“I love you,” he said, begging her to believe him.
Love is such a fickle thing. One moment, you are happily going about your life, walking in on a brisk spring morning, minding your own business, and the next, you are flat on your face, tripped up by a gaping hole in the side walk that you did not see. And then a tall knight in shining armor helps you to your feet again. He smiles that charming, dazzling white toothed smile at you and you are head over heels before you even know his name.
He falls in step beside you as you continue on with your life. But all of a sudden, you realize that it is not a brisk spring morning anymore, but a warm day in the summer, not hot but warm, when all of the colors are out but do not have that fresh, baby look to them anymore but a more faded look. It is not as if you were unhappy with your life before, because you weren’t, and it’s not as if you had never seen color before, because you had. It was just was if all of the world was no longer just comfortable and fun but brilliant and exciting.
Your knight treats you like a lady, opening doors, showing you off as you stroll through life together. You, in turn, drag him in front of all of your friends, particularly the girls, to let them ooh and ah, dangling him as if your armor clad boy were a sparkling silver bracelet. You feel like you are the center of the world when he is with you because all of the world is looking at you when you kiss him and hold his hand. Summer never felt so good and you are ready for a swim.
Standing at the edge of the pool, you look down and see your smiling reflection and the reflection of your handsome knight. You are ready to jump, about to take the plunge. You turn away from the water, look at your knight, and squint, because the sun is reflecting off of his helmet. So you reach up and lift the visor so you can see his face properly and get one last kiss before you both jump. But he stops you and all of a sudden, something happens. It all went so quickly that you are not sure that you understand, but you are falling, plunging into the water and just as you hit the bottom, you remember that you do not know how to swim.
You panic, thrashing around, trying to find your knight in the whirling mass of bubbles, but that’s the funny thing. You see, armor sinks, so the knight never jumps in to save you.
You can literally feel your heart breaking as you realize that you will never reach to air just mocking you out of sight. You hear the pieces rattle around inside your chest, know there is no way you will ever be able to put them back together again. Your heart had been cracked before, small pieces had been torn out and you had glued them all back in, but this was different. This was worse.
A heart can only break so many times.
A steady hand pulls you out of the pool, rescuing you from the watery tomb and you realize that is wasn’t the water that was drowning you after all, but your emotions. And it is cold now, too cold for swimming. You were a fool to think that you could swim in such weather. And this new player, he is not your knight. He is just a boy, dripping wet from his dip in the water to save you. He looks at you as if you are crazy and the world pays no attention, because he is not a knight. The world has already moved on with your knight and you are forgotten.
So you ring out your hair, change your clothes, and walk on to find a nice bench where you can be alone with your life. No more knights, no more attention, and even though you did nothing wrong, no more walking in the sunshine.
Winter is not so bad, you remind yourself, and it’s true. The snow is pretty and you can make angels in it. It is soft and fluffy, a place to land when you fall. And that boy who saved you when you fell in the pool, well, he’s not so bad, for a boy. He throws snowballs at you when you start a snow fight, knowing that they won’t actually hurt you. He gives you his gloves when yours all soaked from the snow, even though his are just as cold, because just maybe it will help. But he is not a knight in shining armor with the world at his beck and call, he is a boy that remembered you when the world forgot.
You start to think that maybe, just maybe, you could let this boy be a part of your world, even though he frustrate you at times, even though the world does not fall over itself to see you with him, even though he is just a boy. But the closer you get to letting that boy become more than ‘just a boy’ to you, you more you remember your knight, and the more afraid you become, because you remember exactly what drowning felt like.
It all starts to spiral around in your head, a whirling tornado of emotions that you cannot comprehend and even see an end to, so you shut your eyes to close it and life out, shaking your head against the internal noise until it all slams to a halt.
You peep open your eyes to find that winter has left all on its own and spring is back. It is not the spring you once knew, because that is a spring you will never see again, but neither is it the summer of your knight. The colors are all brighter than you have ever seen them, the air is fresher than you thought it could ever be. You turn around in delight, taking in the splendor around you, and you find yourself face to face with the boy from summer.
It is in that moment that you realize the you never wanted a knight to begin with, because when the knight held you, all you felt from him was the cool metal casing around him. The sun always glared off of his armor and you never knew if he was looking at you behind that helmet of his or someone else. The boy standing in front of you wears no armor to hide his soul, his eyes are clearly trained on your face, and his heart in your hand.
You look inside of you at that moment and find your heart, not without scars, but somehow whole, and offer it to him with a look of shame, wishing you had something better to give him instead of an ugly heart.
“This,” he says, as he takes your heart and places it where his used to be, “Is the most beautiful heart I have ever seen.”
