“Sorry who?”
“Aster…”
“I ask because the Natalie I’m thinking of hasn’t contacted me in over 5 years. So I ask again, who are you?”
“You already know the answer to that…” She was choking up on the other end with the sadness turned to tears.
“5 years Natalie. 5 years without anyway.”
“I’m sorry!”
“You’re sorry? You’re sorry! Are you sorry for the years we wasted together in college? Are you sorry for disappearing without a word? Are you sorry for the years I lost trying to find any trace of you? I searched! I chased! Every damn rumor I heard, every damn photoshoot! And now 5 years of nothing, all you have to say is sorry?”
“I wasn’t ready! You wanted to get married, you wanted to settle down! I was scared!”
“You left without a word! Nothing! I wanted something, anything! I wanted closure! You gave me nothing, you packed up in the dead of night and left. You left...” The anger in his voice had mellowed, the closed wounds rehashed as his eyes began to water.
“I want to talk Aster, I miss you, Love.”
“NO! Don’t you say that to me.” His voice was visceral venom dripping from every word. The lost anger reignited from one phrase.
She went silent, her voice now brought him nothing but heartache. Neither spoke both sobbing over the phone.
Aster’s body sprawled out on the floor, his back against the door.
“Why are you back!” He screamed over the crying, “Why did you reach out again! I was moving on! I was starting a new life! Why are you back!” He begged for some kind of answer, something, anything!
“Aster! I want to try-” He didn’t hear the end of her sobbing words. He ripped the phone away from his ear and slammed it against the tile, a resounding crash echoed in the hallway. He was heavily panting and shaking rocked back and forth.
“No. No. No. I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you. I. CAN’T. HEAR. YOU! This is a dream. A bad bad dream...” The anger was gone, with all that remained was broken sadness.
“I’m alone. I’m alone. I don’t want to be alone. I’m scared. I’m not ready. I’m still weak. I want to be strong. I want to be better. I said I was better, I said I was fine. I’m not. I’m still not…”
“I promised her I could do this. I promised her it was over. I promised them both I was over her. I lied. I always lie! It hurts! I don’t want to be alone anymore.” He reached out for his phone and pressed the power button but got no light. The screen was shattered and showed no signs of life, leaving him alone in the darkness.
Eventually, the phone slid from his weak hold as the waterworks flowed through the night while he rocked himself to sleep.
#
The sun rose and Aster hadn’t moved. He woke up with a migraine but at his recollection of the night led to a relapse of him being unable to stand. He was no longer frantic but he wasn’t yet stable, the cold but hard tile his sole comfort.
He stared out the side lite that went to the door sill. Observing the world and people who walked by. He looked for happiness in them, some kind of smile so he could maybe vicariously be happy through them.
“They are all so sad and alone.” He mumbled, down the city streets everyone was alone. All their eyes locked with their screens and faces locked stoic.
“Might as well be drones,” He grumbled. He watched a smiling couple walk by, the man smiling without concern and the girl beside him laughing without reserve.
“Natalie Holland, can I have this dance?” He told himself and pushed himself off the ground.
“Yes, you may Aster Rosi.” She appeared right before him, her white smile still radiant. Her dainty hand-laid in his coarse palm as he led to her center stage. The spotlight was on them alone, the world lost in black. Her dark eyes stole his sight as his arm wrapped around her waist. A classic ballroom waltz, even without a partner the movements were engraved deep in his subconscious. She was the star, she led him even now. Eyes that bewitched his soul, ink hair that cascaded down her back in an alluring red dress with an enticing slit showing her silky white leg.
He stopped midstep, his face downcast, “Who am I to be your partner?” He ran his tawny hand through his disheveled charcoal hair coating his hand with a sheen of grease.
His brown eyes emptied as he stretched down for his phone but found it to still be in the same condition he put it in. “I don’t like being alone.” He meekly mumbled.
#
In the search to sate his grumbling stomach, he walked over the pantry and obtained a cereal box. He moseyed over to the nearest couch and shoveled in handfuls of dry cheerios. After his outburst everything almost seemed calm, it felt nice. He began to relish the silence, no ringing phone, no political rehearsal, nothing, just himself, and a now-empty box of cereal.
“What will you say if… Then what? No that’s wrong! Should have said it like this.” He did a poor impression of Destiny, nevertheless led to laughter.
