The One

Her boat set sail without him, and, in its wake, a haunting shadow that mocked him for his blunder. He started having dreams about the happy times that could have transpired had he not waited too long to seize the day, which ultimately turned into nightmares of seeing her name shift into daggers, and slice through the letters of his own before bursting sporadically through a bleeding heart. He stopped sleeping for fear of having to suffer through another, and either lay on his bed staring blankly at the black ceiling, or sat at his computer, doing all he could to forget. He claimed he wanted to forget, but I could see he couldn’t, the heavy pain in his heart chronically twinging in reminder that he lost a very dear friend. I often imagined him reading and rereading through their correspondence, trying to figure out where it all went wrong, how it all went wrong, trying to assure himself that it was not entirely his fault.

         There were times when my pathetic excuse for a bladder lurched in the middle of the night, and I could catch a glimpse of the pale glow of his computer screen seeping from beneath his bedroom door as I scampered to relieve myself. He would always stop me on the way back with an entreaty for company so he could divert his mind from his own reality, and I always accepted for the entertaining pleasure of conversing the night away. We would talk and laugh until the sun’s rays gently poked through the window, at which point he would cheerfully propose we prepare for class, and rise to take a shower. It never ceased to amaze me how he managed to survive each day despite his lack of sleep, and I wondered whether his battle with nostalgia was giving him a double source of adrenaline.

         It wasn’t long, though, before things took a turn for the worse. The glow of his computer soon no longer seeped from beneath the door as I made my dashes for relief, and his requests for company gradually abated into the dark unease of a muffled babble with the occasional thump on a pillow that wafted from his room. I let it go for a while, not wanting to barge in where unwanted, but I began to worry when he started sneaking in late to classes, looking haggard enough to pass for a drunkard, and disheveled enough to pass for a junky. He sat at the very back so he might hide his appearance, and luckily our professors never saw him and our classmates were too apathetic to call him out. He seldom spoke afterwards, spending most of the time in his room. I didn’t know what to do, and was afraid to ask anyone for advice in case it increased the inconvenience.

For the following couple of days, he didn’t go to class at all, heightening my concern to the decisive moment of understanding that I had to intervene. I mustered what mettle I had, and stood in front of his door, the muffled babbling hanging in the air in ghostly whispers. Unlike any other time, I could make out a bit of what he was saying- insults, expletives- but couldn’t determine the addressee. I assumed her, but he might have been cursing himself as well. I held my fist in midair, ready to knock, but the babbling in the instant had rendered me hesitant. I took a deep breath, and tried again, but I couldn’t bring myself to make contact with the door, and simply let it fall to my side. Tomorrow, I thought, we’ll talk tomorrow.

         I went to bed, my thoughts and imaginings of my planned intervention drifting about my mind until filtering into a dream from which I was eventually woken by a heavy thud. I jolted up, looking around the silence of my room, thinking for a moment my bladder was merely lurching again, as had been the case within the last few moments of my dream. But I felt nothing. I had woken up on one of those rare nights where it had been willing to let me sleep. It soon occurred to me what might have happened, and I fumbled for my flashlight before stumbling into the hall.

         “James?”

         The door creaked open, and I shone the flashlight around until I found him prone on the floor beside his bed, a chunk of his bedding hanging messily around him, as though he had dragged it down with him when he fell.

         “Turn the light off,” he groaned.

         I guided the beam to his nightstand, and went over to turn on the lamp.

         “I said turn it off!” he lifted his head, and I could see his eyes were red from tears, which had left two thin glinting trails down his cheeks, “leave me alone.”

         I turned off my flashlight, and left it on the nightstand as I knelt down beside him.

         “Not this time,” I said, trying to keep my mettle up, “We need talk about this.”

         “I’ve told you all you need to know, Mitch,” he grumbled, sitting up, “and no offence, but you’ve never been in love, so I can’t imagine how you would be able to help.”

         “How would you know if don’t let me try?” I asked.

