Gray's Cozy Nook

Prologue

Scarlet bled into the blue sky, drowning the last dredges of day in a limbo of twilight. I had once loved that color so dearly, that crimson shade of passion and love. Who knew that shade could also become something worthy of the emotions called hate and anger? The sun was escaping its duties now, and hurriedly making way for night’s arrival;  I was by the seashore, angrily shedding tears, and holding that simple tube of lipstick he had given me in red.

My husband, no, excuse me, soon to be ex-husband, had always told me that this color suited me. That it highlighted my passionate integrity and liveliness that he had fallen for, what a load of bullshit that was. Seven years of my life wasted, time that I can never get back. Time that slipped away while I worked to help his business and he fooled around and got our secretary pregnant.

“Fucking cliche, straight out of a movie,” I spat, uncapping the tube of lipstick, “what is the point of vows if you can’t even stay true to them?” It hurt so badly to say these words out in the open, but these were statements that I couldn’t hold within my chest anymore.

“Make this a good last cry, Evan.” I ordered my heart, “you will never again, cry for someone who does not keep their vows.”

Never again.

I whispered to the ocean as I dug the lipstick into the sand and began to draw a line of across the moving earth. This was my own vow, to myself, and to my heart, that I would live for only for myself and no one else. I watched as the red line bled into the sand and slowly dissipate into nothing.

It was a signal to close the door on this mess of a chapter, even as the tears fell from my eyes and disappeared into the waves that lapped onto the sand. This pain would fade, I knew it would. Just like the crimson twilight above.