Through my Window by ARIANA Godoy ,Chapter 59,The Farewell

The day has come . . . The day he has to leave. He’ll go from being a few meters away from me to being hundreds of miles away. Silence reigns between us. It’s not uncomfortable but painful because we both know what the other is thinking: this is the inevitable reality. The sky is beautiful and the stars are shining in their maximum splendor, perhaps in an attempt to lessen this heartbreaking sadness. There is a certain inexplicable pain in the inevitable. It’s much easier to walk away from someone when they’ve broken your heart or when they’ve hurt you. It feels impossible to do so when there’s nothing wrong between you, when the love is still there, alive, beating like the heart of a newborn, full of life, exhaling promise for the future. My eyes fall on him, my Ares. My Greek god. There he is, with his hair tousled and his eyes red from the long night, and yet he looks beautiful. “Ares . . .” He doesn’t look at me. “Ares, you have to . . .” He shakes his head. “No.”
Oh, my beautiful boy. I struggle with the tears filling my eyes, and my lips shake. My love for him consumes me, suffocates me, gives me life, and takes it away. His flight leaves in half an hour. He has to enter the area where he’ll wait to board the plane, where I can’t go. We’re in the waiting area of the airport, and we can see the sky through the huge windows. His hand brushes mine gently before he takes it firmly in his. He still doesn’t look at me, his blue eyes focusing instead on the sky. I can’t stop looking at him. I want to remember every detail of him when he’s gone. I want to remember what it feels like to be by his side, to feel his warmth, his smell, his love. Maybe I sound cloying, but the love of my life is about to get on a plane, so I have the right to be cheesy. “Ares?” Apolo’s voice comes from behind us. It has that same sense of urgency and sadness that my voice had when I reminded him it was time to go. Ares takes his eyes off the stars and lowers his head. When he turns to face me, I strain to smile through the tears forming in my eyes, but I fall short. He licks his lips but says nothing, and I know he can’t speak. I know the moment he speaks he will cry, and he wants to be strong for me. I know him so well. He squeezes my hand tightly, and tears escape my eyes. “I know,” I say simply. He wipes away my tears, holding my face as if it will disappear at any moment. “Don’t cry.” I laugh falsely. “Ask me for something a little easier.” He gives me a short kiss, but it’s filled with so much emotion that I cry silently again. The saltiness of my tears blends with our kiss. “Don’t give up on me, love me, chase me, but don’t forget me, please,” he begs. “As if I could forget you.” I smile against his lips.
“Promise me that this is not the end. That we’ll try until we can’t anymore, until all resources and means are exhausted, until we can say we have tried everything and still try a little further.” “I promise.” I wrap my arms around his neck and hug him. He kisses the side of my head. “I love you so much, Witch.” His voice cracks slightly, and it breaks my soul. “I love you, too, Greek God.” When we part, he wipes away his tears quickly, and takes a deep breath. “I’ve got to go.” I just nod, tears sliding down my cheeks and falling from my chin. “You’re going to be a great doctor.” “And you’re going to be a wonderful psychologist.” I can feel my face contort as I stifle my sobs. Ares says good-bye to Apolo, Artemis, and his parents. I walk with him toward the security gate. When we reach it, I stop and wipe away my tears. “Let me know when you get there, okay?” He nods and lets go of my hand. He joins one of the security lines, then he stops and walks quickly back to hug me one more time. “I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. You are the love of my life, Raquel, I love you.” The sobs escape me, so I wrap my hands around his waist. “I love you too,” my voice breaks. “I love you.” “Please, let’s fight for this, I know it won’t be easy, I know there will be hard times, but . . . please don’t stop loving me.” “You won’t . . . you won’t be able to . . . get rid of me so easily,” I tell him with a broken voice. When we separate, I see how red his face is, and the tears on his cheeks. “I promise you, I will always be your stalker.”