“Roll your shoulders back. Push your hair to the left. Change the shirt. Jeans? For a fashion dinner?” The voice was unsurprisingly similar to his Destiny but was likely Natalie.
He returned to his normal self with a sad smile, “It is always something. There is always something they want different. God, I miss high school. Wait, are my yearbooks still in the attic?”
He rolled off the couch and raced down the hall and upstairs. He walked into the first room on the left and pulled a string from the ceiling. Creaking from rusted metal and ancient wood he walked up the ladder.
#
“Here it is!” He exclaimed in joy numerous open cardboard boxes surrounding him. He was covered in sweat and he at some point threw his dress shirt somewhere in the abyss of insulation. He clenched the box to his chest and meticulously maneuvered over the thrown away contaminants of the excess of other boxes.
Once down the ladder, he dropped the box and himself right in front of it. He scanned the spines reaching for the oldest edition.
The door immediately opened up to the 9th-grade class photo, with the ID photos on the next pages. With the surname Rosi, he was in the back, his glossy bangs covering his eyes, his cheeks still having baby fat, and his lips were pushed straight unwilling to smile. Written under his name, “Let’s go to dinner some time.” - Natalie
#
“You’re wearing this out to the dinner?”
“Yes?” He looked himself over, it seemed fine to him. Was a decent dress shirt and a pair of dress pants. It is worth noting they weren’t close to matching.
“No, you’re not. We are going back inside and you are picking something else.”
“I don’t have anything else.”
“Then we are going shopping and buying you a suit!” Her eyes lit up instantly, missing dinner didn’t matter; she much preferred this.
“The deep blue looks amazing!” She squealed and rushed over with a pink tie in hand. “Change the tie to this one! Oh and put back on the maroon shirt!”
“Which one?”
“Maroon!”
“Which one is maroon!”
“Come here!” She grabbed him by the collar and pulled him back into the dressing room. “This one, now take off the sky blue and put this on.” She sat herself down on a shelf.
“Aren’t you going to go out there?”
“It’s just a shirt,”
He sighed, his face turned a deep carmine. He removed the jacket and undid just enough buttons to pull the shirt over his head. His figure was nothing to be embarrassed about for his age, he wasn’t in bodybuilder shape but there was a faint show of abs.
“Perfect!” A deep blue suit matched with a pink tie and maroon shirt. “Now get! Let me find a matching dress!” She pushed him out of the stall and he took the place where she previously sat.
The dinner date turned into clothes modeling, a haircut, getting Aster a gym membership. He loved every moment of it.
#
He was broken away from the memory by the sound of the door downstairs opening. “Aster you home!” It sounded like Serena had come to check up on him after he hadn’t written anything all day.
“Upstairs Serena!” He shouted back.
“Destiny asked me to stop by, apparently she has been trying to reach you all day…” Once she walked by the doorway and saw the box of yearbooks at his feet the color left her face.
“Serena?” He stood up concerned.
“You said you threw those away!” She screeched.
“I couldn’t…” He admitted.
“Aster! Stop clinging to the memory of the past! She is gone.” She pushed passed him and slammed the book shut and tossed it into the cardboard container.
“She’s back…”
“I’m sorry what?”
“She’s back….”
“What do you mean...she is back?”
“She called me last night and said she wanted to talk.”
“Give me your damn phone! Right fucking now. I’m blocking her and we are throwing all these books in the trash.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You think I give a shit? 5 years! She has been gone for 5 years! We went over this years ago! We agreed on these years ago! You agreed to throw it all away, you promised you were over her!”
“I can’t!”
“I don’t care! You may not remember the pit you locked yourself in, you may not remember the suffering you went through. I do! I remember every second of it! As your friend, I can not let you go through that again!” She stormed out of the room with the box in her clutch.
“Serena! We can talk this over! I’m better now.”
“Where is your phone then? Show me that you blocked her.”
“Well, this is awkward.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out what remained of his phone.
“Aster why is your phone shattered?”
“I might have maybe smashed it on the ground last night.”
“And you are trying to tell me you are better?”
“I didn’t smash my face on the ground.”
“That isn’t a good bar to go off of!”
“But I’m better, so if you could just leave the high school memories here that would be great!”
“Nope!”
He walked over to her and pulled at the box, neither Aster nor Serena won the tug of war as the box tore in half the books gone all over the floor.
“Aster! This needs to stop....”
