Cyclamen (Game Over)

Cyclamen - Game Over

Louisa sat, now alone, waves of grief washing over her as Jonathon left, slamming the door to the café as he walked away for the last time. Her hands curled around her warm coffee mug, as she replayed their last conversation over and over again in her mind.

It was over: She had won.

She closed her eyes, rubbing them with her hands, suddenly exhausted. She saw his face behind her eyelids, no matter how hard she tried to shake it.

He did this, every time he left, every time she said something wrong, every time he did something so unforgivable that she said he had to go: he took her heart with him.
And every time he came back, she felt healed. The feeling was mutual, she had seen his heart break and freeze over, in tandem with hers, as they said horribly brief goodbye.

It was a vicious circle, the pattern in which they had lived their lives. He lied, she cheated, and somehow she always believed that all the pain was worth it for the brief weeks or months they would have in the middle, where they’d be recklessly, wonderfully happy.

But no more. The circle was broken. She herself had broken it, with no more than a few choice words, a diamond ring, and a bright smile. It had been an understanding, an unspoken agreement between them that in the end, when all was said and done, they would end up together. At some point they would stop playing the games of the young, and settle into the stability of middle age and beyond. Together.

She’d broken that deal, and she’d given up her seat on their roundabout. She was sick of waiting for him to calm down, and tired of crying in the middle of the night. She’d endured it for years, thrived off it for as long as she could remember, her sanity kept going by the hope that one day it would resolve itself. But now she’d finally grown up. She’d taken the initiative, she’d ended it, futilely believing that maybe, when he was gone, the pain would leave with him.

She looked down at her hands where they still encircled the mug. The only warmth in the world that still seemed to touch her was the warm coffee in its striped cup, cradled between her ice cold hands. A white-gold, diamond ring glinted on her forefinger, as icy and frozen as the rest of her. For a moment, she hated the beautiful stone, as it sparkled on her finger. Because of this small, precious thing, she had lost something which now seemed infinitely more valuable.

She took a deep breath, and straightened her spine. Louisa Carmichael was never one to bow down and cry. She rubbed the few, final tears from her eyes. She had done it. Finally, she had had her victory over the boy who had taunted and tainted her life since she was fifteen. He was gone, and she had made sure that he could never come back. This was it, this was the way that she had planned for it to go.

“I am young,” she whispered to herself “I am free, I am engaged to a wonderful man. And everything is going to be perfect.”

So why did it feel like everything had just fallen apart?