They Would Never Know

He woke up crying that day. It was a full-blown sobbing spell, the kind that burned the back of your throat and ripped your lungs apart. It had been 40 years since he had cried the exact same way, the heart-wrenching weeping that would've been too ugly in reality but would be perfectly complacent when submitted to words.

He had thought that he was too old, too wise for the ardent feelings that young people seem to display these days. He had himself fooled that she was completely obliterated from his mind, that he wouldn't know her even if he saw her again. 

And yet, there she was, standing by the window with her back to him. He saw her again, with the halo on her golden hair and a mole on her neck. He wanted to touch it, kiss it.  Are you an angel? She was in his class, and he nearly flunked the first semester having spent every lecture staring at her. 

Then, miraculously then, she talked to him. She let him hold her hand when they took long walks to the city, where he lived. She let him kiss her, hesitantly at first, the brushing of lips. When she agreed to marry him he felt like dragging her to the nearest church and have the priest marry them immediately. 

There was a fight. It was stupid, really. But they were proud. Relentless. She wouldn't look at him, wouldn't listen. He was terrified by the look in her eyes, such cold animosity. Cry, yell, wring your arms, anything but standing there, watching me with those hard, unforgiving eyes. And in his fear he sought out to be stubbornly unyielding, the same frosty mist clouding over his eyes to shield the fear. 

He walked away. 

He would never know that she would have ran towards him - had he showed the slightest hint that he still loved her - arms flung open to embrace him in her bosom, to repeat the word I'm sorry over and over again until he silence her with a kiss. He would never know that she prayed so hard for him to just stop walking away from her and turn back, that her whole body shook with the ferocity. 

He would never know that she did not remarry, and she would never know that neither did he. And they never knew that it would be the last time they would see each other ever again.