Track 9 After The Love Has Gone
“After The Love Has Gone”
COLLEGE CLASSES BEGAN after the worst summer of my life, and I was barely aware of them. I was a ghost drifting through lectures with nothing but a heartbeat and the forced need to breathe. Looking back, it was lonely and aching, but at the time, I didn’t feel any of that. I was completely numb.
Lara and Kasey had run off to the University of Illinois, and I never spoke to them again.
I never wanted to. I didn’t know where E ended up, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t any college around me, and Enzo was being the menace he’d always been—reckless and irresponsible.
Staying away from him was easier than I had imagined.
Home was quieter, too. It was just me, Ren, and Mom now. Kat had flown out to California to chase her big dream of making it in Hollywood, and my dad had fought one too many battles and lost, so he was out of the house altogether.
Life didn’t pick up speed quickly. I made it through the first semester in a fog and was genuinely shocked when I passed all my classes with high grades. Maybe that was the perk of my entry level classes—the courses were so easy I didn’t even need my brain.
The spring semester started off better. I was used to being alone at that point. I liked it even. I didn’t miss my friends anymore, and I spent all my extra time with my nose in a book. I truly never would have noticed him if he hadn’t made me.
“Hey. Psst.” The whisper of the guy beside me shocked me into reality one morning. I snapped my head to him, showing he had my attention.
“Do you have a pencil?” He asked from across the row. He smiled politely, and I offered a small grin back as I registered his request. I rummaged through my bag and gave him a pencil. He mouthed, “Thank you,” and that was it.
That was the first day.
Two days later, it was time for psych again, and I took my self-assigned seat in the back of the class. Pencil Guy was there in his seat beside mine, but again, I didn’t notice him.
A few minutes into class, he whispered. “Hey. Pencil?” I looked at him in mock disbelief.
“Sure,” I whispered back, and I passed him a pencil for the second time. He smiled politely and returned to his notes.
By the third week of class, I was offering him a pencil before he even asked. I’d place it on his desk as I walked past to take my seat without even meeting his eyes, just a knowing smirk on my face that complemented his playful grin.
After class one day, he caught up with me to give me back my pencil, something he usually did before we left. I hadn’t noticed he forgot.
“Hey,” he called out, and I turned around. “Sorry. Forgot to give this back to you.” He pointed the pencil at me with an adorable grin, and I took it, slightly amused.
“You can keep it, you know. I have more.”
“Nah, I’d feel too guilty.”
I smiled. “How do you make it through your other classes without a pencil?” I gave him a questioning glare as I took the pencil from his hand.
“Huh.” He considered it. “Good point. Maybe I should keep it after all.” He grabbed the pencil back, and I narrowed my eyes at him with a smirk as I tried to figure him out.
That’s when I noticed him.
He was handsome and tall. Taller than I had realized, since we were usually sitting down.
He had the hint of a five o’clock shadow and scruffy brown hair.
His top lip didn’t match the fullness of the bottom, but his wide smile was perfectly symmetrical.
His teeth were bright white, like he’d never smoked a cigarette or drunk a sip of coffee in his life.
His smile fell to a downward smirk that was endearing, kind of like Freddie Prince Jr. in She’s All That.
Actually, that’s exactly who he looked like, except his eyes were a hazel green with pretty specks of orange and yellow in them.
And he was big and muscular, like he had a spare bedroom at the gym.
“When’s your next class?” he asked.
“Right now. I’m done at two.”
“Me too. I can meet you at the coffee stand in the cafeteria after. Give you your pencil back.”
I didn’t need the pencil back, but I was starting to become entertained by this little game of ours. I wanted to play along a bit longer.
“Sure,” I said with a pursed-lipped grin.
“Cool. See you later…”
“Sydney.”
“Sydney.” He nodded. “I like it.”
“Thank you,” I said through a smile that was more flirtatious than I expected.
“Don’t thank me, thank your mom.”
I laughed at that.
“I’m Jake,” he said, and he held out his hand. “It’s nice to meet you. Pencil free… Sort of.”
I giggled again, tickled by our cute exchange. “Nice to meet you, too.” He held my hand a little too long as he looked into my onyx eyes, and it was the first time in a long time that I didn’t mind.
“See you at two, Sydney,” he said, and he turned to walk away.
“See ya,” I waved, delighted by the little flutter in my belly, the one I’d long forgotten. It was the first touch of sunlight after a long and dreary storm.
But the feeling died away quickly, unwanted reminders surfacing just to make sure I didn’t forget the pain that always trailed behind the joy.
So I didn’t go to the coffee stand. I was tricked out of it by the familiar ache—the one that warns you not to get too close or hope too hard. Because there were consequences now, ones I knew too well.
After the love has gone, something dies inside you, and sometimes you never get it back.
It’s not a loud or sudden kind of death.
It’s slow and soft but hurts just the same.
It’s the sound of your own heart learning how to live without something it never wanted to let go of, and sometimes, that’s not living at all.