I think, deep down in the dark recess of my mind, that I knew.

I was impulsive and hyper, such the opposite of you, I doubt we were actually meant to end up together in the end. Yet it still didn’t stop us from sharing a bed for over a year.

Some of my best memories take place in that bed. I remember the way your arms would always wrap around mine in your sleep. The way you’d sometimes just hold me. Of course usually when that happened our nearness to each other would be realised and we’d be going at it again. I remember the way your hand felt like it caressed every last inch of my body as we made love.

We weren’t stonewall and teflon, we were Michael and Maria, and I believed we would last forever.

It’s a child’s dream that – forever. Forever isn’t real. Not even Max and Liz and their soulmate love got forever, they drew apart when Liz left for college. Yet, despite that, I thought we had forever. I thought we were stronger than that.

But then you left me.

I cried and cried. Liz told me later that I was inconsolable. Who knows, maybe I was – I’ve never felt worse in my life than I did then. And Liz seemed almost inconsolable when her and Max broke up and, to me at least, your leaving was so much worse than that.

Back at the beginning I never thought I could live with you and your irritating ways. Now I realise that the truth is I can’t live without you.

My heart is empty. Your leaving has created a void no one else could ever fill. A space as wide as a galaxy left by my beloved space boy.

Sometimes I write you letters but I could never send one. You shouldn’t be bothered by me and my petty insecurities now. You left me. And now I must live with that. It’s my fault that I let you have my heart. My fault that my heart is now lying on the cold concrete floor at my feet, shattered.

Shattered into so many pieces that I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to repair it. Anyone but you that is.

I love you so much. I never once regretted loving you. I know I never will.

I remember the first time you said you loved me, right before leaving to find your destiny. I thought that was painful, yet nowhere near as much as this is.

I remember the day we celebrated the fact that we were finally free of high school, not long after graduation. I remember eating the picnic you made us, the way you pushed me back on the grass as you lips devoured mine, hands pulling at each other’s clothes. Even our best friends stumbling upon us right when we were… well, you know, doesn’t make that day any less perfect. It was one of the best days of my life.

My heart, so full of love for you, was shattered only a month later. I still don’t understand why.

I know what you’d say – that it was inevitable. That still doesn’t change anything. Inevitable doesn’t give you any reason to leave me all alone.

I told you my fears, but you brushed them away. But your reassurances were all lies.

I don’t cry every time I think of you now, so I guess that’s an improvement. I hate him more than anything though.

I remember that day. I remember the gentle breeze in my hair as I laughed, wrapping my arms tightly around your waist as the motorbike engine roared to life. Liz took a photo of us the right before we left – it sits beside what used to be our bed, leaning against the picture of us at graduation that you put there. You’re laughing too. Even Isabel told me, through tears, how in love we looked right then.

I remember the few moments before. The tarmac racing past below us, the wind blowing in my face as I hung on tightly to you, the love of my life.

I remember us turning the corner. The screeching of brakes as we came to head with an oncoming car driving on the wrong side of the road. Sometimes, when I’m lying bed, I can still feel the impact as we collided.

You were hurt worse than I but you used your powers to heal me, everything but this cut above my eyebrow. I don’t care about that. This scar reminds me of you.

That was the first and only time you ever healed someone. I never even knew you could.

Maybe if you’d saved your powers you would have survived, I don’t know. All I know was that the last words you ever said were ‘I love you Maria’, just as I know that my last words to you were ‘I’ll always love you Michael.’

Yes, I remember that day. It was the worst day of my life.

It was the day I had to learn to live without you.

The End