He loved her so much.
The first time he had seen her, he was looking up from Jack Ketchum’s Off Season, to throw a careless ‘thanks’ at the hand that was pouring his coffee, setting down his turkey burger. She was sitting on the next table immersed in a book whose title he could not see because of the angle she held her it at. Her long red hair was rolled in a careless bun at the nape of her smooth creamy neck and her green shirt off set her freckled tanned skin. Behind the glasses was a pair of lowered eyes that frequently looked up at the cup she was taking the occasional sip out of. Her fingers were long, topped by nails that looked like they were taken care of, but not pampered. Next to the cup lay a large muffin that she had yet to take a bite out of. He took a large, absent minded bite out of his burger, he could have looked at her forever, had it not been for the rapid pounding in his chest, the kind of feeling you get when your heart is either about to break or explode. He was in love and he didn’t know it.
As he rose from his seat, he stole a quick glance at the mirrored walls of the quaint cafe to make sure his hair was behaving itself. He left the cafe with a spring in his step and a date for that Thursday night. The connection had been instant. She had smiled when he walked up to her. They had chatted easily. From up close she was even more beautiful. She smelled like shampoo and lotion and she had a slight snaggle tooth that made her look like a girl wandering in a feild of daisies, smiling to herself contendedly. Her eyes matched the shirt she wore and they shone with radiance unmatched by anything he had ever seen. The beating in his heart slowed down, the pain slowly melted into a delicious ecstasy.
He learned quickly to stop describing her in analogies. She was so much more graceful than a swan, she her walk was so much lighter than air, her voice was so much more melodious than a nightingale. The first time they kissed he was in a dizzy; the feel of her skin left him reeling. When they made love he would hold her, cling to her, wanting to possess her with an entirety that he had never experienced before. He would watch her for hours when they slept, admiring the curvature of her hips, the dip at her waist, the collarbones that rose from her skin like two islands.
Even two years later, they frequently sported polo neck sweaters to hide the signs of the previous night and she would blush with pleasure when someone teased her about it. When she was away, and she was away a lot because of work, he would come home and head straight to bed, all the time with an agonizing dull ache in his chest. In the morning, while making himself breakfast, he would keep touching the things he knew that she usually touches in the morning, with the complusiveness , he is actually touching her.
She had returned late that night from a particularly long trip to Dallas. At the airport, he went every single time to the airport to pick her up, he stood watching her as she came out of the arrivals lounge; his chest beat a slow retreat, and the pain however did not recede. He kissed her. He held her on the cab ride way home, and up the stairs to the apartment. As she started to unpack, he pulled her down to the clean sheets and lay there, silent for a very long time. She had her head on his chest, and he knew she could hear his heart, he wondered if she would ever know of the pain he endures at being away from her. He felt her breath get even. When he looked down at her, she was asleep. He turned out the light and lay there, well, half lay there with her. She stirred and smiled, they kissed.
He had missed her so much and he breathed her in all over again. He began to massage the tensed muscles of her neck and as he kissed them gently he opened his mouth and dug his teeth deep into her flesh. He could feel her hitting him, struggling against his 6 foot, 200 hundred pound frame. She must have fainted as blood spurted out because she stopped struggling. He swallowed without bothering to chew, it would take too much time and his heart raced like it was going to burst through it’s fleshy confines . He bit into her cheeks, those rosy fleshy orbs that he had kissed so many times before. And her neck, her torso, her arms and her legs…. When he was done, he cleaned up and sat at her spot on the dining table. The pain in his chest was gone. A small smile ran across his lips and went straight to his eyes.
He loved her so much. They would never be apart now.