5 March 2013

{ This is the prologue of one of my newest stories on Wattpad, thought I'd share and see what you guys think? }

Dear Isabella Grace Garcia,

I'm writing this letter hoping you'll never read it... Or at least that when you do, it'll be thirty years into the future and we'll be married with our own kids, looking through our memories and laughing together.

If you are reading this before then, I suppose I'm gone. I know I said I'd never leave you - but we both know that life doesn't care about promises like that. I care about them, and will do everything I can to fulfil it. But sometimes 'everything' isn't enough.

I'm no good with sappy stuff, you've told me so about a million times... But, here I go. You need to live, Isabella. You need to have the life you deserve, without me. Someday, maybe we'll see each other again, but in this life I need you to be happy for me, Is'; to be a mom, to be a wife, to be smiling every day. I wish more than anything that I could be the one to make you smile, but we both know that that isn't going to happen. Somewhere out there, there's a guy who you are going to make so happy...

I love you, Isabella Grace Garcia. I love you so much. I love you enough to let you go.

Love, your Jason Robert Marshall.

○ ○ ○

I watched my mom from the window as she packed my stuff into plastic bags and took them to the car. She was moving me out of the house that Jason and I had spent only a handful of nights in together before he'd died. I didn't want to live there if Jason wasn't - it was supposed to be ours, and it felt wrong being there alone. Mom understood.

"Isabella!" I sighed and took a last look around the bedroom Jason and I had shared. I ran a hand over the bedframe, knowing it would be the last time I'd see it. The movers would collect it later and take it to the house of the couple I'd sold it to. They'd have a new bed, new memories, a happy life ahead of them.

Before Mom could holler again, I left the room, forcefully pushing back the tears threatening to escape down my cheeks. The last thing I needed or wanted was to become an emotional wreck; leaving this house was something I needed to do, and I swore I would do it with decorum. I may have been a woman in grief, but I was not going to let the grief overwhelm me. I knew my mother thought my lack of tears and outward mourning was unnatural and unhealthy, but I was fearful that I'd never stop crying if I allowed myself to start.

I shut the bedroom door behind me, my hand lingering on the doorknob, and made my way down the spiralling staircase. It was the staircase that had originally attracted Jason and I to this particular house. The staircase was wide and a sandy-coloured wood, which dictated the whole structure of the house; it was as if the designer had begun with the staircase and built around it - I loved the character of it.

Walking through the empty house was strange. Although I'd only been living in it a few months, it was home, and I was used to seeing the mismatching furniture and magazines sprawled about surfaces. It was too clean to be called my home anymore, I realised. Maybe it wasn't the place that was home, it was what was inside the place.

○ ○ ○

"Hey Dad," I slung my arms around my father's neck affectionately. The bristles of his day-old beard rubbed against my cheek comfortingly. My father smelt of musky pine and Baileys. He used to smell of whiskey, until I complained about it - even a whiff of the stuff made me want to gag.

"Hey there, Is'." Dad's voice was soft and understanding. He understood, like Mom, what I was going through, and offered what affection I needed. "You alright? Want to play your old man at scrabble?"

I groaned. "Dad, you know I hate scrabble."

"Only because you know I'll beat you," he winked, his eyes crinkling beneath his round spectacles. I scoffed, but didn't answer, because that was exactly the reason I disliked playing it for. My lack of answer only cause my father to let loose a cheery rumble of laughter; I loved the sound of my father's laughter, it made me happy and I smiled back at him.

I released him from my hold and sunk into the arm chair next to him. My parents' sitting room was warm and homely, the sort of place I'd imagined Jason and I to sit in when we were older. Another one of the fantasies I'd had that would never be coming true. I couldn't picture having that with anybody but Jason.

"When are you leaving for New York, then?" Dad's gaze left the newspaper in his lap and fixed on me instead.

New York. I sighed. It was Mom's idea to get me out of Mexico City and into a new place. She thought staying where all my memories with Jason were was a bad idea, and that in order to start afresh, I needed to be somewhere completely different. When I tentatively agreed, she made arrangements straight away to secure me a spot at an average-sized newspaper house. No interviews required, apparently, because Mom went to high school with the owner's son. Small world.

I rested my elbow on the arm of the chair and put my chin in my open palm. "Tuesday, next week, I think. Mama booked me a flight for then... I should double check though." I sighed. I was all for the whole 'new start' thing, but it felt as though I'd never actually be ready to try it.

As if reading my thoughts, Dad smiled and reached to pat my knee affectionately. "Your mother is right, you know," a soft smile crossed his features. It wasn't hard to see that my father was a man very much in love with his tiny, Hispanic wife. "Getting to a new place will do you so much good. As much as I love having my daughter at home, this is what's best, Isabella." The tan skin around my father's eyes wrinkled with another smile. I nodded.

We sank into a comfortable silence, marred only by the occasional turn of a newspaper page. I stared at the Van Gogh replica on the wall above the mantelpiece. It was Starry Night, one of his most famous, and I liked it. I liked the blues, I liked the complicated swirls - it was like Van Gogh could see what nobody else could. If I looked up to a sky, I would see something completely different. What Van Gogh saw was beautiful.

"Thiago?" My mother called for my father, who set his newspaper aside with a sigh. I grinned as he ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. Evenings with my parents always went like this: Mom would insist that Dad should help with the dinner, whilst Jason and I - or just me, now - sat in the living room. It was routine, it was comfortable, it made me smile fondly.

I pushed Dad as he walked past with a groan, in a few moments I would hear the two giggling like love-struck teenagers. Indeed I did. It was predictable; no matter how much of a grumbling façade Dad would put across, he'd go to the ends of the earth for my mom. It had been the same for Jason and I, before he'd died.

I sat in the armchair and remembered Jason. I'd been amazed in high school when he'd asked me out with that boyish nervousness of his. Jason was a caramel-blond with the widest hazel eyes you'd ever come across. He had the All American boy looks down. Not to say he was Mr Popular - neither of us was - but he wasn't unpopular, either. He asked me out in tenth grade, when we were both sophomores. On Valentine's Day, with a rose and everything. At fifteen, I thought he was the best thing that ever happened to me - and he was. He was nothing but a gentleman, my parents adored him and I got on with his parents... We were one of those 'together forever' couples.

And yet, both he and I knew - we must have known, deep down - that I didn't deserve Jason. Before he'd asked me out on that innocent tenth-grade date, I'd been teetering on the edge of sanity. One tiny breath of air could have pushed me off, but Jason pulled me back. He saw past the ruined girl and the ugly conscience. He saw what I could be, and made something on me. I needed him for that. But he was gone.

I also remembered the day he told me he was joining the army. It was the last year of high school, so we'd been together almost three years. When he told me he was signing up, I'd cried and begged him not to go - but if Jason was anything, he was stubborn. He'd left, and for the first year or so, it was all fine. He'd come and go, and we moved into our own house by the end of that first year. Then I got his letter, and a formal letter of apology and commendation for his work.

I'd never felt so numb, sitting there, reading that letter. Yet, I hadn't cried. I kept it all bottled up, every single emotion I'd ever felt was bottled up inside of me. My name was Isabella Grace Garcia, and there was no way in hell that I would become a dependant wreck. My long-term boy-friend may have died, but he wanted me to be happy.

What Jason wanted, I would make happen. Whatever the cost.

HeatherAnneIt Takes Two To Tango: Prologue. • Opuss № I