By kevin urenda, kluless70@hotmail.com Date: 19 November 1998
He sat there on the sofa, looking absently at nothing in particular. The weight of a thousand sorrowful moments hung within him as a millstone around his heart. Emptiness... The weight of this had crowded out all of his thoughts. His mind was almost blank as countless deliberations tried to take shape within his mind, but could not find full form.
He thought he heard the distant jingling of keys. His consciousness slowly streamed back into the present at the sound of a key turning in the front door lock. It was then that he noticed that his eyes were wet. He wiped them quickly as his girlfriend came through the door.
"Hi, honey, I’m home," she said cheerfully, with the genuine happiness of a lover missing her beloved. She smiled at him, but then noticed that his eyes were a little puffy and wet. She sensed a burden of sadness on him. The smile disappeared replaced by a furrowed brow of concern, as if the sun had suddenly passed behind a cloud.
"Sweetie, what's wrong?" she asked, suddenly concerned, dropping her keys and her purse on a nearby chair. She almost hurried to his side. Putting her arms around his neck, she softly said, "I love you." She leaned toward him gently and took him into all of her senses.
He wrapped his arms around her as if she were a life preserver and he a drowning man. She immediately felt the rush of alarm filling her cheeks like a blush. He was holding her too tightly, and it scared her. She squeezed back. He relaxed his viselike grip on her, as the joy of being loved filled him. Her fear subsided as well, as she leaned back away from him, her arms still about his neck.
"Honey," she whispered, almost choking on the emotion she felt. "What *is* it?"
He looked at her as a tear escaped and rolled down his cheek. He felt the emotion she expressed for him in her eyes, the tenderness and care she genuinely felt in her heart. His expression changed and she sensed that this man she held finally realized that she loved him. He was no longer captured by the emotion she had seen in him after she had first entered their apartment.
"Nothing, really, I just got a wedding invitation, and it made me think, that’s all. God, how I love you," he softly said, hugging her tightly once more. "I love you so much..." he whispered almost inaudibly.
It was then that she noticed it sitting there on the coffee table, plain as day, opened as if for all the world to see, revealing more to her about this moment than anything she had just seen in his tear-filled eyes. It was a wedding invitation from his ex-fiancee, in bolder lettering than she had thought she had ever seen on such a thing... She held him tighter.
"I love you too," she whispered.