What Love Leaves Behind

CW: Mental health, suicide

What does it mean to be happy by yourself? Daniel asked himself this question as he poured a tall Guinness out of a bottle in his studio apartment. Feeble sunlight penetrated the indigo darkness through Venetian blinds in thin, slanted rays. They illuminated an unmade bed that was the sore blight in an otherwise organized place. The dining table was clear, the bookshelf organized. The closet was neat and arranged by color. Yet anyone who knew Daniel would not find this surprising. In times of great distress, Daniel hyper-fixated on keeping his space tidy. This was certainly a time of great distress.

He took a long sip of his beer, the toasted bitterness finishing smooth down his throat as he looked at the microwave clock. It was 5:47 in the morning. He’d have to go to work in just three hours. The bed stood out to him, and he loathed it. How could he even dream of laying in that bed… If he turned to face the left side of it, he thought he could still catch her aroma on the pillow. Tears welled up in his eyes. He tried not to look at his fridge, where her family’s Christmas card lingered underneath a magnet. Her face–bright, happy, and beaming out at him, caught one of those rays of sunlight that made her blue eyes sparkle just as they had when he’d last seen them.

Or rather, not when he’d last seen them, because when last he had seen Melissa’s blue eyes, they’d been red-rimmed from crying.

So there he was, alone in his apartment–

No, not alone, as a gentle meow came from the bathroom. From out behind a nearly-shut door, a cat slunk into the studio. Daniel looked down at her as though she was an alien. She was a British shorthair with velvety brown fur and bright yellow eyes that glowed as though they were miniature suns themselves in the dark. Bella. She looked up at him quizzically, bouncing her way lithely up to the dining table. Daniel scowled: Melissa never allowed Bella on any eating surfaces. His voice, harsh from a lack of sleep, said, “Hey! Down. Get down.”

Bella just blinked slowly and looked at him with what he figured was deep impertinence. Daniel swore under his breath, downed the rest of his beer, and went to the fridge for another one. Usually after the third or fourth, he could get back to sleep. As he waited for the bubbles to settle in this glass, he thought about how quickly Melissa was torn from his life. One minute, they were racing down the back streets of Vermont in his vintage BMW. One minute, they were holding hands at a cathedral in Europe, their irises twinkling under the candlelight. One minute, they were going house shopping together, planning their future, and Daniel was picturing how cute a kid with her blue eyes and his curly brown hair would look.

The next they were in the car where once they’d looked for secluded lots to sneak kisses under the moonlight, and she was telling him that she hadn’t felt that she loved him in quite some time, that she wasn’t able to make the compromises required to stay with him. She said all of this with an even voice, yet when his tears began falling, her own harmonized with his pain.

He didn’t remember driving her home. He didn’t remember what she’d said to him. He only remembered that he had held her tightly and, feeling her tears pool on his shirt while his dripped onto her shoulder, said–no, whimpered, “I… I liked calling you ‘baby,’” and, “I’ll always love you.”

He hadn’t done anything wrong, that had been clear. And neither had she. “A difference in values.” That’s what Daniel’s therapist had said to him. She didn’t see herself wanting the same things he did. Perhaps that’s what hurt the most.

“But you’re young,” whispered Daniel acidly, echoing what others had already told him. “You’re not even thirty yet. You’ve got plenty of time to find someone…” He snorted and polished off the second beer.

Bella looked at him. Her tail whisked back and forth. There was a little more light in the apartment now, and it shone through something on the bookshelf. A crystal lotus sat upon it, bought by Melissa for their one year anniversary from Swarovski. The delicate quartz glimmered as it caught the bluish gold light that filtered through it. As the light shifted, it caught different facets of its perfectly hewn, lilac petals. It was the only thing in the apartment, aside from the card on the refrigerator, that was still “Melissa’s.”

Well, there was one other thing. Bella meowed again and stretched on the table, and Daniel was reminded of how Melissa used to caress her when she did this and say kindly, “Ooh, a big stretch, Bella. Good girl!”

