Devon Woody
This fight was unlike all of the others. Rilyn sat in the corner of the room staring at the hardwood floor as though the wooden pattern held the secrets to life’s
happiness. On the other side of the earthly toned living room was the woman who
had changed it all. Lianna was her name. The last two years Rilyn was with her,
it felt like nothing was impossible. He was on top of the world until now. They
weren’t married, but they had vowed to never spend a day without each other. It
was love at its finest. Rilyn thought that not even the strongest force in the world
could bring them down. He was wrong.
They never fought. It was always peaceful in their home. So why did this
make sense? Rilyn must have asked himself that a million times in his head. Was it
the way he left clothes on the floor or food on the table for days at a time? No. Was
it because he refused to meet her parents after two years? That can’t be it either. He
spent what felt like hours going through everything in his head that could have lead
to this. But that’s just it: there was no reasonable explanation.
Rilyn was with a dozen girls before Lianna. He was eighteen and he wanted to
fill the hole in his heart that started to surface after his mother’s death. He was only
seventeen when he lost the best woman of his life, so commitment wasn’t in the
cards for him. It wasn’t until Rilyn was twenty two and had walked away from so
many girls when he had met Lianna. They met as normal people do. There was no
dramatic encounter and it wasn’t love at first sight. But they connected immediately.
Before this, Rilyn had befriended a dozen girls. He never connected to them or felt
anything when they left his bed in the morning. But this was a woman. The woman
who pulled on every heart string he had in his body. The woman who haunted his
thoughts at night. The woman who he pulled back into his arms just as she would
reach the door. He never wanted to let go.
All of his life, the family he had left and the friends that passed through his
life convinced him he was worthless;; that the universe had never pitied another
human being as much as him. Rilyn is not a man of many words, so he soaked up
all of that negativity like a sponge. When Lianna made an imprint in his life, nothing else mattered. They were one with each other. They were as close as two people
could possibly be. It still didn’t make sense. They were okay. They were in love.
They didn’t fight the day before, the room just turned sour that day. No hurtful
words were said. They just sat across the room from each other for hours. Then Lianna got up and walked out of his front door for the last time. He had yet again lost
the greatest woman in his life. He will never know what drove her away or if she’ll