There was a tight press molding the fleshy palm of the enraging yet, smaller frame. Her scolding gaze was narrow, blemished with hot tears as they smudged the eyeliner that was meticulously drawn at her waterline. Tense muscles felt fueled with fire, adrenaline coursing her veins as her state of disbelief swarmed her thoughts into a scrambled and unintelligible mess.

“I’ve never met anyone like you before!”

“You should be grateful for that.”

A darker, firm husky voice echoed through her tunnels of sound. Puncturing her ear bass and reaping poison into her.

He stood adjacent to her, the frown lined along his lips punctuating his statement with an emphasized confession of truth.

Anger toiled through the pair, drowning into an abyss that was left with limitless wonder. And as each aggravating second slipped forwards into time, so did the footsteps that began to lead the man to the front door.

His arms swayed with the urgency for him to leave, to vanish like a ghost and allow the thin air of his absence finish his argument for him. It was what his own conflicting thoughts settled on whenever the road got rocky, when his mind overstimulated and reduced him into a hollow silhouette meant to slowly peel away from his romantic encounters.

Because that’s all they were, encounters. And this particular cross of fates left him more conflicted than anything he’s experienced prior.

As calloused digits reached for the cold, smooth metal of the door knob to open and allow for his twisted sense of freedom, a faint broken voice called for his name.

“William, don’t leave.”

His steps halted, a moment involuntary to himself. It was a rare occurence, his own gut overstepping his desperate desire to leave his issues in the dusk. To allow them to marinate alone.

“Tell me why I should be grateful.”

It was as if his demeanor shifted within himself, the softness of the statement pleading for a form of closure before his journey with the naive being ended. Allowing the comma in their journey together to transition into a period.

“Evelyn, sweetheart,” He started, his expression now soft with the genuine tone he carried. His back turned, leading him back to the broken down woman that’s regressed into the little girl that deeply despised abandonment. The girl that he saw within her round innocent gaze, glazed with love that was excessively pouring through her.

His steps were calculated, a slow approach that allowed her mind to experience visually, the push and pull dance they’ve choreographed unintentionally.

As William finally approached her, she steadily adjusted her gaze to his own. Lifting her pupils as they expanded to allow the beautiful sight of the illusive man.

Turmoil pursed on, the acceptance of the palmed cup over her cheek radiating a familiar heat that her body craves. And as his thumb slowly craned her lip back he spread a grin that lifted the frustration he previously had.

“Because your favorite cup is in it’s usual drawer, you just misplaced it and allowed your short term memory to settle on blaming me.”