i loved you once

a short story of hurt and angsty, elaborate monologues

Rooms in New York (1932) by Edward Hopper

overture

In the last quarter of 2021, I had watched one of Mike Flanagan’s best TV shows—Midnight Mass.

Now, if you know me personally or have been following me for a number of years, then this comes as no surprise to you. I was obsessed with that show, and even more so with the main character. The priest. The vampire priest, John Pruitt (Father Paul). Hamish Linklater put his everything into that role, and it showed.

I loved everything about that show.

But then again I loved (and will continue to love) everything that Mike Flanagan directed. Maybe I’m biased, but he is a magnificent figure in the horror scene. Him and Kate Siegel are gems in this category of the industry, and if you’re still sleeping on them, this is your sign to wake up.

As always, I constantly draw inspiration from other people’s works, as one always does.

Art imitates art, after all. If it isn’t a song, it’s a gut-wrenching scene from a movie or TV show or a single impactful line or compelling paragraph from a book. It’s someone else’s melancholic poetry. A sentence that nonchalantly escaped your friend’s mouth while you’re buying groceries together in a cramped Lotus’s.

You never know when inspiration and idea would strike.

Worse is when they would strike in the shower and you find yourself tiptoeing out of the bathroom to write it down in your notebook with dampened hands because you have the memory of a goldfish and the gears of your mind move faster than your feet.

This short story that I’m about to share with you was written sometime in early 2022, if I’m not mistaken. It was heavily inspired by Erin’s monologue in Midnight Mass. A nearly five-minute monologue that had me enraptured from the very start.

The topic of the monologue is so repugnant and revolting and volatile. Like my mind. Like my fleeting thoughts. I still think of the monologue sometimes, because the writing is so beautiful and detailed. I recommend you watch it too.

So here is my short story, called I Loved You Once, which was written heavily inspired by this scene. Except, instead of life and death, I put it into a much easier scenario—a man who cheated on his lover. So simple, so overused and overdone and will continue to be done by many human beings until the earth finally shatters.

It’s merely over 1,300 words, but I hope you swallow the impact of their words in your soul regardless of their pretentiousness or heartbreak that you may not feel.

I am incapable of writing stories that are not tragic and consumed by angst. So you know what to expect of me.

I am that I am.

Enjoy.

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i loved you once, by nadiah zakaria

Room by the Sea (1951) by Edward Hopper

Sitting in the living room, on a couch so familiar opposite the one he loves most, has never hurt him so badly before.

James watches Anne intently as the latter pulls her knees to her chest and leans back on the armrest, her eyes looking at anywhere but James. The silence hanging above them is more deafening than James can ever imagine.

“So, why did you call me?” Anne chooses to be the first to break the silence. She doesn’t look at James. Not even once.

And James? He can’t stop looking at Anne. The way her hair moves slightly due to the breeze flowing into the area from the opened window, her long eyelashes and her perfect nose, the lips James yearns to kiss again, her slender fingers picking at the fabric of her jeans; they all belong to Anne, they are part of Anne, something James knows he’ll never be again.

“I called you because I needed to talk to you,” James says after clearing his throat. There are fresh tears in his eyes already, waiting for the moment he finally lets his guard down and allows them to fall onto his cheeks. “I know you won’t look at me. I know you don’t even want to step foot into this house, let alone be anywhere near me, but I need you to hear me out, even if you don’t believe a word that escapes my mouth.”

Anne doesn’t answer, to James’s dismay. But who can blame him?

James waits after a beat, and another, until Anne stretches her legs out and crosses her arms over her chest. She glances at James once. Once. Her left eyebrow is raised, questioning why James hasn’t started talking when she’s clearly waiting to ‘hear him out.’

The first tear falls, and James quickly wipes it away with the back of his hand. He’s wearing one of Anne’s oversized sweaters, brown and knitted, radiating warmth that no longer keeps the coldness of Anne’s stare away. James nods when Anne glances at him a second time, her annoyance getting more prominent with each passing second where James doesn’t speak.

So he does.

“I still love you. And don’t scoff, or mock, or roll your eyes at me, because god, Anne, I am still so fucking in love with you. Every day I wake up in what used to be our bed and I can’t bear the absence of your steady breathing or the cold sheets on your side. Your wallet and phone aren’t on the nightstand, your slippers not in front of the bathroom door. I can’t open the cabinet and not see your favorite cereal box, or the empty spot near the sink where your cat mug would be.

