Love is like a Flower

"Love is like a flower, delicate, fragile, ephemeral. But perfect, without even trying to be."

She turned back to look at him, offered a small smile, then turned back into the sunset and let the flower get caught in the wind.

He didn't know what to say, he was breathtaken by her beauty. He didn't know why she had called him here, didn't know why her eyes seemed so sad. He just knew he wanted to reach out to her, pull her back from the faraway place she had reached, and hold her to him for forever. He hated himself that he could not say this out loud.

"You told me once, that love was like a disease. Infecting a person, and spreading secretly and quietly. You said it consumes people, dessicates them until they're something else. And somehow they come out of it better. Bettered by love." She paused, glanced down, fingered the ribbon on her dress. "Back then I didn't understand, but I think I do now."

His heart skipped a beat. Could she have finally guessed his secret? Could she finally understand the passion that he had been harboring in his heart for so long, since their childhood together? Could it be, that she loved him?

She raised her eyes up to him, her pure, beautiful, big brown eyes. "I understand, because I love someone now. A man who is beautiful, who is dear to me, whom I dream about every night. I love a man who is so integrated into me that I am nothing without him. I am in love with a man, who could never guess how I truly feel..." She broke off, sobbed a dry sob, and then composed herself again. "That's why I called you here, I have to say goodbye. I can't keep living here with you so close, knowing you'll never lo-"

"Stop!" Henry stammered. "Just stop right there. What do you mean, say goodbye?"

"Don't you see? It's you I love, but you don't love me, you never will, and I can't take-" She stopped, seeing the stricken look on his face.

"What makes you think I don't love you?" he whispered.

"What about that girl.."

"What girl? Beth, how could I love anyone BUT you. You have been there my entire life, by my side. I can't imagine continuing my life without you. Beth, I love you!"

There, he had said it. At long last, after 20 years of growing up together, of hiding his secret amorous feelings, he had announced it to her. He watched her reaction, scared, but also kind of relieved...

"Y-you do?" Beth stammered. Henry nodded. "B-but what about-"

"No one else matters to me Beth, you're the only woman I love"

They were both silent.

"Do you feel the same way, Beth? Do you really love me?"

She looked up, and her eyes were filled with tears. His heart broke, there was a whooshing in his ears as he saw her shake her head. He looked down, staring furiously at the ground.

"How can you doubt me? How can you doubt that I love you?!"

He looked back up at her and she was smiling, and then he was smiling, and they were in each others arms. He whispered into her ears "I love you Beth, I love you I love you I love you. I've waited 20 years to say this, and I'm not going to stop now. Oh Beth, I love you" and she whispered back "I love you, too, Henry. I love you too." And the two of them stood there in the sunset, wrapped in one another's embrace.

And the flower that had been carried off by the wind, returned unnoticed, and slipped into the shadows around them.