Seeing them there, whispering, heads bent together, because and in spite of me, sent off red fireworks in my line of sight. Like a flare gun going off in my limbic system, sending off signals of panic and bitterness and jealousy and point-blank rage. I pedaled faster, harder, not knowing where I was going or barely who I was anymore. I felt the tears streaming down my wind-whipped cheeks, the now-always present tears, and the hair whip around my face like little fingers trying to hide my eyes from what I had just seen.

My ex-best friend and her boyfriend, the one I set her up with, the one she only used me to get to, the one whose family she chose over me.

But it wasn’t them I was mad at.
It was him.
He broke me.

He broke us.

Downhill. The sudden acceleration of my bike told me I was speeding fast down a steep incline.

My eyes were shut in anger, in trauma and shock, in an attempt to keep the torrent of sadness and confusion from escaping. I didn’t dare open them, lest I see another awful thing that I didn’t want to, lest I destroy my eyes, my mind, my heart, again.

Sudden, complete darkness.

And then-

Searing pain. Cold concrete beneath my bare, reddened hands. The sound of skidding bike tires and the scrape of flesh against pavement, the crunch of a million leaves beneath me as I fell, my cheek skimming the side of the hard wall of the tunnel. My body’s instinct was to jerk away from it, and I felt my arm being mercilessly dragged against the mangled bark of a tree. Three miles away from where I had seen them, what felt like thirty seconds ago. Tears now mingled and coalesced with something red, and brown. Dirt caked underneath my fingernails as I dug them into the squishy wet earth in frustration and simple, overbearing pain.

A long, jagged cut in my jeans revealed a shallow scratch on my calf. My already weakened ankle throbbed in pain and threatened to give beneath my weight as I pulled myself up by the shaky handles of my bike and put pressure on it. A gasp of pain escaped my lips.

But I wasn’t there yet. I still needed to get there. I don’t know how or why, but seeing them gave my once-leisurely bike ride a purpose and a destination.

I left the bike there, on the side of the grassy trail. I didn’t want it anymore- not there, not in that moment.
I masochistically savored the pain of my swollen right ankle as I limped up the hill. Was aware of every trail a tear made down my face, every drop of blood that stained my shirt, of the hair that stuck to my face and the wind that stung the cuts and scrapes all over my body. I felt that I had deserved it, all of it, even if it wasn’t my fault.
Nothing was my fault.

Everything was my freaking fault.

And I was almost there, so close to the top of that golden plateau, so close to where I knew, just knew that I needed to be to find some degree of closure.

The sun was dipping in the sky like a golden spoon in the orange soup of the day, near-ending.

I crested the hill, blood and tears and moisture streaking down my face and jeans, my hair a tangled mess, my lips beyond chapped and my emotions beyond worn thin.

I was pathetic.

I was majestic.

Tucker Lake was almost fully drained. The shallow water lapped the shore in lazy circles. It used to be beautiful once, a place where young boys would fish for crawdads and lovers would watch the sun sparkle off the surface of the water.

I collapsed on the bench near where the lake used to expand and shine like a jewel in his eyes when he looked at me, smiled at me.

I was suddenly freezing.

I tenderly lay what felt like a broken body on the bench and thought of the People’s Fair, when he held me after I was drenched and shivering, and remembered him telling me to think of being warm, of palm trees, and of hot chocolate. Instead, I thought of him, and how warm he used to make me feel, when he held me that day or just when he smiled at me, on any given day. I thought of how he had kissed me on this very bench, at this very lake, where I had always been happiest with him.

I was always my happiest when I was with him.

I was never my happiest when I was with him.

I stood and silently listened to the birds call to one another like I wanted to call to him, listened to the water begin to stop moving as we drained it out, gradually each day. Little did I know that, months later, the lake would be completely emptied and barren of its former glory, completely forgotten by the once-gleeful observers of the lake.
It is so easy to become so caught up in the beauty of a masterpiece that one often forgets to conceive of its end,
I walked down the hill. Picked up my bike. Ignored my personal disarray and the pain on my face and leg and ankle and started the slow trek home.

I missed him terribly that day.

I let him go that day.