---Gray
    My eyes were trained on his background of us. I stood in my prom dress, the skirt cascading around me like a waterfall of deep blue fabric as his lips pressed against my forehead. My face was unseen, though I remembered that moment so vividly: I was smiling behind my curled deep-brown hair. It hadn't yet been dyed the ashy brown I wore throughout my collegiate years.

    The phone buzzed with another notification as I opened his texts and saw a new heart message from the contact labeled Alexis. I knew Eli had female friends, but I didn't ever hear him speak of anyone named Alexis. I rested my thumb over the contact, the streamline of messages in blue and white spreading across the screen.

    I scrolled back to see weeks of flirtatious messages exchanged between my boyfriend and this unknown girl. I realized as I scrolled downwards that something less than innocent flirtations had been exchanged between them. 'Baby, you really know how to please a girl xo' was the one that caught my attention. I paused, as if someone had pressed down on a remote over my body. I slowly reread the text. I wanted to believe that my eyes had deceived me. They had not.

    I slowly looked upward to see a guilt-ridden expression over the ocean blue eyes of the boy that was supposed to be mine. The boy who took me to every high school dance, the boy who gave my first kiss, the boy who held the most important aspects of my soul and knew me in the most intimate ways, not just physically, but emotionally; he had known another girl in the same ways.

    I didn't know then, what a heartbreak felt like. I didn't know then, what a betrayal felt like. I didn't know then, what a fall from cloud nine felt like. I did, however, know that a line had been crossed and there was no way to turn around and go back.

    There was written evidence of infidelity, and a physical expression on every single one of his features that purely solidified the notion. Elijah Reynolds had cheated on me. I never thought I'd ever think, nor need to process that statement. I had been so caught up in my thoughts, that I didn't feel the tears begin to stream down my cheeks and fall on his phone. I handed it back to him, my hands experiencing tremors of disbelief as he set it on the counter and reached out to touch me. I pulled away and stared at him.

    My throat tightened, vocal chords feeling like rubber bands that had been stretched past their limits. I wondered if they'd snap or simply relax with time. I found myself unable to speak a single word as my body shook with confusion. I lost my strength to stand as the tears blurred my vision and I sunk to the floor. The tiles had turned to quicksand and I wondered if AJ knew the half of it.

    I looked up to see a distorted Elijah kneeling beside me. I buried my face in my hands and let the sobs consume me, wondering what I'd done wrong to push him so far away. I called him to be met with a voicemail box, I would text to be met with a delivered sign for hours on end. I knew he'd been distant, but I couldn't imagine that the distance was due to the closeness of another soul with his own.

    I heard him speak, but the ringing in my ears made the words incomprehensible. I couldn't move. I couldn't speak. All I could muster from my body were thoughts that drowned out any hope of saving I had.

    I cried. I kept crying. I shook until my body lost its will to shake. I cried until my body lost the tears to continue. I licked my upper lip, tasting the salt of my emotions. My eyes looked up at Elijah. I ran them over his features. His eyes had teared up as well, but I could see deeper to the restraint he showed. I knew he was suffering through the pain of uncertainty. I hadn't said a word and the times he showed most fear was in my silence.

    My vocal chords had relaxed, though my voice was raspy and dry as I spoke my first words, "How could you do this?"

    His voice was softly stricken with the electricity of the moment, the lightning of a storm that he'd brewed with his actions. "I fucked up," was all he had to say as he reached out for my hand once more. I pulled away and hid it behind my knees that had curled up to my chest. "I can't lose you, Gray. I can't let you leave. I need you," he continued, through an obvious uncertainty. I wished to be within his thoughts; I wished I could simply understand what had driven him to such a thing. How could someone claim to love you and put themselves in such a moment with someone else?

    I reached up to the barstool, unwilling to lean on the boy I knew I still loved for support. I had been so defined as Elijah's girlfriend, that I found it hard to stand on my own. My legs shook, but I had to stand. I pulled my phone from the counter and turned around. I had nothing to say to him. I just hoped, if he truly regretted it, he would find a way within himself to show me I meant more to him than he did by such provocative text messages with another girl.

    "Graylin Elise Eldrich, I love you," he spoke as I felt the weight of his hand on my shoulder. I expected to return to an unchanged world. I expected to return to Avondale with a loyal boyfriend and a home full of love, yet never did I expect either of those things to wither away over four months of absence.

    "I wish I still believed that," I murmured, stepping forward as the simple weight on my shoulder fell away. I grabbed my camera from my tote, and sought the place I knew best.

***

    The path to the banks was one that never changed. It was there. It was always there.
The lake remained placid and calm, a dull reminder that nature was the most pure form of consistency in my life. I stepped forward cautiously, onto the banks of the lake which held my fondest memories-- memories in which I was happy and consumed by the ignorant bliss of my youth. I picked up my still wavering leg as I struggled not to trip over the first board of the pier.

      The pier was the place I'd had my greatest epiphanies and triumphs. It was a place where I found myself the victim of nothing more than a crisp breeze and withering thoughts. I pulled out my phone and clicked over to the favorites portion of my contacts. I pressed the small phone icon next to Eden's contact and listened to the gentle buzz of the phone connecting to hers across the country.
Eden couldn't come home from California because the fights were too expensive, and her family lacked the funds to help her come home. It was the first Christmas break I hadn't spent with her, and yet I found it being the break in which I needed her most.

