Warning: mentions of self-deprecation

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I didn't care that the rain assaulted me with its freezing water drops. I didn't care that my clothes were soaked through and my teeth clattered together. I didn't care that my feet were soaked in mud and burned from the cold of it all. I didn't care.

Raike's back turning to walk away was the only thing I could see in my mind's eyes. My body was on autopilot as I walked home avoiding the things around me but paid no mind to them all the same. He left me. He watched me cry and turned away as if I meant nothing to him. The twenty-four years of friendship, of laughter, joy, pain, struggle, grief, all deemed worthless because of one girl.

An ache burned my chest at the thought and the tears fell freely. He didn't say anything even though he knew. He didn't love me back. Why didn't he say anything? A scream bubbled up in my chest that I fought to keep down. His laughter that once warmed me now burned as I looked back on all of our happy memories. His words created caves in my chest and breaking pieces of my spirit I don't think I'd ever get back. His words now say everything I refused to acknowledge.

"Her skin is like porcelain, it's so creamy and white."

Memories after another came by to terrorize me the longer I thought. Memories of all the other times he'd fallen in love and confessed why slamming me in the heart.

"I love how slim she looked in her pale blue dress." I'd worn pale blue for months afterward in hopes of catching his attention.

"Her hair was so like silk flowing in the breeze. Long straight hair is so beautiful on her." I remember hating my curls and their shrinkage after hearing him say that, wishing for long straight hair that he liked so much.

"Her mouth was so small like two petals caressing each other, so rosy and beautiful." I'd scrubbed my lips hard and created a regime to try and remove the two-toned coloring of my own lips, knowing there was nothing I could do about the bigness of them.

Words like tsunamis came by crushing me under the weight of the revelation that Raike had been telling me without telling me all this time that it would never be me. That I wasn't enough for him. Or better yet I was too much for him. My foot slipped on a rock sending me crashing to the muddy ground in grief.

I could hear wailing but by this point, I wasn't sure if it was me or the wind. I banged at my chest weeping as it all came out. I was never going to be enough for him. I was too big, too brown, too much of everything he'd never want. I wasn't good enough? What was wrong with me that made me unattractive to him? Was my skin not like the earth his mother tilled to ensure he and his family ate every night? Although big in size I am soft, do men not like soft things? The ache in my chest grew into a burn that I couldn't put out no matter how much I screamed and banged on it. I am not too tall to tower over him. Sure my curls shrunk into each other but they were still long when stretched. Why was I not enough?

The rain skewed my vision but I made no effort to wipe it away as tears would just that its place. The coldness of the mud seeped into my skin freezing me to the bone but I couldn't care. The only thing I could think about was Raike.

"Emma! Emma! Is that you? Oh, dear Emmett that is her, that's Emma! Emma!" hands grabbed at my shoulders but I made no effort to respond.

I didn't want to.

"Emmett, Emmett dear, give me the coat to cover her! She's as blue as the dead!" I knew by now it was Mara, who else would it be...Raike?

A bitter laugh left my mouth at the thought before I burst into tears again. I could hear the tears in Mara's voice as she tried to soothe me and coax me into getting up. Which I finally did after another 10 minutes of convincing from both Mara and Old Man Litters.

We walked to their home in silence, both of them just trying to warm me up from the cold.