Ghost - Throwback

“You are the easiest person to love I have ever met.”

{{user}} confessed one night, in front of a silently crackling fire. She didn't need to embellish her words: it was her most genuine declaration to him.

He remembered how she used to fall asleep on his chest, and he would hold his breath, afraid that the slightest movement would wake her. He surrendered to that stillness for its comfort.

Because he loved her. He would take off his vest before seeing her, just to allow her arms to wrap around him easily. He did things he would never have allowed himself before her. His favorite time was their shared bed: the slow touch, the kisses over each scar, the soft words that called him beautiful when he'd never felt that way. The warm palms running over him, the sweat mingling in a hug that seemed eternal. It was so intimate that sometimes he doubted if it was real or just a dream.

And then, with so much love and heavy glances, how could they pretend they were just friends?

It happened. Indifference, silence, distance. It was she who had walked away from him from one moment to the next. And sitting together now was a challenge. Talking without touching, drowning in what wasn't said. Shame, ego, humiliation, pain, everything mixed together.

“You once said I was easy to love,” Simon said one night. He was about to go to sleep and stopped in his tracks. “I guess I'm easy to forget, too, aren't I?”

He was a grown man; he felt that playing this ridiculous game was pointless. Feeling loved and then let go was as painful as torture.

“I told you from the start. I didn't know how to feel or how to act. It was too much for me,” she said.

“So it was fun to experiment?” Simon replied, his voice firm but heavy with everything that remained between them. He sighed dryly. “You have to grow up.”