The loneliness is eating at her, and he is on the other side of the Atlantic. She lies in bed, grabs an extra pillow, tries to pretend he's there next to her, but there's too much space, it isn't warm and sweaty, there's no arm around her. She feels naked, without skin; as if his body next to her was what was supposed to hold her together. She can feel the loneliness in her bones, how it's straining her muscles, and she doesn't understand how something missing can take up so much space, how nothing can weigh more than anything else.

 

She stretches her arm out from under the protective covers and reaches for her phone. Her fingers know his number without asking her brain first. She gets to his voicemail. Those familiar words. She can see his lips before him as he mouths the words. She tries to imagine what it would feel like if he was here saying those words to her, what the soft air escaping his lips would feel like as it met her ear. A smile appears on her lips as she imagine him being here, whispering "Hello, this is David, I can't take your call right now, please leave a message" in her ear as if it was the sweetest of poems. She would ask him to do that once he got back. That way she could call his answering machine and know exactly what it was like to hear those words while he was next to her. Maybe then it wouldn't hurt so much hearing them. Maybe then it wouldn't be as much of a reminder that he was so incredibly far away.

 

Missing someone had always been just words to her, an expression and nothing more. Sure, she had missed people before, wanted to see someone who wasn't at the same place at the same time as her. But missing someone, feeling like she wasn't whole without him, that was new to her. It was as if an essential limb had suddenly disappeared from her body, leaving her to die a slow and painful death. This didn't feel like missing, it felt like dying. The air somehow wouldn't fill her lungs.

 

As he stepped in through the door, he knew something was wrong. But it wasn't until he found her cold body in their bed that he knew exactly how wrong something was.