Daniel had hardly been able to put a hand on the cat since she’d left two months ago. He poured himself another beer and finished the one he had, taking this one to the bathroom where Bella’s litterbox was starting to smell. Otherwise, his bathroom was as clean as the rest of his apartment. He smirked as he turned on the light, blinking blearily in the grating whiteness that now bathed his figure. His smirk faded quickly, yet the thought lingered, If only my therapist could see how perfect everything is in here… she’d call the cops on me.

After he was done peeing, he took two large gulps of beer and looked at himself in the mirror. He was athletic, stronger than most people, and decently tall. His face showed moderately high cheekbones, cool brown eyes, and a mess of curly brown hair on his head. Yet when he stared at the person in the mirror, all he could see was how the light made his otherwise thick hair look like it was thinning, how he had some slight acne scars on his cheeks, how his patchy beard never quite filled in, and how he carried a little extra weight in all the wrong places. It didn’t help that after so many sleepless nights and so much emotional turmoil, the bags under his eyes had deepened and darkened.

Daniel smiled wryly. What did it mean to be happy by yourself? He genuinely didn’t know. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been happy, the last time his thoughts hadn’t inevitably strayed to the worst at some point, or multiple points during the day. What did being happy even mean? How was it possible to just be… by yourself and be happy?

As it seemed to him right now, Melissa, in a storm of tears and muted words, had taken all of his happiness with her when he had dropped her off at her place with a promise to give anything of hers back with one of her friends. He had given everything back, and the only things which had been returned were Bella–Melissa said her dad was allergic to cats, and the crystal, for unknown reasons. The Christmas card had just been an oversight on Daniel’s part.

To use a term he’d heard first in Europe while travelling with Melissa, Daniel “X’d” his latest beer and lurched a little as he tried to prepare himself to go back to the main living space. Maybe he could finally get some sleep at… 6:17 in the morning. Out of the blue, his heart felt pierced by a dagger as he remembered some of Melissa’s words on that fateful summer night: “I love you, but I’m not… in love with you.”

Then as they wept together, she choked and said, “D-d’you think we could still be friends?”

They both knew the answer to that. No, not after everything they had been… Daniel couldn’t stomach the idea of being near Melissa and not putting an arm around her, not feeling the supple, warm skin of her hand enfolded within his. He felt his heart get pulled apart like taffy when he thought about being so near her and not allowed to lean in for a kiss, put his hand on the back of her head and into her blond hair as she smiled and kissed him back. His mind often pictured her with other men, going on dates, laughing the way she had with him. Had she moved on already?

Daniel sniffed heavily and swiped tears away from his eyes. He swung himself around to the bathroom door when he heard a fragile shattering sound from the living room. His heart plunged into his stomach–he seemed to know what had happened before he stumbled out of the bathroom and saw Bella sitting on the top of the bookshelf, looking mildly interested at the shattered lotus below her.

Daniel paled, adrenaline rushing to his hands. He stammered, “Y-you… you stupid–how could you do that?!”

Bella just looked at him with what he swore were raised eyebrows. Daniel cocked his arm back; he wanted to hurl his empty glass at that stupid cat. He wanted to chase it around the room until he got his hands on it…

Yet all he could do in the moment was let the anger defuse into anguish as he looked at the last relic of his relationship with Melissa broken on his floor. He took some heavy steps towards it and fell to his knees, lucky not to fall on a tiny piece of broken quartz.

The sobs that escaped him were heavy. They came from the depths of his soul, they brought bile up in his stomach as he vomited dark beer and acid onto the broken flower of his love. He wiped his eyes, wiped the drool away from his mouth, and screamed, “Just kill me!”

He knew there would be whisperings on his floor after that, perhaps an inquiry, but he did not care. His muscles felt numb, his skin wracked with an itchiness that he could not explain, and a hot stone had lodged itself in his throat, apparently fed by the downpour of tears that fell heavily from his face. He wanted to die; if ever there was a moment for God to smite one of His creations with righteous and enthusiastic approval from said creation, it was now.

“No, no, no… no, no,” he muttered to himself, looking at how the tiny pieces of lilac and clear crystal had been strewn all over his hardwood floor. His mind wildly thought about how he could fix it. Perhaps he could get some clear glue… some of the pieces weren’t too small, after all, he could get it mostly back the way it was.

