A year and a day (rewrite)

'Were you two ever in love?' he asks one day, draped over the cushions of my sofa in the living room. I am standing with my back to him, pouring myself a glass of something that smells rather like fudge, and my hands shake and my fingers grasp just a little too hard on the fragile glass. All I can think then is  'how dare you of all people ask me that'.1

Silently, I answer 'I was.’ 2

‘Though, I can’t speak for him.'3

There are so many things I wonder. Did he wake you up as well, by blowing softly in your ear in the morning? Did he continue to drink the orange juice straight from the bottle even after he moved in with you, like he did with me? And, most of all, I wonder: did it make you love him even more, like it did to me?4

This is what I know:5

Everything was silent the day we went our separate ways (meaning, the day you swept him off his feat and into your waiting Cabriolet). It was as though even the sound had been packed into those cardboard boxes, stuffed between his pillow and cassette player. 6

(Yes, I know that I am bitter, but I let myself be.)7

Yet, now that you are here, that you are stretched out on my couch, that you drink fudged liquor 'till the late hours of the night, I wonder if I ever really noticed the absence before now. In a higher sense of the word, he never left at all. 8

After the incident, it is as though his presence is even stronger, and now that two of his lovers are gathered in the same building, I can practically see him standing out there, in the middle of the floor.9

He’s now moved to sit on the armrest where you rest your head since it started to feel too heavy to hold up. I can pretend to feel his ghostly fingertips moving up and down my spine, and I drop the bottle, spilling it’s precious content. 10

‘Dear Jacques, how I hate you’ I say. You don’t even have the decency to be surprised. I guess I’m not as good at hiding my grudges anymore. 11

‘How I hate you for taking him away from me.’12

You stare, and replies:13

‘It was not I who got him ill.’14