Chapter 1
The opposite of love isn't hate. It's death.
It's presence is sudden and final. Where there was once warmth only cold remains.
Death. It comes and stays and sticks. Then enters the pain. But not pain from tripping on a curb or cutting your finger with a knife. This pain is from a place far deep and unknown. It spreads thick and fast. It hurts when our eyes close. It hurts when our chests rise and fall. The pain of a loss.
Then comes the grief and the insurmontable loss of oneself.
Ariana has never been one for grieving. When her mother had died from cancer and the pain came, she cried and she moved out.
When her father remarried, the anger was there, the betrayal...the hurt but it was barely a whisper. A soft sob in a dark hall.
When her cat, Marge, died, she cried, buried him and got a goldfish. There was pain, hurt, betrayal, all those words associated with death.
But no grief.
She didn't spend hours lying in the dark or staring listlessly out a window. She didn't search for meaning in her life.
We love. We die.
Until he died.
Now suddenly, she can't find joy in anything. Suddenly it rains all the time and the house is so cold and quiet. The warmth he brought, the light of him that filled all her cracks, gone. Like it never existed.
Everything he was...gone. Everything he was ever going to be...dead in the earth.
Love had come and brought her sister Death.
Death had brought all the emotions and finally death has given her grief.
A grief so raw and empty. A grief unable to be put into words. It hits her when she least expects it. It hurts and hurts and when finally she can't cry anymore, it's nothing. A nothing so heavy, so vast, so drowning.
Ariana stares down at her hands. Her white knuckles hold a funeral program. There's a picture of his face. A picture she had taken.
Underneath are the words: In loving memory of Zandar Leslie Woods. The date is four months ago.
Her heart breaks all over again. Her hands tremble and drops of tears plop down onto it. Ariana sobs and rests her head on the steering wheel. Her cries are silent and raw. Pain rips open her chest and swallows and swallows till there's nothing left of her but a cavernous space where everything she used to have had withered and died.
Ariana has never know such a weight. She doesn't know how to handle it. How to control or stop it. Her stepmother tells her to see a therapist, to talk out her grief with someone. But how can she talk about something she herself can't even understand.
It's a feeling but it's also a nothing. It takes up space but it creates space. It surges in the darkness but it shines in the light. She could be walking on the street and see a stranger with ginger hair or freckles and her heart would rip open and her pain would pour out onto the sidewalk.
Her father tells her it is normal to feel these things. It's better to feel them. He tells her keeping them in would only hurt more. He tells her to mourn and grieve. He tells her he's there for her.
She knows it's true. She knows she has to feel the motions and rise from it. But she doesn't want to.
She doesn't want to turn over in bed, reach for him and he's not there.
She doesn't want to walk into the kitchen, and see he's not there shirtless, making coffee and talking about the terrible noise of the construction workers.
She doesn't want to breakdown on the train and have strangers comfort her.
She wants him back. She wants the pain gone. She wants the hurt to stop.
She's not sure how much of it she can take.
Ariana lifts her head and stares ahead.
Spaced out lights illuminate the bridge like small dots of orange that stretch into the winding darkness. The spot she has chosen is secluded and quiet. Cars don't pass this part so late.
She blinks and drops the program on the passenger seat. It doesn't make a sound or maybe she doesn't hear it. Lately, she doesn't feel anything; not the wind or cold sheets, not the empty house or the busy streets. She drifts mindlessly through faces and places, knowing that one day when she doesn't expect she would feel everything. And when that day comes she knows she won't survive.
Ariana steps out of her car and leaves the door open. She walks steadily, the way she had walked in Puland Cemetery. She doesn't cry or blink. There's nothing underneath the pale, dry skin. There's no memory replaying in her mind.
There's only silence.
Silence that beckons as she stops on the ledge. Silence that yawns through the dark space beyond the railings and ripples over the glass surface of the water below.
For a long moment, she stares over the bridge, over the dark waters and dark skies, over the distant lights of the city and into nothing.
She's like a single speck in the vastness. A speck that once held warmth and love.
She grips onto the ledge and uses the railings as support, she climbs it. It takes only a few seconds before she's standing on the edge.
For a brief moment, the silence breaks like a hurricane in a storm and she hears.
She hears the whistling of the wind and rippling of the water. She feels her hair like black tendrils sail over her face, sticking to the wetness of her cheeks. She hears her quiet sobs and the shuffling of her shoes. She hears the loud beating of her heart and she feels the fear sneaking up on her.
In the face of Death, she hesitates. Miles of empty road stretch on both sides. Miles of darkness stretch below, promising her a swift death once her body hits the water. The finality of the action. The uncertainty of her decision.
Maybe she should step back, get in her car, go home. And tomorrow morning make an appointment to see the therapist. Throw herself into her work. Do everything to keep the emptiness at a distance.
But forever is a long time. There would be times her grief would sneak up on her. Times her sadness would push everyone away. Times the pain would drown her and she would be lost.
Nobody would save her then. Nobody would hold her then.
So why wait?
"Zandar," she whispers into the air. Would she get to see him again?
To feel his embrace?
He would never have let her take this step. he would never have wanted this. But he isn't here to save her.
Nobody is here to pull her back from the edg and cradle her while she cried, to tell her suicide is not the right way.
Ariana breathes shakily, the rings on a silver chain on her neck clinks like wind chimes. She looks up at the sky, then down at the quiet but inviting water.
She leaves the railing.
She jumps.
Silence.
Headfirst, she falls, down... down... down. Space and time endless. The silence deafening. The water beautiful and freeing. Her eyes flutter close, she smiles, she sees.
Zandar wrapping his arms around her, shaking from laughter. Zandar smiling down at her, the corners of his warm blue eyes crinkling, the little freckles scattered all over his nose. Zandar slipping his hands into hers as they walked down the street. Zandar picking out the tomatoes in his sandwich and putting it on her plate. Zandar kissing her, holding her, loving her. Zandar promising to spend the rest of his life as her light in the dark. Zandar dancing in the kitchen while the morning sun bathes his skin and sets fire to his hair. Zandar coming over with ice cream and flowers. Zandar waving goodbye as he enters his car to go to work. Zandar's car wrecked on the bridge. Zandar lying on a cold table, lifeless and mangled, his face torn and crusted with blood. Zandar in a coffin, white and stiff. Zandar dead in the ground.