There’s a million traces of your existence in this room alone, on this couch, let alone the four walls of our bedroom. I can’t have lunch in my own kitchen because you’re not there to show off your cooking skills over some new recipe you just learned on the internet. And do not get me started on the emptiness that swallows me whole every nightfall, Anne. All the things that make me who I am, the little things that make me me, they mean nothing without you.

The microbes and bacterium and the billion other little things that live on my eyelashes and in my hair and in my mouth and on my skin and in my gut and everywhere else, they just keep on living. I will still wake up and brush my teeth and shower and eat, but your side of the bed will remain empty, your toothbrush no longer next to mine, the scent of your favorite shampoo now a distant memory. The food? Nothing I can make or order can taste like your cooking.

I’m broken apart; broken apart over what I did to you and the way I hurt you. I tore you apart when I kissed another woman. I tore you apart until the end when I realized that I’d slept with her, and the worst part? The worst part is I don’t even remember half of the things I’d done that night when I went out for a drink after you told me not to. I’m broken apart after I watched myself tear your heart into pieces. I didn’t catch your tears that fell when I promised you for a long time that I would. I left you scattered; your littlest pieces spread over a billion places that are my regrets.

Now you’re here. You’re right here in front of me when I haven’t seen you or spoken to you for the past two months. I’m thankful that you’re here, that you’re willing to hear me talk about all this nonsense that has been building up brick by brick in my brain until I can’t see the light anymore. You’re here, and you’re like the stars in the sky, Anne. You’re here one moment and then you’re scattered across the goddamn cosmos, too far and out of reach for me to follow or catch up to.

I would die for you. I know they say that in songs and in movies but fuck, Anne, I would die for you and I would live for you just the same. The me that slept with another person when I had too much to drink, that me, he’s not someone I’m proud of. I thought I’d let him take the wheel for one night, one, because I never drink and you know that. Not until I lose myself to the oblivion of being drunk anyway. You know that. You know me. But I did it. I let myself consume just enough to forget who I was or who I was with, and suddenly everyone was everything and everything was a blur.

And I lost myself, Anne. You’re rolling your eyes. You think I’m making excuses. I cheated on you, and I don’t deserve a second chance. I know. I get it. But even if you’ll never have me back, I just want you to know, right now, that I love you. Even when I let another woman touch me or hold me when I promised you that you’ll be the only one I’ll ever let close to me. I broke that promise, and a myriad of other promises that I have neglected. I’m sorry, Anne. I love you, and I’m sorry.”

James inhales deeply and sighs, choking back a sob. He frantically wipes the tears that have rolled down his face nonstop, his ears and nose now as red as his cheeks. The glassy view of Anne simply staring at her feet with her eyebrows pulled into a frown stabs James’s heart with a million needles, their pricks getting sharper each second. James wipes his tears again, blinking profusely to clear his vision, only to find Anne now standing up and fixing her jeans.

“I’m leaving,” Anne announces abruptly, taking her wallet and phone and keys from the coffee table and heading straight for the door.

“Anne, please,” James cries, no longer ashamed to hold back the ugly sobs that begin to escape his mouth. He grabs Anne’s forearm, almost falling to his knees. He holds on for dear life, as if Anne pushing him away would be the tipping point that sends him into an endless, pitch black abyss.

“I loved you once, James,” Anne replies. She trains her eyes on the doorknob, the sight of James crying and begging behind her too unbearable to witness. “I loved you once, and like a fool, you threw it away because of something that’s so normal and stupid. It wasn’t bizarre, what you did. It wasn’t even fucking insane. It was ordinary. You gave me up over something that has been done too many times before by too many people, like I was just another person to toy with at the hands of cheating.”

Anne finally shrugs James’s hands off of her when she feels that the latter’s grip has loosened. She unlocks the door and opens it. With one foot already out in the hallway, Anne turns around one last time to meet James’s eyes, glistening with tears and never ending regrets.

“I loved you once,” Anne says, both feet out the door now. “Remember that.”

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finale

Edward Hopper’s Room by the Sea, A Tribute (2010)

Just a little author’s note to end this week’s post:

This version is slightly altered for this specific post. I have actually published the original version of this story before on a different platform; one that you may never come across because some things are meant to be seen by only a certain type of audience.

And I felt like this heavily edited version would fit you the most.

Should you want to scream into the void regarding this story, I am always open, and I, too, am an endless void you can scream into.