Detective: pt 3 (Universes)

It occurred to her that she had not fully, unbiasedly, trusted him for a little over a decade, now.
Not since the first time he broke her heart. A little voice inside her whispered cautionary tales.
Perhaps, the trust was incomplete, in some ways, since the very beginning.
She was never one to believe in happy endings. It wasn't that she didn't have hope, or the longing. She never could dare to fully believe that she had found something so perfect, so amazing. Even though 'amazing' is exactly what she told herself, it was.
Otherworldly, even. Directly proportionate to having created a universe of their own.
At first, thoughts of that natue seemed nothing more than silly, quirky, exasperated ways to explain the big feelings that come with an intense romantic relationship.
They were young, free, and full of wanderlust.
As such, these glowing conclusions were usually reached after some type of intoxicant.
Marijuana, alcohol, dabbling in psychedelic mushrooms.

The relationship became a bubble. One they were happy to reside in alone, and, as often as possible, responsibilities be damned.
He was the one that fit her. The one that was meant to be in her life. She knew it to her core.
Bouts of light, childish, easily dismissed anxiety teased her. Taunting that she may have, simply, gone insane.
She dismissed the notion quickly. She'd had thoughts like that before, particularly when no one else seemed to understand the full range of feelings she experienced, every. single. day.
The two of them were connected. She was sure. It was, all consuming, and it felt like nothing she had ever experienced.
He knew her in ways only she was intimate with. He was the only one in her life that took her, just as she was, and thought it a thing of unspeakable wonder. 
She hadn't realized then, just how much that kind of unconditional acceptance had been missing from her life. Or maybe, a starved, sad, lonely part of her did and held on like a tightrope walker to the line.
They sang songs and played instruments. Weaving tales about the different colors that now broke into their lives. She wrote short stories about the two of them. About how God had known exactly what she needed, and sent her exactly that.
The pair clung to that premise, the actualization of unbreakable unity, through every stolen moment they could manage.

As it turns out. If you tell yourself something enough. If you believe something is true, rationalize, fictionalize, and analyze something, often enough. Sober or not. It eventually wedges itself into every corner of your brain. Coloring all the things you think or feel.
It's quite a thing to get lost in, really. A bit unhealthy, perhaps?

There were those that would say, it wasn't real. It was as real, to her, as the air she drew into her lungs. Her experiences came to her in flashes. Echos of laughter and screams swirled for a few drawn out seconds in a scene of half painted memory. It was often spurred by a snippet of a song, a piece of leaf, the outline of a stranger, the light of streetlights on a cold, foggy night. The memories had their place in assuring her guarded, tense, sensitive, hypervigalant, manner.
Sometimes they came in dreams. There was a bit more leeway in the reality of things when she was asleep. Unfortunately, the lack of rationale did not provide an escape.It only seemed to make her fight against it harder. She would wake trembling, her breathing uncontrolled, every emotion crescendoed, her nerves pulsing.
Control.That was key.
There was nothing controlled about how she felt for him. Especially not, 13 years ago. She was still a kid then.
At twenty, a young adult can't legally drink, in the states. Lucky for her she spent a lot of time and money between the ages of 19 and 21, chasing after him. Visiting over seas. Doing what ever she could to give them one more moment.
She didn't have much other choice. Before the ink dried on his Air Force recruitment form, he was putty in their hands, to do with as they wished. Regardless the promises made to him, during recruitment.
She was partly a blame for that as well. Often, she wondered, what it would have been like for them if he hadn't joined the military. If she hadn't pushed him so hard to do more with his life. To get off his ass and put some real effort into building a future together. One that didn't involve being fast food workers, delivery drivers, or overnight stocking crew.
Not that there is shame in working these jobs. Many do so, happily working, shamelessly content, fufilling roles critical to the functioning of life, as we know it.
At some point during her younger years it had been imprinted upon her spirit that she must make a difference.
Move a moutian. 
Do something that would bring honor to the ideals she held in place.
Deep inside, she could not shake the feeling that there was more for her, for them. There had to be. They were special. 
Nothing could stop the Lovers Rain.
It came like their love, hard and steady, slow and light, sideways, dripping down their faces, and seeping up between their toes.
It served as baptism from above. Patterning on the tin roof.
A melody only they could understand.
Beading on their skin, like, the dew caresses the grass.
Delusions of grandeur? Perhaps?
She was adament it wasn't just some fairy tale she made up in her head. Maybe it was. It mattered little then, she was his. The only thing she could see was a future with him. A skewed one, framed with the bond between them. Cobbled together with hope. With little measuring, and even less direction.
At the very top stood a turret with a beautiful stained glass window. On it shone her hopes and dreams. As the Sun moved across the sky, the pictures changed, dancing across the farwall.
It was a sweet little lie. One she had coveted since she was a small child. It told her that she could be anything. Be anyone she set her mind to.
Now, she had found the man to walk by her side.
It was a memory to be reckoned with. 
Perhaps she had moved past that time now. Put most of it to rest. Still, the insistent longing, the dull ache to be free to move universes with him again, followed her constantly