A meow roused him from the depths of his insanity. Puffy red eyes upon a face scarred by canyons of saline tears that ran down to his chin turned to the British shorthair cat that had leapt from the bookshelf across to the bed, where it now sat looking down at him with a mixture of mild amusement and confusion. Perhaps it was wondering where its food was.

Daniel’s eyes were too blinded by tears for his lunging grab to be anything but pathetic. He gritted his teeth as he swayed and nearly fell on the shards of crystal. Cursing, he straightened himself up and wiped the drool and vomit off of his mouth. He looked at the cat, at… at Bella. That had been Melissa’s name for her, but it had been Daniel’s idea to get a cat. They’d gotten her when she was just one year old, a tiny little cat just barely bigger than a kitten. She’d been feisty, difficult to manage, but when at last they had won her heart, Bella had always been there to brush herself against their legs, call out to them when they came home from work, and cuddle with them under warm sheets on lazy weekend mornings.

Daniel used the edge of the bed to heave himself up and fell heavily upon it. His breath coming in shuddering gasps as his heart broke as though freshly wounded by Melissa. Amidst his tears, he felt a weight upon his chest. Tilting his head up, he saw Bella sitting contentedly with him, her round yellow eyes looking into his brown ones. Mindlessly, almost by instinct, he used a large hand, measuring its force precisely, and began petting Bella in long, smooth strokes.

Almost instantly, she began to purr. The deep, warm sound ran through his bones and, inexplicably, he felt something that had previously been racing within his ribcage began to slow down. He felt every beat of his heart, every breath ease slightly. This creature made him feel warm on his otherwise numb surface. He raised his head a little and saw that Bella had her eyes closed and, could it be… a smile on her face?

Different tears were leaking from his eyes now, not painful but sublime. Sunlight was coming through more steadily from his window now, and he could see a happy cat on his chest.

How long he stayed like that, he didn’t know. He might even have drifted off to sleep momentarily. Mercifully, no headache greeted him when he regained consciousness–just Bella looking at him lovingly, expectantly. He realized it was time to feed her.

Scratching her behind the ears, he said, “You want breakfast?”

She meowed and sprang lightly off of him. He felt the vacuum of coldness where once her little body had lain, and he reached over to his phone. It was only after sending his boss a text that he was sick and wouldn’t be able to make it today that he had a shocking realization: for the first time in… goodness, since that damning night in summer, he had opened his phone without his heart skipping a beat, expecting to see Melissa’s name on the screen, hoping against all hope that there would be a message, a call, a small indication that she missed him.

Instead, he’d put the phone back on the nightstand… content–yes, content! with completing his task and moving on. Even in his half-drunken, half-insane state, he managed a small smile. He pushed himself off of the bed and poured out some food for Bella, who gave him a thankful meow and began munching. In the bathroom, Daniel cleaned himself off and washed his face, sighing at the weathered creature in the mirror. Yet no longer was this creature fetid, hopeless… It was weathered, but not beaten.

It took him a few minutes to clean up all of the crystal–he used a cut potato to get all of the small shards. By the time Bella was done with breakfast, he was done cleaning. He drank a tall glass of water and opened his blinds, squinting in the now risen sun beaming through his window. It was warm; a golden day was in the works with clear azure skies, a brisk autumn breeze, and a bolstering, undimmed sun.

Bella leapt up onto the windowsill and he took her in his arms where she rubbed her head against his chest. They had a view of New England’s foliage beyond their mediocre little parking lot. Daniel sighed, looking down at the BMW and then turning back to face the little apartment he’d first gotten with Melissa. How they’d fallen in love with its intimacy, its spaciousness despite being a studio apartment, and how it promised to be a stepping stone to their first house. Now there was just Daniel and Bella sharing the apartment with the ghosts of what could have been, of a love now cold and distant.

“Bella, my dear,” said Daniel, “how about we get a fresh start, you and me?”

Bella purred in his arms, and Daniel kissed her on the head. His smile reached the crinkling corners of his eyes for the first time in months, and as he went to the fridge to whip himself up some breakfast, for once his mind was not on Melissa’s Christmas card. He felt Bella pushing against his leg and smiled again as he looked at her. Maybe he didn’t need to be happy by himself.