That night part 3

I was left dumbstrucked that whole night. I ended up making all the possible scenarios what Elliot did and where he currently was.

"Elliot, did it," I spoke to myself as tears ran down my face.

The afternoon came and I never heard anything from Elliot. He did not even show himself up to our place. I texted him in hope he went home the morning his mother called. But I did not receive any reply. Days came passing and I was getting more and more worried. I was in a cycle of overthinking spree of what had become of Elliot; I could only speculate all possibilities.

I was sitting in the same bench that we first talked, forty years later. I always sit here. It has served as an extension of my home. It is where I once felt home, and learned to be somebody's home. -Elliot have made life somewhere else. Away from the things that shackled him.

"If I could do something I so much wanted, I want to run. Run so fast and long... I will not stop even if my legs will numb... hurt... give in. I will run," He said between one of those silences we had while we were looking at each other's eyes, holding hands --in this very bench.

I had an idea that Elliot was broken as I was. Just differently. He was craving for something. A thirst for his wholeness I can never quench --no one can but himself. And I knew. I always did. We both -wanted to run; him for the identity he has not yet found, and me from the ghost that haunted me. "I was raped," the words I suddenly blurted out one same night on the bench. He was silent for a moment.

"I know. I have an idea," he caressed my forearm. It calmed the building storm inside me. "The bruises and hickeys you try to hide tell me so," he said seriously staring at me.

I always liked to think that we both understand each other. Like we knew things we thought the other did not think of. We communicated in a manner so unfashionably distant from the normalcy of mere human language. We touched without touching, feel without doing anything. I knew we both were complicated, but strangely we were entwined.

Elliot may have traveled ways far away from me, but his smiles is etched forever in my mind, his laughters in my heart. My heart continues to howl for the love and understanding he gave me. It wants the home he alone could make it feel

"Hey, Mr. John. I will not bother to ask why you are here. But it is already late at night... it is also quite chilly..." Eddie, the one who sells night snacks, said. He knew me.

"I hope he comes back real soon," he said sitting next to me. "I am hoping he will... I will keep hoping that he will, Ed."

I grasped tightly on my chest the letter Elliot gave me that night. The letter that contained the promise he made to me. The promise we sealed with a kiss.

"I wish I could relive that night forever," I hopelessly spoken out as I stared into the st arless night sky.

The end...