You've been all over the country [your father moves a lot], seen everything there is to see in America-it would surprise you if there was a spot that you hadn't laid your eyes upon-and yet you'll always come back to him. It doesn't matter if you have to get down on your knees and beg him to take you back and love you for just a little while, until you return and repeat the process, and it doesn't matter if you have to plead with your father to just visit the town once in a while, even if it's for a few days and you're across the country. They both listen to you anyway.

Now, the house is silent, his breaths quiet. There's a good foot or so between your naked back and his bare chest, but his hand still rests on your hipbone like it's always belonged there and his heartbeat isn't anywhere near you. You would have been frightened, except for the fact where you've become accustomed to the silence of him and everything related to him.

: : : :

You remember falling in love with him for the first time [because there's been many times, that you're sure of].

It had been winter, you were fourteen and he was fifteen and he had been so scrawny that when you laid your hands on his shoulders, bones dug into your palms. You had thought of him as something akin to a character from a cliche novel; an orphan, lonely, miserable, so that only meant that you had to be the one to save and protect him, except he had already had a character like that.

She had been a doll faced thing, with sad eyes and an even sadder smile, and then she met a boy who taught her what tequila tasted like and had wrapped his arm around her lithe shoulders while promising her he would take her away from the town you all grew up in.

You remember falling in love with him for the first time, but you will always remember Elana and Ace and how they shared a love like Romeo and Juliet, complete with tragic endings and tears and the feeling of losing someone so important to you that you can barely live anymore.

: : : : 

When you are somewhere else, you will always think of his shoulder blades and his hands and his smile and his eyes, but his voice always fades fast from your memory if you aren't around him for even just a few hours, and sometimes you wonder if this is what addiction feels like.

: : : :

When a lizard loses their tail, they can grow it back.

You can't do that, but you hope that it might work with your heart.

: : : :

Just like when his voice vanishes from your mind, he's gone when you wake up to a cool bed and even cooler skin due to the open window at the far side of the room.

You read a novel once [something you rarely do because you can never carry out anything without thinking of him] about a boy coming in through a window, about him coming back after four years before disappearing again, about him leaving her abandoned in the city wall's ruins, but she always opened her windows every night, because she was so sure he would return [and maybe he did].

You decide you can put up with the cold for awhile.

: : : :

He doesn't come back.