"It's always been that way, it seems

One love begins, one comes undone"

✦

Harry and I were hanging out in his thrift store. The place was stocked with second hand items and it would be opening soon.

In the background he had kept a record playing, choosing carefully from his large vinyl collection which he used in the meantime before they sold.

"I want to play you a song," he said. "It reminded me of you."

He stood up from the couch and took out a particularly battered looking case, sliding the record from it and setting it up.

"It's called 'I Lost Something in the Hills' by Sibylle Baier. I stumbled across the album, Colour Green, the other day," he explained.

Guitar notes then began to pluck at the silence before a deeper woman's voice began to sing.

Every time I shed tears

In the last past years

When I pass through the hills

Oh, what images return

Oh, I yearn

For the roots of the woods

That origin of all my strong and strange moods

I lost something in the hills

I lost something in the hills

I grew up in declivities

Others grow up in cities

Where first love and soul takes rise

There where times in my life

When I felt mad and deprived

And only the slopes gave me hope

When I pass through the leg high grass, I shall die

Under the jasmine, I shall die

In the elder tree

I need not try to prepare for a new coming day

Where is it that fills the deepness I feel?

You will say I'm not Robin the Hood

But how could I hide from top to foot

That I lost something in the hills

I lost something in the hills

Oh, I lost something in the hills

Now I lean on my window sill

And I cry, though it's silly

And I'm dreaming of off and away

Oh, I know further west these hills exist

Marked by apple trees

Marked by a straight brook

That leads me wherever I want it to

Well I lost something in the hills

I lost something in the hills

Oh, I lost something in the hills

I had frozen as the lyrics rolled smoothly off the sorrowful woman's tongue. Harry hadn't moved either, his back facing me as he leant over the record player, taking the vinyl off now that the song had finished.

The song lulled us into an unsure atmosphere. Harry was muzzled by the idea of my offense, I was sure, and I was unable to conceive a response. Why did that remind him of me?

"Harry?"

"Evdoxia."

I bit my lip, figuring I should ask. "Why did the song remind you of me?"

He finally turned around, his features drooped in an expression of condolence. "You're a sad song," he whimpered, the lack of finality in how he pronounced "song" hinting that there was greater reason.

The statement was exactly what he had said last night at my art studio. As this was Harry, I think that the wording was simply the prettiest wrapping he could find to express his thoughts; in divulging them without censor, they wouldn't be as dainty and attractive.

"Be honest," I pleaded. I was doing that a lot lately, begging for the truth.

"You've trekked up many hills, Evdoxia. And you left something at the summit of each one. I believe you're halfway up a steep one now—with only so many pieces left to abandon,"

"But please, don't head west, however enticing it is. Don't go where the sun sets." Let yourself live in the light.

I'd plan your funeral, Evdoxia. He meant what he said. He just didn't want to prove it.

"Harry," I said meekly, not sure of what else to say.

"There's a warm, dry leeward side to every mountain. You just have to surpass the peak to get there," he continued.

"And take with me what to traipse the next one?"

"Who says there is one? You can only see what's ahead once you reach that summit. It's up to you what you make your way down towards."

"Have you ever been in love, Harry?" It was a rhetorical question for I knew of the years he's spent with Rose. But, I needed to explain the hideous nature of this particular hill.

To my surprise, he shook his head and his face disguised all emotion. Do you love yourself? No.

"Maybe, but in retrospect maybe not," he spoke up. "I can't say I know how it all works to be fair."

"In what terms?"

His eyes narrowed in contemplation and his fingers threaded through his hair. "Reciprocation."

I didn't particularly understand his relationship with Rose. If he hadn't been confident in his love for her or her love for him, why would he be with her for multiple years?

"How would you describe love?" I asked for insight.

"I suppose as Edith Wharton had wrote, 'each time you happen to me all over again.'"

"What does that mean to you?"

"Love is a constant inevitable relapse; it's the ability for the one you love to enable a surge of any given emotion whether that's through their sight, scent, belongings, or whatever it may be that you associate them with."

I sunk from the couch to the floor, running my hand over the expanse of Bear's back, feeling his spine for he was becoming sickly. Harry had brought him over earlier to get him out of the house.

I didn't know what exactly to say right away for my only instinct was to ask if Rose could do so for him, but that was too far to push. Also, his original answer was enough evidence to clue that his answer would be no.

"But why? I agree with you—but why? Why do we give people this power of emotional control; why do we love them?" And why do we not?

"We love people because we find that they absorbed every sense of our reality until we ourselves have morphed into a version in which they are reflected. Love is encapsulating this person in a cavity of your heart to help it keep beating. And we love them because we admire them and how their influence has supported our own function."

Matthew didn't simply become an accessory to aid in my blood flow, it seemed as if he was the catalyst to start and keep it pumping after my mom left. With the remnants I had left of him stored in my chest, blood still circulated throughout my body, but it was slow and on the cusp of solidifying.

"Someone once told me it shouldn't be impossible to live without someone you love, but that's the only kind of love I've ever come to know." That's reliance. "In retrospect, maybe I've never been in love either."

