My Personal Demon

07:02

I need to protect him.

My husband sits next to me in the passenger seat, scribbling down sentences for his next novel. Whether he'll finish it is another story, but his brows are knit in concentration as I speed down the empty roads.

"You know I love you, right?" I don't say that to him enough. Even he knows this, raising an eyebrow at my words.

"I love you, too," he said absentmindedly. I smile as he continues to write. He still remembered to say it back even with his head in the clouds.

We were coming back from our spring vacation, a well-deserved break among the sunflower fields. Between the money he made from royalties and the sales I made from my paintings, we finally saved up enough for our first trip in years.

With the tattoo shop that I set up in our little town, we were meant to take even more trips in the future. We were going to see the world and go wherever our hearts desired.

If only I hadn't messed things up.

Things were supposed to get better for us. I know I'm not supposed to dwell on it, but the guilt eats me whether or not I think about it.

I stopped at a gas station, grabbing two coffees while the tank filled up. Charles liked his with three sugars and no milk. He disliked the sleepy feeling he always got from drinking anything with cream, hating the way it made it harder for him to think.

That was the thing about him. He never stopped thinking. Some days, it felt like he was born with an endless fountain of creativity in his head. I knew his hands could barely keep up with his ideas as he continued writing in the passenger seat. Blue ink seemed to permanently stain the side of his hands.

He liked ballpoint pens, or frankly whatever pen he found off the ground, but he was especially fond of blue ink. He had this strange notion that it made him feel like he was writing with the very fabric of the sky. But everything he liked showed me that he was a perpetual romantic, an eternal dreamer even.

I push strands of his hair away from his forehead. "You need a haircut. Your hair is starting to block your eyes."

"I can see just fine," he reassured me, keeping his eyes glued to his notepad. "I'll trim it when we get home once we've unpacked if it still bothers you."

Frankly, I thought he looked prettier with long hair. But after a certain length, he walked a fine line between looking wonderfully dashing or appearing like a scraggly unkempt bachelor.

It made the whole experience of being his wife more fun. I've always loved him for his free spirit. He knew how to make every second of our marriage an adventure, effortlessly sweeping me off my feet.

On our first night in the small village we visited, we rented a small cottage for the week. There was a record player in the living room and we decided to put on some vinyl. We listened to a few classical pieces, alternating between our favorites. He preferred Erik Satie, often drafting with the composer's music playing in the background. While I enjoyed the melancholic pieces, I preferred Antonio Vivaldi's upbeat compositions.

We swayed to the music all the same, holding each other close in the candlelight.

When the sun came up, we went off to explore the mountains around the village. We wore matching gray scarves for the occasion, but our wool hats were different colors. His was predictably sky blue and mine was red, both hand-stitched by a local artisan.

We made sure to hit the trails early so that the paths would be empty. We were both introverts, people who enjoyed solitude and quiet. Sometimes, if I saw something interesting, I would walk ahead, sketchbook in hand. Maybe it was a flower in half bloom or a strangely shaped bird.