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“Henry...what happened? Is it me? I know I'm a terrible cook, but could you at least look at me? I really tried to follow the recipe, and I don’t think it turned out that bad...right?”
For the first time this evening, Henry’s eyes left the untouched food on his plate. The scraping of the fork against the porcelain stopped and he looked at Elizabeth. They had been dating for almost two years. He had never felt so deeply for anyone before. Leaving her would be the hardest thing he had ever done in his entire life. Henry felt his heart beating in his chest. He had been dreading this day from the moment he met her. He knew what joining the ROTC meant, but back then he didn’t know Elizabeth yet. He thought leaving everything behind would be easy. He wasn’t a popular guy and couldn’t imagine that any girl, especially as beautiful and intelligent as his girlfriend, would even look at him.
But that one rainy autumn day, his last year of college, she came running into his Middle East Politics and Religion class ten minutes late. The water was dripping from her long blonde hair onto the floor, her oversized sweatshirt was soaked and she was wearing the most ridiculous pink rain boots.
That was when he fell in love.
Elizabeth was just a college freshman at that time and he didn’t only fall in love with her long legs and gorgeous blonde hair, but also with her incredible mind and wit.
—
“Elizabeth...I-I'm so sorry.” It was now or never, he was looking into her ocean blue eyes.
“I, I can’t do this...it’s over.”
Elizabeth’s mouth was agape, she furrowed one of her brows and tilted her head slightly. The material of the dangling golden earrings that she had specifically chosen for their dinner tonight caught the light of the ceiling lamp, sparking, while swaying slightly from the sudden movement.
“You’re kidding, right?” A chuckle escaped her mouth, as she was trying to understand what Henry just said. Her eyes began to burn, but she blinked the tears away. Her boyfriend just sat there in silence. He didn’t look at her. She always thought this meant something to him, to them.
Disappointment filled her heart and the sadness turned into rage. Was he really that cold? Did her love really mean so little to him? She thought he knew how long it took her to open up to him, hell, she told him about her parents, and now this. Her knuckles turned white as she hit the table with her fist, causing the dishes to shake and clink loudly.
“For god’s sake, would you just say something!”
Elizabeth stood up, pacing along the little dining room of the apartment they shared. Silence.
“Leave.” Still no reaction at all. The tears had now made their way down to her cheeks.
“LEAVE!” Henry flinched at the sound of her voice, he could hear the pain and sudden hostility in the way she spoke and it scared him. He immediately grabbed his coat and left the apartment.
Henry was in trance, the cold November air made his skin burn, when he walked along the street, not knowing where to go. What had he expected? He just broke up with her, without any reasonable explanation. Of course she would be hurt, angry and disappointed. He felt all those emotions as well. But he also felt frustration. He was frustrated about his own cowardice and lack of bravery. Why didn’t he have the courage to talk to her?
He just ran away from his problems, as always.
Henry had almost made it down the street, when the tarmac seemed to collapse underneath his feet. At first, he thought it was him hallucinating. The last few minutes had been a blur inside his mind. Then, once it had stopped, the lights inside the houses around him turned on and he heard people shouting.
Elizabeth.
He never ran faster in his life. The whole world seemed to come to a halt and when he found himself standing in front of their apartment, scrambling for his keys, he realized that he couldn’t live without Elizabeth. He immediately went inside, once he had unlocked the door, and started searching for her.
“Elizabeth! ELIZABETH! are you alright?”
The panic began to rise, when he couldn’t find her in the living room, dining room or the kitchen. God, all of this was his fault. Then he saw light coming from the direction of the bathroom door. He breathed a sigh of relief and lightly knocked on the door.
“Liz? I-It’s me, Henry. Are you ok?”
He found her sitting on the bathroom floor, looking up at him with puffy eyes. She was pressing a towel onto the palm of her hand that slowly started to turn red.
“What happened? Come on, let’s get you to the hospital. You’re bleeding. You might need stitches.”
Henry got down onto his knees and carefully got closer to Elizabeth.
“Can I? I mean—”
She looked up at him and their eyes connected.
“Shit. Elizabeth, that looks pretty deep.” He awkwardly tried to inspect her wound without touching her, the events of that evening were still playing in both their minds.
“Do you think you’ll be able to walk? We should really let someone look at it.”
Defeated from the pain and exhaustion, Elizabeth got up. The rejection was clearly visible in her distance to Henry, but she eventually let him drive her to the hospital. The entire car ride was silent. Both of them still hadn’t quite made sense of the events before the earthquake yet.
“Why?”
Elizabeth whispered quietly as they sat in the waiting room of the Emergency Department.
Henry swallowed. He didn’t know how to answer, so he decided to go with the truth. Something he should have done in the beginning.
“I-I am leaving tomorrow, my plane goes at 6:30...I just didn’t want you to worry about me. It sounds stupid, I know. But when I thought that the world was ending...I mean, when the earthquake happened, I realized that I couldn’t live without you. If something serious had happened to you, I would have never been able to look at myself again. I love you so much Elizabeth Adams. I hope you’ll forgive me one day.”