"You don't have to downplay your relationship because of how it aged. Some love is mortal, meant to be nothing more than a hill you pass through. Traveling slowly only reinforces the hardships of the climb."

Matthew and I's love had to be of that mortal kind. It was more so founded on the mutual need for an escape than infatuation. I was worth nothing mentally and Matthew was worth nothing physically. I needed out of my mind and Matthew needed out of his family. In finding each other we found everything we needed. A home.

Though, I had always been more needy, savagely desperate to feel wanted. And that was why that first winter I was warm and he was cold; I was dead soil begging to grow life, absorbing his nutrients in hopes to reek my own harvest the next season. I had sucked all the fertility from him I could but in the end it wasn't enough to sustain and share and we both became stagnant—with slow coursing blood.

"Mortality," I said slowly, stretching it out on my tongue to make it flimsy, but it stayed intact without a single crease.

As I spoke I glanced to the dog, slumped beside me. His breaths were labored and loud, not quite as loud as the watch but only a few decibels off from the puzzle. He was uncomfortable here but I knew he was uncomfortable anywhere with his deteriorating lungs and scraggly body.

Harry was looking at him as well with a wistful expression.

"Is he sick?" I asked.

"Yeah. Hasn't got much left in him," he sighed.

It was clear that Bear was on his deathbed. He walked like he was dragging coals and his every position was one of discomfort. He was practically skin and bones too.

"How old is he?"

"Six."

"He aged so quickly in last few months," he added. "His appetite and energy just diminished and now all movement pains him."

"How long have you had him?"

"Since he was a puppy. I rescued him from an abusive home. He was always so playful and happy; so receptive to love. It's hard to watch him come to this."

I frowned, repeating under my breath, "mortality."

Harry strolled over to the desk with the cash register. As I watched him do so, I spotted the mosaic pot I had given him there.

I joined him near the desk, pointing my finger at it. "The pot."

"Your pot," he reiterated, the topic of Bear buried as he smiled brightly.

It was empty, making it somewhat out of place on display. "Are you gonna put a plant in it?"

"Yeah, I want to find the perfect one first."

"What's your favorite?"

"Lilacs," he said, concentrating on my face. "They're beautiful."

"You should put some in there then," I suggested.

He nodded. "I will."

I scrunched up my nose. "On the topic of flowers, I don't think Rose likes me very much."

His eyebrows furrowed. "Why would you say that?"

"Whenever I see her she seems very withdrawn. I think she finds my presence very unpleasant."

I don't want to be quick to call it jealousy of Harry and I's friendship, but something is off when it comes to her approach to me.

"She's pretty shy," he shrugged.

I parted my lips to speak but stopped myself from my immediate reaction. "Maybe," I agreed, "I bet she's great though."

His face was unreadable for a second and it's form lost its shape. A pretty shell.

"Harry?"

"Evdoxia."

"Why don't you love yourself?"

After he had said no, I couldn't get the thought out of my head. Why, why, why?

"You first."

I was scared to open up to Harry. I didn't want my happy Harry to leave.

"Because of my past," I said, trying to be as vague as possible.

"Because of what you've done?" He inquired.

"What others have done—well what I've done to make them do those things."

He breathed in through his nostrils and exhaled loudly through his mouth. "These things that you've supposedly done are the same things you apologize for, no?"

I nodded.

"So things you most likely never needed to apologize for—the situations of which you did nothing wrong. But yet you, Evdoxia, find yourself apologizing."

I bit my lip. "You can't assume that."

He hesitated to speak.

"Say it. Say whatever's on the tip of your tongue."

"I had noticed something," he began.

"Mhm," I encouraged.

"Once we hang out after there's been a period of time between when we were last together, you often find something to apologize for."

"I don't understand."

"It's like you have the ailments to grow, but this weed keeps sprouting to starve you of them. So you stay inert."

But I'm the weed; I'm the nutrient thief. I destined Matt and Ev wilt. And I'd have to wait to see if it could resurrect or if it was indeed mortal.

"Everything's at a standstill right now," I confessed. "It's not only me, it's my life and many things that make it up."

I pulled my lips into my mouth, coming to terms with the reality of the present. I had thought I had stopped waiting a while ago. But I'm not sure that phase had really ended, if anything the waiting evolved to having even higher stakes.

"Are you waiting or are you more so transfixed?"

I frowned, not directly replying. "Um, enough of me. Your turn."

"I don't love myself because of what I've done to people who don't love themselves. What I've done to make them not love themselves."

Harry was never someone I could imagine remotely hurting someone. Him and his sweet words were as smooth and soft as velvet.

"I don't believe that," I said. "Also, it's slightly hypocritical."

"I know," he laughed unhumorously. "I've made poorly aging decisions. I wish I'd caked them with sunscreen so they wouldn't have burnt and wrinkled in the sun."

My frown lessened but the play on words wasn't enough to disguise the tone as he may have intended.

"And it's not a matter of indirect influence, it's a matter of my choices directly hurting someone," he continued, differentiating between our cases.

"Did you make these choices with the objective to harm?" I asked.