         He sighed, and stood up to head over to the window. I followed him with my eyes, and watched as he began to solemnly look out into the darkness of the street below as though he wanted her to be there looking back up at him.

         “Let her go, James,” I continued, “there are other fish in the sea.”

         “Don’t go cliché on me!” he sliced a hand through the air in warning, “that’s precisely why those like you can’t help in this: clichés don’t work!”

         “That one is true, though,” I reminded.

         “It doesn’t matter,” he swiveled around to face me, his annoyed and distressed expression halflit in the lamplight, “she was the one, Mitch. There was a kind of affection in the tone of her emails, of her voice during our friendly calls, and she even sent me a picture of her at her family’s cottage.”

         “When she also plugged in the B-word,” I intoned.

         He sighed, the subtle squeak of a sob escaping as well as he remembered that fateful message.

         “The B-word. That should have been me.”

         “She’s happy, though,” I tried to soothe him, but I immediately realized those weren’t the right words.

         “She claims she is,” he replied, “but who knows if she’s actually. He’s her third, and her second was a fancy-pants who didn’t even last one day.”

         “How could you say, then, she was the one?” I was growing skeptical of the reasons for the meltdown.

         “I felt it more than I have with any other girl I’ve known,” he intoned.

         “You can feel that with any girl, James,” I said, feeling I was on to something of which I didn’t even know I had the capacity, “doesn’t mean she is.”

         He gave me another look of incredulity and confusion.

         “How can you tell?”

         “I may not have gone beyond the friend zone yet,” I began, “but it doesn’t mean I don’t know who the one is.” I was feeling the flame of exhilaration building up inside, unable to believe I was saying this. “I’ve been waiting for her, patiently enough to be able to know exactly who she’d be when she finally comes.” He sparked with attention, his eyes begging me to continue. “She’ll be the girl with wealth enough to have two boats in the harbour, because we often by our nature as guys miss the first. You missed Alice’s, and that was the only one she had. But there’s a girl out there who would not let your ticket go to waste.”

         We remained silent for a bit, he in such amazement at my surprising cleverness to have conjured up such an analogy, opening his mouth a few times to speak, but with the words caught in his throat, whereas myself in wonder at the words I had just uttered when I only had been conscious of the factor that I had indeed been waiting. He finally plopped himself down beside me, and nudged me on the shoulder.

         “You surprise me, Mitch.”

         “I surprise myself sometimes,” I replied.

         “Whoever she’d be would be very lucky.”

         We laughed, delighting ourselves in the sound of the other’s cheer, simmering down at times to catch our breath before the mere glance at each other would start us up again. We finally stopped, and he clamped a hand upon my shoulder.

         “I think it’s time we get some rest,” he said.

         I agreed. He needed rest, and in my own way, so did I. We stood up, wishing each other goodnight, and I headed for the hall.

         “Mitch!”

I turned back, and he tossed me my flashlight, nodding with a wink when I caught it. I nodded in turn with a smile, and made towards my room, the dawn peeping through the windows with a soothing tranquility that showed everything was going to be alright.

-EDP

Author's Note

My first foray into prose.
(doesn't mean I'm done with poetry, just branching out).

Reviews

[barleygirl]

I am stunned that this is your first prose attempt! This is amazing! I was a little mixed up at first, had to read the first 3 paragraphs over before continuing on. I did not get the gist of the situation of what characters we're dealing with here. Your story starts off as if we know who we're dealing with, but then it's not revealed right away. Other than that little bit of a shaky start, the rest of your story is very compelling & quite intriguing, the way you show the narrator getting up his nerve, then trying to be a friend, & surprising himself with his efforts. This is a simple storyline, but you made it feel like a wholesome story becuz of the way you convey this oscillating hesitation & then diving in. You nailed that so perfectly, just like it really happens. This is so realistic, I have to believe it really did happen in your life experience (((HUGS))) Fondly, Margie

[emipoemi]

This is def based off life experience, but it didn't actually happen to the letter. I'm so glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading.

