Sebastian

I started to count the passing of time by how long my hair had gotten. It now hung just past my chin and I figured it was nearly January. Or maybe mid-December. I stopped keeping track of the days some time after August when she left.

The inn was deserted. With a thick layer of snow on the ground and the forest slick with ice, no one wanted to stay here. Once the summer heat faded and all the flowers died, I was usually the only person in these cabins. The hot water barely worked anymore, but I had gotten used to the cold.

I spent the days after she left pretending that I was okay. I sat by the phone, hoping every time it rang it would be Rose's voice on the other end. She never called. I sat on the porch, under her yellow roof, to try to feel closer to her. I imagined she was beside me still, the two of us locked up here for the winter.

On my lowest of days I found myself wishing Violet would appear, just so I had someone to talk to. It was pathetic, I knew that. But I was slowly spiralling back into the man I was when Violet died, when it felt like my body was made up of shadows and dark corners, like my heart had hardened into stone. 

Now, I just needed something to hold onto.

When I laid in bed at night, I wondered how I managed to let them both slip away. Rose wasn't dead, but she was still gone. And knowing she was somewhere out there, living without me, made it harder.

The heat from the mug in my hands fogged up the kitchen window and I brushed it aside, clearing a patch of glass. The yellow roof of Rose's cabin was beginning to fade, chipping away from the cold winds. If you looked close into the snow surrounding it, there were specks of yellow mixed with the white. 

I hadn't stepped foot in in her cabin since she left. Not once. I sat on the porch, sure, but I could never go any further inside. I was scared it would hurt too much. 

God, I still loved her.

Before I could tell myself that this was a very bad idea, I tugged on boots, a jacket and a hat and trudged into the snow. The wind hit me first, biting at my cheeks. I tilted my head down, for once thankful that my hair covered my neck.

By the time I was on Rose's old porch, my frozen fingers were fumbling to unlock the door. It took a minute until I pushed it open, heat hitting me as I stepped inside. I froze, my eyes traveling around the space, hundreds of memories hitting me all at once. I saw Rose in her dress, cooking for me at the stove; laying on the couch, naked, arm hanging off the side; standing at the window, gazing out, eyes hiding secrets.

I shook the snow out of my hair as I tugged off my boots. I knew this was a bad idea. After Violet died, I spent days in her apartments, trying to surround myself with pieces of her until it didn't hurt so much.

Standing in Rose's cabin felt vaguely similar.

I don't know what I expected or why I even came here, but as I walked through the rooms, my eyes kept searching for something. Some part of her she had left behind by mistake that I could hold onto.

Every room was empty except for the furniture. I felt like a madman: opening drawers, checking closets, looking behind dressers. I was searching for something I knew wasn't there, but that didn't stop me. I needed to find one trace of her to convince myself that she was real. That I hadn't dreamed her up like I did Violet.

That's what it was beginning to feel like. That's what scared me the most. What if it all never happened? If Rose, like Violet, only lived in my head? It was possible, I was pretty sure I was fucking crazy. And I dreamed up one girlfriend before, so why not another?

I tried to tell myself that Violet was real. That she had died and continued to live in my head. That Rose was different. But I stopped trusting my own mind a long time ago.

My hands were shaking now. I could barely breathe as I stepped into her bedroom, my knees all but giving out as I tumbled onto her bed. I had to stop doing that, calling it her bed. Her cabin. It wasn't hers. Not anymore. I forced myself to breath. To fucking breathe and get up. I was standing, head swaying, eyes searching. I had to find some trace of her to hold onto.

She's not real, my mind whispered as I checked in the closet. Nothing.

You imagined her, too, it said as I pulled open the dresser drawers. Nothing.

She was never here, it told me. I checked under the bed. Nothing.

She never loved you. I screamed. My hands reached out and then I was falling. My side hit the bed, pushing it slightly until there was a small gap between the head board and the wall. I was on my knees, panting, head between my hands as I screamed back inside my head. She's real. She's real. She's real.

The window creaked from the snow storm and it was enough to bring me back to the summer nights we had spent in this bed. My heart still burned from the thought of her. The feel of her.

She's real, she's real. She's real.

I picked myself off the floor and opened the window, I felt like I was suffocating in an open room. The cold air was enough to clear my head. I rested my head against the window, breathing in the air like a drowning man. That was when I saw it.

It was on the wall, the small mark now visible from the gap between the bed from when I had fallen. I held my breath as I walked to it, running my hand along the wood. There, painted onto the wall in red and green, was a single rose. It felt like my heart had just remembered how to work as I ran my fingers along it.

She's real.

I nearly screamed it.

There was no doubt Rose painted this. This mark was the last trace of her. I smiled, wondering what other little marks she had left in this cabin. I had to find them all.

An hour later I had torn my way through every single room. I pushed back the couch to find a night sky on the wall. Painted behind the fridge was a lake, water reflecting like diamonds from the sun. In the bathroom there was a mini forest of trees, all green and brown. Behind lamps there were stars and there were single roses hidden everywhere. Her mark.

I didn't know when I started crying, but I felt the tears fall onto my lips. This cabin was hers and it always would be. But I didn't want little markings of her to look back on years from now. I wanted the real thing: Rose. In my arms. In my life. 

I didn't even put on my jacket as I raced out the door and back into my cabin. I had to find that damn book. My lungs were burning, fingers frozen solid, by the time I was back in my kitchen. My hair felt like it was frozen to my neck but, for once, I ignored it. I flipped through the book where I kept all guest information until I found her name on the last page. Below it, her contact information.

Her address.

I stood there for a single second wondering if I should do this.

Wondering if this was what she wanted.

It killed me that the answer was no.

I knew when Rose drove away on that August day that she wanted it to be goodbye. She had no intentions of ever seeing me again, I could see it in her eyes. 

But I didn't care. I loved her. If our short time here showed me anything, it was that we both had broken, fucked up hearts. And that mine only managed to feel a little more whole when she was around.

I couldn't just sit here, withering away in these damn trees, day after day, without even trying.

For the first time in a long time, I smiled. I hauled the old, worn leather luggage out of my closet and laid it open on my bed. I could barely see what I was packing, my hands grabbing whatever they touched. 

I told myself it was crazy as I bought the plane ticket.

I told myself she would definitely kill me as I walked out my door the next morning.

I told myself to stop, to go back, but I was sitting in my car, driving down the highway, the airport now in site.

I told myself a million reasons why I should turn around. Each one ended the same: Rose was a city girl, I was a wild guy.

But our time together showed me that she could be a wild girl.

My wild girl.

____

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