shattered on the wall making an explosion of glass that bounced everywhere along the ground and he didn’t care that he walked across it and bits got stuck in his heel and between his toes because he wanted to feel it, he wanted to feel something except the overwhelming love that wouldn’t go away.
People who said it got easier with time were fucking liars, and Henry knew it. Dirty, filthy liars. One, two, three hundred and sixty five days later. Seven letters. One bottle of scotch. Endless memories still as bright as the first day they happened.
