The Cloud (a short story) - Part 1

There it is again.  That dark cloud moving across her face.  It’s the third time he’s noticed it this weekend.  Fleeting, like the shadow of a harried cumulus on a windy day.  Not quite the reaction he expected after what he had just pronounced.

“God, I love you.  I can’t tell you what it means to me to be here with you, right now, in this moment.”

Granted, he’d spoken words to that effect many times before, so they were not new to her.  But they had generally provoked a very different result, a kind of softening of her demeanour and an almost shy, slightly child-like smile, which never failed to make his heart burst with emotion.

“I love you too, darling,” she responded, with a warmth that had been only slightly delayed by that passing umbra.

He believed her, of course.  There could be no doubting her feelings for him.  He knew her well enough to know that she would never say something she didn’t mean.  At the beginning of their relationship, it had taken her months to say it.  He, on the other hand, had told her on their first night together.

“I love you.”

“You can’t possibly mean that.” She scoffed.

“But I do.”

“That’s just the rush of endorphins brought on by sex.”

“No, no it isn’t.  I know what I’m feeling, and I love you.  I’ll love you in the morning too.  And the day after that.  And the one after that.”

She looked at him across her pillow with a somewhat annoyed countenance.  

“Men are always throwing that word around without really understanding what it means.”

He didn’t insist. He wasn’t offended by her words, he understood that it could be hard for someone in her position to let herself go to emotion.  

It hurt him, sometimes, how much he loved this woman.  For the last two years he has lived in fear that she would end it at any moment.  He wouldn’t blame her if she did, but the sheer thought of it tore him apart.

Five months.  That’s how long it had taken her to say, “I love you,” back to him.  He hadn’t stopped saying it to her despite her reticence.  She was so completely his whenever they were together that he had decided he didn’t actually need her to say it.  Just having her was more than he could have dreamed of.

She’d said it over the phone when she finally did.  Most of their relationship was over the phone, so it wasn’t surprising.  How he had wished to be standing in front of her when she’d said it, though, to see the light in her eyes, the look on her face.  Nothing in the world meant more to him than knowing she loved him too.  

She’d asked him, then.

“What does it mean, to be loved in return?  Why does it matter so much?”

“Well,” he’d said, after some thought, “I guess it’s about vulnerability.  If love is one-sided, then the person who loves is more vulnerable than the person who doesn’t.  When love is reciprocated, there is no imbalance.”

She was silent for a while.  Through the earpiece he could hear her light breathing and wondered, as he often does, what she was thinking.  But he waited.  He’d learnt that patience was the key with her.

Finally she said.

“Not in this case.”

There was no rancour in her voice, nor sarcasm or cynicism.  Just a kind of defeat.

It didn’t matter. She loved him. And it was clear in every moment they spent together, in every shared thought, every conversation. He had admired how resolute she’d been in keeping her defences up, but he was relieved to finally see them crumble.

…to be continued…