By and By

 

“I can see the whole world from up here,” I said between breaths as I gazed upon the view from the top of the straw yellow hill that stood tall at the edge of town.

“I can see the future from here,” he whispered into my ear, his breath grazing the spot on my neck that always caused goosebumps to rise down one side of my body and back up the other.

“Oh yeah, and what does that look like?” I turned back, away from the edge, and met his gaze. His brown eyes were a cliché, alluring and playful.

He grinned, and he placed his hands on my shoulders and gently turned me back around, before pulling me back into his embrace. “There,” he said, raising one arm away from my waist and pointing out across the valley. I followed his finger, but saw nothing in particular, just the endless rows of suburban housing grid, repeating itself across the valley before stopping abruptly against the hills on the far side.

“Where?”

“You don’t see it? It’s the English countryside, and across those green fields is our stone cottage. You are inside, still asleep.”

“Oh,” I replied, “but why aren’t you sleeping next to me?”

“Because our daughter woke up early, but I thought I would let you sleep, so I took her out to feed the horses.”

“We have horses?” I turned back to face him again.

“Of course,” he smiled, and he pulled me to him again.

As I stared at his face, I could almost feel his lips pressed against mine, the way they had on that hill top twenty years ago. For so long those eyes, the ones I now saw staring back at me from my computer screen, had only existed in my memory, but now here they were again, though now they were framed with the creases of the time that has passed.

I scrolled down to the “view profile” button. I clicked it and silently wished that he wasn’t one of those that hid everything from those not on his friends list. A second later the screen refreshed, and I wanted to take back my wish.  

There on the screen in front of me was exactly what I did not need to know. His relationship status, married. His current home, Leicester, UK. Children, one. The life he had dreamed about with me, he was now living, with somebody else.

A voice broke my trance, “what’s wrong honey?”

I closed the incognito tab, “nothing.”

“You sure? You looked like you were about to cry.”

“Just allergies,” I replied as I shut the laptop and set it on the table, “hey, how about we go to dinner tonight, perhaps that new pub that just opened? I have a sudden craving for fish and chip