“You’ve caused me so much pain, yet the love I feel for you blinds me of it!”

Terrance’s words rang through the midsummer air.

“I’m sorry,” Fiona shook her head gently. Under the moonlight, she resembled a goddess, feathery strands of blond hair kissing her skin.

“I yearn for someone else, my dear.”

Those words speared Terrance straight through.

Fiona shut her window, silk curtains obscuring her. And suddenly, his heart felt like a worn, exhausted thing.

He was tired.

Terrance leaped down from where he had stood on the flower-speckled balcony of Fiona’s manor. All the clever, romantic words he’d mustered in his mind suddenly faded to fine dust, his bluster and bravado gone.

It wasn’t until he was slowly trecking down the alleyway that he allowed every ounce of pain and misery he felt from Fiona flood through.

All the mistreatment. All the manipulation. The countless days he’d found her in the bed of another man only for her to remark it as a misunderstanding. Her fabricated confusion when he confronted her about his feelings.

Terrance believed his love, above all else, would be able to let Fiona hang on to him. He thought of it as a bandage to every wound she had blown.

He watched wearily as a young man holding a messy bouquet of wild roses climbed up the same balcony he’d just abandoned. Fiona opened her window, a vibrant smile gracing her face. The two shared a lighthearted kiss that sent Terrance into a haze of sorrow.

_Why can she not love me the same? _His mind wondered hopelessly. A tear slid silently down his cheek. _Have I not done enough? _

__

And that night, he was left with nothing but an empty bottle of wine in his bag and a tired heart.