Someone I Used to Know - By Blakney Francis Page 0,112

stubbornly repeated.

“I just told you she’s gone. Why does it matter who she is?”

Aurelia huffed. I pitied little Casey. I could only imagine the lifetime of irritated huffs that waited for that little girl.

“It matters because every fool in your generation is convinced they’re in love. You all have single handedly destroyed the novelty of God’s most rare and extraordinary gift with your fickle ways…How am I supposed to know if you really love her, if I don’t know who she is through your eyes?”

“Adley Adair,” I said her name for the first time in months, the words bitter and fresh at the same time. “Her name is Adley Adair.”

She gave me a look that clearly said that wasn’t going to be enough.

“She’s horrible, really.” I stared down into swirling brown colors inside my teacup. “She has this whole martyr complex. It’s unbelievably annoying. There is no in-between with her, something is either right or it’s wrong; no gray, only black and white. And she can be so wrong sometimes – most times, actually – but she can’t see it, not until it’s on her terms. It drives me crazy. She drives me crazy.”

“Well, you definitely love her,” she stated plainly.

My jaw dropped. “How can you say that after everything I’ve just said? I’m not even sure I love her anymore.”

“You see her for who she really is, past all the disillusions most people get tangled up in when they think they are falling in love. You accept her flaws, and you love her just as much because of them as you do in spite of them.”

“How can you know that?”

She took my cup away from me so I had no choice but to look at her. I felt like a five-year-old getting their racecar snatched because they wouldn’t pay attention.

“I don’t…but you do. That’s why you’re sitting here with me right now…You’re practically begging me to tell you to go get her, to not give up, to make her see that she’s in love with you too. You’re just looking for an excuse to tear out that door and chase her down.”

“I am not!” I couldn’t possibly be so pathetic. “Is that what you think I should do?”

“No.”

“No?”

“If you love someone then you should set them free.”

My face pinched so tightly I almost couldn’t see. “I came to you because I wanted real advice, and I knew you wouldn’t bullshit me. I don’t want a cliché.”

“There is a reason that sayings become cliché, Declan,” she scolded, sounding exactly like what I imagined a grandmother would sound like. I’d never had any of my own. My mother’s parents were estranged, and my father’s were long dead by the time I was born. “People repeat them over and over again because they’re true.”

“You think I should just stop loving her?”

It was her turn to narrow her eyes at me in an almost glare. “If you can just ‘stop’ loving her, then you never really loved her at all. Love doesn’t work that way. If you ever truly love someone, then it never goes away. It can become something else. There are all different sorts of love. It can even become hate – a thin line and all that –And, really, hate is just another kind of caring.”

“So if I love her, I will set her free and just trust that, eventually, she’ll come back to me?” I was trying not to play the role of a petulant child, but she was right; she hadn’t told me anything I wanted to hear.

“That’s one part of the cliché that I have to admit, I don’t always agree with…The point isn’t that you’re letting her go so she’ll come back to you. The point is you love her more than your own selfish desires. You love her enough to let her have her own definition of what your love meant. People can love each other without it meaning that they’re meant to be. I’m sure you’ve seen love like that before.”

I had.

Cam and Adley loved each other like that. I wanted her to be mine – just mine – but a piece of her would always be his, some part of her would always love him. They weren’t meant to be together though. Not anymore. But it didn’t mean they stopped loving each other either.

Maybe, that was all that was meant for Adley and me, too.

Maybe that was just who she was. She was the girl who went through life picking up pieces of