Travis didn’t want to be at this work party. He was only here because of her. He’d left his career and moved across the country for her, but this wasn’t what he had imagined.

He hated the people that fawned over her and the roses she curled into her hair to compliment her skin-flaunting dresses. He wasn’t jealous, but he knew they were. He could see it in their fake smiles and cheesy toasts, and in the way they interrupted each other to be in  the spotlight of her beautiful eyes – the eyes that doted on you like warm moonlight.

Travis sipped at a cocktail and leaned in a doorway to watch the vultures circle them. “I do” seemed so long ago, he thought. He’d loved her owlish face and soft feathery words long before her angelic debut. Now “in sickness and in health” looked like an endless procession of guest appearances and parties where he stood in the corner and turned down the surprisingly common offers of cocaine. He followed because he could tell by the way she swaggered into every room that she thrived on this. He wanted her to be happy.

Deafening laughter at something she said rang in his ears. He wondered regretfully when he’d stopped listening to her jokes. He wished they could go back to a simpler time: back to when she’d snuck through his window after the parents had gone to bed; back to when holding hands seemed to stop the world from spinning; back to when she’d told him that seeing him always made the sky seem bluer.

“Hey, you’re Avalon’s husband, right?” a suited stranger accosted him. Travis nodded and tried to smile above the noise. “She was great, right? What do you do?”

“I draw comics,” Travis said, but he doubted the man heard him. He was too busy downing his drink. Travis wasn’t offended; he was just nostalgic, out of place, and sad that in the ten years they had been doing this she had never asked if he was happy too.

“You’re a comic?” the man belched, clearly having misheard him. “Tell us a joke then. Hey, hey, everybody!” the man yelled to the room, and Travis felt his eyes widen in fright. He moved to drop his glass on a table before correcting the man but missed. The room went silent in time to listen as his glass shattered against the hardwood floor.

The cannibalistic quiet burned in his chest as if he’d been cut by the glass. But he would have preferred that to his wife’s disappointed glare from the center of the room. He bent down to sweep up the pieces, ignoring the warning of a nearby onlooker. Pain sliced up his fingers, and the scent of blood mixed with the sugar and perfume. He glanced up in time to watch Avalon turn away from the embarrassment he had become. He straightened in an anxious panic and fled out the door into the cold night air.

No-one stopped him.

He was only a few steps from their car before the fog in his head cooled enough for him to wonder why he’d raced outside instead of to the bathroom. He closed his eyes and told himself to breathe, even as his hand trembled and his heart ached. He glanced over his shoulder to see an empty walkway behind him. Part of him had hoped she would follow and reassure him that everything was fine. But she hadn’t.

He swore quietly because he knew it was all his fault. He balled his bloodied hand into an angry fist and shook it at the crescent moon. His vision blurred with heartbroken tears, and he let out a deep painful breath. There were no stars, but the sky stretched out in a fathomless magnificence. It was empty – so empty – and Travis realized what he needed: he needed to leave.

He took a step back towards the house, intent on telling her. He stopped as a chill shook him. Would he be able to leave if he went back in? Would she let him? Would she even care? He returned to the car and crawled behind the wheel. Three deep breaths later, he had decided he would call her or write her a beautiful letter explaining why.

He drove into the night, windows down, and breathed the fresh clean air. He stared up at the cloudless night and wondered if it had ever looked so blue.

Another Image Worth A Thousand Words