[barleygirl]

Most of my true-life stories are embellished. That's the name of the game! *wink! wink!*

[Anise]

Some similarities between this one and the pumpkin one. The heart break, being dumped and all that.
I thought the ships analogy was clever. And how true it is that we don't always get it right the first time.
I like your story telling.

[emipoemi]

Thank you! And yeah, the two stories (The One and The Pumpkins) were intended sister stories. I mention that in the description on The Pumpkins. I had wanted to write a story using one of my favourite expressions in Spanish, but it didn't translate well into English. So I wrote one version in English (using the ship analogy), and one in Spanish (using the pumpkin), and then decided that the Spanish one was too good to remain in Spanish, so I translated it. They're sister stories, conceived out of the same theme, but had taken difference directions. Glad you liked it. Thanks for reading.

[Anise]

you're welcome, that's so cool how they are same at the root but took on a different life. enjoyed. i must have missed the author note on the pumpkin one

[H L Rose]

I quite like the premise of this story, and I think you’ve done a good job making your point as well as tying the whole story together from start to finish.

To be honest I thought the story was third person omniscient at first and was thrown off by finding out it was first person at “I could see he couldn’t”. I don’t know if this is a big deal or not, but it just caught my eye.

I think the dream in the beginning is quite interesting and unique, but again was thrown off by the fact that it was told by a narrator who first had it described to him rather than an omniscient speaker which I had thought initially.

Despite the narration thing though, I think the first line is my favorite line of the story, because it sounds very poetic and has fantastic imagery.

The quotations around “insults, expletives” confuse me a bit, since I don’t think the intention is for him to be saying those exact words. But I could be wrong about that, and I don’t think it’s that important.

The flow between the second and third paragraph seems off to me.

“giving him a double source of adrenaline./
It wasn’t long, though, before things took a turn for the worse. “

Something about “a turn for the worse” doesn’t seem to fit with contrasting “a double source of adrenaline”. I wish I could explain it better, but I would expect something more like “it wasn’t long before his energy ran out and things took a turn for the worse”. But I barely know what I’m talking about here, so if it doesn’t make sense don’t mind it.

I am going to admit that I don’t totally understand the analogy of the boats. I’m confused about what the boats represent, but that probably has more to do with my lack of understanding on the topic than the quality of the analogy.

I like the part where the narrator decides “tomorrow... we’ll talk tomorrow”. I think that is a very realistic take on a persons reaction to this type of situation.

I also like the first part of the conversation when the narrator takes a flash light into James’ room. The cliché part made me laugh, because I love clichés, yet get very hypocritical about people using them.

Overall I enjoyed reading this and think you’ve done a really good job getting the emotion across.

[emipoemi]

Thank you so much! Yeah, it was a fun story to write. To answer your concerns:

- the first person narrator was intentional, and the first part (about the dream and all) is the first person talking about his friend. If you give it a second read, after you know it's first person narration, then the first person reveal doesn't come across as too surprising (I like doing those tricks though).
- the quotations is actually a technical error on WC's part....some algorithm can't detect dashes....I edited that already.
-The adrenaline, I'll fix to make clearer, it's actually part of that whole last sentence. How Felix was amazed that Simon could pull so many all nighters and not be tired (his fight against nostalgia must be giving him a double source of adrenaline). The adrenaline is subordinate to the main idea, so the next paragraph is about how "things took a turn for the worse".
-the boat may be an obscure analogy...but I was playing off the saying "their boat(/ship) has sailed".

Thanks again for reading! Glad you enjoyed it.

[H L Rose]

Of course! Thank you for those explanations!

[emipoemi]

......d'oh! silly me....I just realized I named the wrong characters in my explanation. lol. Those are their names in the sister story, which I also have posted.

[H L Rose]

Ya! I literally just read that one so I didn’t even catch it.