Serenading Heartbreak

by Ella Fields

He arrived wrapped in warning, of which I’d never heed. Every shade of gray, sunshine and rain-drenched days. A love that visited and never stayed. Again and again and again.

Hearts are such unpredictable things, you can never control to whom they might sing.

Sometime later, Everett emerged with something I hadn’t seen since meeting him on our drive. Something so beautiful, it would continue to haunt me years later no matter what I did to erase it. A smile.

Someone or something was the reason he was growing into a cold young man with an extra-large chip on his shoulder.

He looked tired, the kind of tired that weighed down the spirit as well as the shoulders.

“And I just want to be around flowers all day, keep things minimal to better experience what comes. How’s that for goals?”

“It’s a goal, and a unique one at that. Doesn’t matter what it is. If it’s important to you and it’s what you want, don’t talk it down.”

“I’m not afraid of the dark. Not at all. But I like what something bright can do to the dark, so they stay.”

“You’re a flower bound to suffocate without sunshine, fresh air, and tasty nutrients.”

“You’re beautiful, but when you smile, you’re a portrait of starlit dreams.”

“You’re worthy. You just haven’t figured that out yet.”

Gradually, he’d snuck inside me, imbedding and making a home for himself beneath my flesh and bone. He was a crescendo, an ever-increasing note, and there was no end in sight.

He needed this opportunity to get out and make a better life for himself. And I had to wonder if that was what love was? Did loving someone grant you the ability to smother your own desperation long enough to see theirs? To want to aid in setting them free from their demons within?

“You know staying would continue to kill me slowly.”

In a world filled with thorns and poisonous flowers, somehow, I was lucky enough to find you. My clover.

“I’m tired of goodbyes, Ever.” “I need all your goodbyes and every hello. Don’t fucking deprive me of you.”

I won’t be your second choice because some asshole couldn’t make you his first.”

“He lost the only person who loved him unconditionally.”

“If it doesn’t feel good, you let it go, and you find something that does.”

Then he was kissing me. Not the chaste, flirtatious kisses we’d planted on one another’s lips or cheeks before, but a breath-stealing, soul-igniting, tasting the tip of forever kind of kiss.

“Do you think you can fall for two different men, I mean really fall for them, and love them both at the same time?”

“Maybe, with time, it’ll fade. One love becomes louder than the other.”

“You deserve to be someone’s entire world. Their first and only choice.”

“I’m not here to mess shit up for you. I swear. I’m here because I fucking love you. I’ve loved you for years, and there’s nowhere else I want to be.”

But once upon a times were for dreams, and he was only capable of nightmares.

“We’re still young and stupid, and we’re bound to make more mistakes, but I’m tired of making the same ones. If you’ll believe nothing else I say, then at least believe that.”

Some people were stronger on their own. Some people were stronger due to the people they surrounded themselves with.

I’d always known Everett was capable of the former, but all along, I’d also known deep down, I longed to be beside him when he flourished. Though to deserve that, I’d had to learn to accept him at his worst. I wanted to deserve him the way he so desperately fought to deserve me, and that was something I would never lose sight of again.

Everett Taylor had taught me many things during this roller coaster love of ours, the most prevalent of all being courage. When things get hard, you don’t run away, and you don’t give up. You plant two feet into the ground, remember the root...

Souls were bound to knit to others. And where Everett was concerned, mine had stitched to his a long time ago.

We were never supposed to make something out of moments. We were always meant to build something out of lifetimes.