"No," he fired. "Though everything changed and my decisions couldn't last peacefully when put to the test in a new realm."

"Then that's no reason to not love yourself. If you didn't hurt purposefully, you can't harbor all this guilt because how were you to know how things would turn out, right?"

He pursed his lips. "But they weren't decisions really, they were promises. And promises shouldn't expire as I let them."

Will you, Matthew, cherish Evdoxia as your lawful wedded wfie, protecting her, and tending to her needs through illness and disappointment? I will.

"A promise is as much of a hill as love can be. And as you said, when you reach that peak and have an overview of what could come, things change."

He smiled limply for a moment. "That's fair. But it's important what you do at that peak and how you handle what you foresee, in the context of both where you head and the road you take. Not only can you sacrifice yourself as you go, but you can sacrifice others too in the intervention of their own path."

Harry's words had truth to them, but the manner in which he expressed his feelings concealed pivotal details. The grey truth. What he meant exactly by intersecting paths and sacrifice was not entirely clear.

I was aware that he said things as prettily as possible and in doing so manipulated his bare thoughts, but I couldn't understand why. And I was also curious how it affected other aspects of his life.

Resolute to never offend, he had to be subconsciously in fear of hurting people; always teetering on the edge of negativity as if only speaking optimistically would keep everything itself positive. But it doesn't. Terrible things don't deserve flattery, so what hideousness was he veiling with graciousness—with neutrality?

Harry was made up of colors only butterflies could see. And while the common eye may not capture the true range of beauty he offered, it also may not capture his true adversities. His broken promises.

"Mortality."

⊹ ⊹ ⊹

When I came home to the car in the driveway I was surprised. I was surprised further to find Matthew in the laundry room with no shirt on, slamming the washer door shut.

I watched him as he waited for the whir of chugging water to begin and as his posture relaxed.

"Hey," I said.

His head whipped to the side. "Hey, Ev."

"What's the rush?"

He struggled to speak.

I walked up to him so we were barley a foot apart. He smelt like sweet, soapy citrus. Orange blossom.

I took a step back. "If you were gonna see her you shouldn't have fucking quit."

Matthew, do you love Evdoxia willingly and completely, withholding nothing? Will you protect her, and give her your deepest considerations of her feelings, desires and needs? I will.

I spun around and hurried up the stairs. His footsteps followed me but I made it to the bathroom and forefully shut the door and locked it before he could enter.

His fists pounding on the door shook my body as I slide down to the floor with my back leant against it.

"Ev!" He hollered. "I'm sorry! Let me explain!"

I knocked right back with the force of my head, my calmer demeanor crippled into snotty sobs. It's odd how I surmised he still saw Melly yet was unaffected, but as soon as I was met with concrete evidence I was ravaged to this.

I'm not sure how long the cycle of him slamming his fits and rattling the wood and then jiggling the handle repeated to the sound of my cries before it all went silent. And he was done and I was staring at the grout between the tiles sniffling occasionally but not blinking—just staring and thinking about nothing, maybe my exhaustion.

I waited until I harnessed the energy to move to the guest bedroom. Although, upon opening the door a weight came with it. Half-asleep, Matthew jolted up as I disrupted his position.

He was quick to match me on my feet, his height allowing him to tower over me slightly.

"Move out of the way," I sighed. My eyes were raw and burning, my nostrils enflamed.

The space between his eyebrows creased. "I didn't touch her, okay?"

"You smell like her."

"I know," he exhaled, his own irritated, bloodshot eyes watering.

"So you touched her, okay?" I said defeatedly.

"I—I didn't, not in that way."

I shook my head. "Then in what way?"

"We hugged but I swear that was it."

"That was it?" I repeated, my low volume raising to a normal level. "That was it? You shouldn't have even met with her, I really don't understand what there is to defend. Whether you hugged or kissed or had sex, you were breathing the same air of the same room and that's already too much."

"Ev, I had to see her."

"Why?"

"...I can't say." His rustled hair fell farther forward, casting a shadow over his eyes.

"Are you gonna have to see her again?" I asked, half sarcastically.

"Maybe," he whispered, his chin dropping.

I sucked my lips into my mouth. "What am I supposed to do with this? You throw a curve at me and as I try to digest it, you force feed me another."

He didn't answer, looking to the ground.

"I thought we were trying to amend this—to fall in love. That was your idea. And I wanted to, but I needed time,"

"And I'm confused," I croaked. "Because I do love you. And I don't need to fall in love. But you do. You do."

Do you, Matthew, welcome Evdoxia as your wife, offering her your love and encouragement, your trust and respect, as together you create your future? I do.

He faced me, reaching up to smear away a tear on my cheek. His ring was cold as it touched, numbing the heat of the area so it felt like decayed flesh.

"Do you really, Ev? Should you?"

"I don't know." Mortality.

Hey guys! I have sm on my plate rn

but I hope by November things will

clear up a little bit. I have no idea whenI'll do my best to try to make it no longer

than two weeks! I hope you enjoyed

this chapter, it was very Harry-yyy :)

peace out ☺