   A few moments later I heard the gently rolling voice of hers, speaking into her phone as she would face to face. "Hey there, gorgeous."

    "Eden. I'm scared," I mustered up, in a voice that had been taxed by the weight of light being shone on the situation I faced. As I spoke, I walked forward to the end of the pier. The boards cried out in age, creaking soft echoes into the silent sky.

    "Back up, what happened, darling?" she asked sweetly, a genuine concern lacing the spaces of her words. Her voice held the familiar southern twang, I'd somehow avoided. I knew her so well, as we'd been friends since our first day in kindergarten. We met Eli during first grade, and from that moment, the three of us never parted until Eden and I left for college.

    "Eli-- he cheated on me," I murmured, feeling fresh tears surge to the corners of my eyes. I hadn't said it out loud until that moment. Eli had cheated on me. Speaking the words made it feel even more vividly real than it had when my eyes discovered the message confirming it.

    "He what now?!" she basically screamed, causing me to pull my ear away from the phone. Eden was protective of me, as she was of Eli, and swore if either of us hurt the other, she'd personally end us. "You have to be kidding me. Please tell me this is some cruel joke since I didn't come home this year." Her tone shifted to one of pleading, in confirmation that I wasn't crazy to have never expected such a thing.

    "I wish I was joking, Eden," I cried out into the lake, having sat on the edge, shoes discarded to my side. My legs were longer than they were when I was younger, so when my feet hung down toward the surface, the pierced the rolling water and sent shivers up my spine.

    "Darling, no. No, no, no," her own emotions could be heard in her voice. Eden wasn't as heartbroken as I was, but we had a bond to the point that she could feel my emotion as strong as she felt her own. "What are you going to do?" she asked me, concern and fear in her normally sweet words. She pushed me to consider the future. After my tears had dried and the truth had fully sank into my bones-- what was I going to end up doing? I knew I no longer trusted him, but that didn't change that my heart still beat for him. My mind still turned with possibilities of forgiveness, and possibilities of a recurring betrayal.

    If Eli had turned to another girl once, what stopped him from doing it again?

    "I don't know," was the most honest answer I had for her. I didn't know how to function in that instant. I didn't know what would lie beyond each minute. I didn't know if I'd have the heart to possibly get hurt again, but I also didn't know if I had the heart to walk away from him.

    "I have to go, my roommate just got home, but call me back tonight?" she asked, and I understood. Her roommate was crazy and hated her on the phone, but Eden relied on the girl to be able to afford her apartment.

    "Okay, I will," I returned before hearing the click and staggering beeps of the ended call. I let my phone fall to my side, resting face up on the wooden panel. I saw the texts from Daniel and Becca, asking if everything was okay. Caught up in saying hello to everyone I'd missed, followed by the situation with Eli, I'd completely forgotten to call or text and let them know everything was fine.

    My mind raced still. It's activity quickened as my body slowed. It seemed like hours passed as I remained stagnant through a hurricane of thoughts apathetically barrelling through the landscape of my mind.

    I leaned on a certain board, and felt the shift from under my palm-- the spot where Eli and I used to hide each other letters and little gifts when we were far too awkward to hand-deliver such intimate pieces of our souls. I reached into my pocket, feeling a piece of paper I had once intended to write to Daniel with. I pulled it out and looked at the crisp white page. Being a writer, I never traveled anywhere without something to write with, so in the same pocket, I felt a black inkpen. I pulled it out and scribbled down all the emotions, all the feelings, that my thoughts couldn't completely process on their own.

    Folding the paper into a small square, I tucked it under the wood and closed it securely. If it rained, whatever remained would dissipate into the boards, but I just hoped Eli might find it before then. As I did, Eli had been using the pier as a place to clear his head since we were children.

    I wiped away my tears, feeling a growing void in a heart that once felt so full of love and hope. I pressed my hand to my chest, feeling the need to find reassurance that I was still living. My heart beat softly, as I felt the pressure of everything come down on my chest. It was exhausting, yet in a way, I knew with the rain came the rainbows. And having so little darkness in my world, it might've provided a segway to the vision of new light among the shadows of my mind.

    Tucking my pen back into my pocket, I stood, looking out across the water. I wasn't quite sure how much time I'd spent there, nor was I willing to look at my phone for confirmation in fear of finding texts from Eli.

    The sun was beginning to fall once again, over the treeline and down into the arms of Gaea. I always had found the most interest in how Earth rotated around the sun, yet from the view of human onlookers, it seemed that the Sun had been rotating around Earth. It was a chilling reminder that perspective changed everything. It changed the way we viewed the world, and it changed the way we viewed ourselves.

    An analysis of my life might not have given way to the signs that Eli was going to fall into the arms of another woman; an analysis of his life may have simply shown the opposite.

    The sky faded from blue to violet, the lake's
surface mirroring a rolling reflection of the setting sun. From violet, a pale pink erupted, and from the pinks grew a vibrantly soft orange. If I extended my fingertips too far into the canvas, I feared the dripping paint of dusk would stain my skin. As the colors morphed throughout the atmosphere, I watched light secede from the falling night. As my eyes shifted to space, the stars glimmered with a soft, hopeful light into the blackness of my thoughts.