Word Prompt: Sugar
Dialogue Flex: “He bit off more than he could chew.”
Using the provided snippet of dialogue, explore what comes to mind, be it a scene, a thought, or something else.
They should have spent their whole lives together. Meeting at her first job, when she was only seventeen and he was twenty-one, they fought through hell.
Her parents hated him, and they never knew why.
Maybe it was the age gap, maybe it was his past. They accused him of lying to her, but he was honest from day one. He wasn’t a bad guy, not even close, but he did have a little baggage.
She tried to tell her mother and father that she knew everything, and if they wanted to know it too, all they had to do was ask him. It wasn’t good enough, no.
They still insisted he was lying, or hiding something.
She cried on his shoulder, covered in fresh bruises, and he held her tightly. It seemed he’d bitten off more than he could chew – at least to her. He never faltered, though. He was there through it all. Every tear, every black eye; the time her dad threatened to kill her if she didn’t break up with him.
He dealt with cops being called on him, accusations of statutory rape, and watching her father hit her right in front of him. Each private moment, he would promise to get her out of there, if she would just hang on. Her birthday was just a few months away, and then they could be together, but if he intervened too early, her parents would surely make it so he wouldn’t be able to help her.
Each passing day was more difficult than the last. Her parents were unrelenting, never giving her a break. At the barrel of a gun, her dad gave her a choice. Him or them. She made her choice.
Moving forward, he suffered through two deployments. Around his neck, he carried her picture, mixed in with all his military credentials. Thoughts of her gave him a reason to fight.
If she could fight to be with him, he would fight too.
It wasn’t until he came home that the full weight of it all him. Flashbacks of nights spent with her haunted him. He couldn’t stand to even see a clip from the movie they saw on their first date.
He missed her more now that he was home, then he had while he was away. Without the distraction of being in a war zone, he felt it all. The future they wouldn’t have; the children she would have bore him – he thought about it constantly.
She’d made her choice, and he wished it had gone a different way. If he had been there, maybe he could have stopped her. Maybe he could have coached her to make a different choice.
He would spend the rest of his life thinking about what might have been. Her face was the last thing he saw each night, and first thing in the morning. He would always love her, even if they weren’t together.
If only she had chosen her parents over him, maybe her father wouldn’t have killed her.
1.7562 Billion Miles 