He runs his thumb across my cheek. “And I’ll always be yours.” I give him a confused look. “I was stalking you, too, you silly witch.” “What?” “We never ran out of internet. I asked Apolo to pretend with me. It was my excuse to talk to you. You’ve always had my attention, Witch.” I don’t know what to say, idiot Greek god, why did he choose this moment to tell me? Ares takes some bracelets out of his pocket, and I gasp when I recognize them. I made them a long time ago for a school fair, but I couldn’t manage to sell any until a boy bought them all. Had Ares sent that boy? Had he done that for me even when we weren’t speaking to each other? Ares puts a pair of the bracelets in the palm of my hand and closes it. “You’ve always had my attention,” he repeats with feeling, and that only makes me cry even more. “Ares . . .” “I have to go.” He kisses my forehead. “I’ll let you know when I land. I love you.” He gives me a short kiss and disappears through the security door before I can regret not begging him to stay. With my hand on the transparent windows of the airport, I watch his plane take off and disappear into the sky. I feel like a hole has opened in my heart and it will never close. Maybe it will heal, but the scar will always be there. Part of me imagines him coming back like in the movies, telling me that he loves me and won’t leave me, but it’s not like that. Real life is crueler than romance movies. I close my hand into a fist over the window. Good-bye, Greek God. Ares’s parents and Artemis are already gone, but Apolo remains by my side, weeping openly. The journey back to the house becomes the saddest
hour of my life. Apolo and I share a taxi but neither of us speaks. Both of us are absorbed in our own sadness. Trees, houses, people, and cars pass by the window, but I don’t see anything. I don’t even say good-bye to Apolo when I get out of the car. I walk into my house like a zombie. My room welcomes me with silence. My eyes slip to the window and pain squeezes my chest tightly. My mind teases me, imagining Ares coming through the window smiling, his pretty blue eyes lighting up at the sight of me. I look at the front of my bed and remember that night I made him hot chocolate and he told me about his grandpa. Ares has grown so much as a person. From an idiot who didn’t value anything to a man who values everything, who finds it easier to express his feelings, who understands that it’s okay to be weak or even cry. I don’t want to take credit for that because no one changes if they really don’t want to change. I was just the push he needed to get started. I sit on my bed without looking at a specific point. Dani opens the door with a bang. Her gaze meets mine, and that’s all it takes for me to lose control. “Dani, he’s gone,” I say quietly. She gives me a sad look, moving closer to me. “Really, he’s gone.” I start to cry inconsolably, letting it all out. I feel like a part of me has gone with him, and maybe it has. Dani rushes over, throws her purse on the floor, and hugs me. “He’s gone,” I keep repeating over and over. In my best friend’s arms, I cry all night until I fall asleep. I wake up slightly to a text telling me that he has arrived, but after reading it, I just cry myself to sleep again.
Three Months Later
“And then I told him he was an idiot,” I say with the phone in front of me, talking about Joshua. “How could he even think of putting an egg in the microwave?” Ares laughs, his face encapsulated in my phone screen. We’re Skyping while I’m cooking in the college dorms. “And that wasn’t the worst of it,” I continue. “He put a pink shirt in the wash with his whites. Guess who only wears pink now?” “And I thought I’d be the one making the most mistakes with this living alone thing.” I squint at him. “You burned all the pots in your apartment.” “I was learning.” “You don’t even know how to make coffee.” “You haven’t tried it.” “Thank God,” I mumble. Ares scoffs. “Yesterday I made pasta, it was a little sticky but edible.” “Look who’s here,” I show him a stuffed witch he gave me when we met at Thanksgiving break a few weeks ago. “She’s my roommate.” “Speaking of roommates. Where’s Dani?” “At a frat party.” “And Joshua?” “At the same party.” “Your roommates are at a party, and you’re here talking to your boyfriend, so loyal.” “Parties have never been my thing.” I sigh. I lick my finger to taste the soup I’m preparing. “Mmm, it’s delicious.” “I wish I was that finger.” “Ares!” “What? I miss you, Witch. I’m going to die from a lack of love and sex.” I roll my eyes. “Only you can be romantic and sexual at the same time.”
“I need the Christmas break to come.” He runs his hand over his face. “You know what we should try?” “We’re not having phone sex, forget it.” “I had to try.” “But if you behave yourself, I might send you a sexy photo,” I tell him. He gives me that cheeky grin I like so much. “Oh, well, fair enough.” “Christmas is a week away. I’ll stick to you like bubblegum. You know that, don’t you?” “I love bubblegum then.” “Are you flirting with me?” He bites his lower lip. “Is it working?” “It might be.” We keep talking and I laugh at his silly attempts at flirting. So far, we’ve been fine, missing each other a lot, but we’re seeing each other at least once a month. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s tolerable, and it makes me think we can survive this.
When Christmas break comes, I make two steaming mugs of hot chocolate as soon as I get home. My mom is in the kitchen, and I tell her how I’m doing in the first few months of college. Afterward, I bring the mugs upstairs and carefully set them down next to me beside the bed. It doesn’t take long until I see Ares at the window. I run to him, jump on him, and give him a desperate kiss that leaves me breathless. Those lips I love so much greet me with the same desperation. The kiss is passionate and tastes like the words I missed you. Our mouths move together in that perfect synchrony. When we break the kiss, our breath is ragged. His beautiful blue eyes are lost in mine, and I run my fingers over his face to tangle them in his hair and
kiss him again. After a while, we sit in front of the bed, each with a cup of hot chocolate in our hands. It’s starting to snow, and there are little snowflakes floating outside the window. We clink our mugs together in a toast, and I realize it will take a lot more than distance to break what we have. He and I are in a time of change in our lives, but that won’t stop us from being together and getting through it. And I know that, when hardship comes, we will both give 100 percent to the fight. Maybe it will defeat us or maybe we will prevail, only time will tell. Even if it ends at some point, I will be able to say that I fought until the last second, until I couldn’t fight anymore, because I know he will too. We are the witch and the Greek god after all. The one who felt everything, and the one who felt nothing. Now we both feel more than enough. And there, in the silence of my room, with a cup of hot chocolate in one hand and the other intertwined with his, I watch the snow fall through my window.
The End