A Lifetime Ago

He took a step towards the door and held his hand up to knock but stopped in mid air. Space and time froze because it had been such a long time and such a long distance, fourteen years and two continents apart he saw the woman who was legally his "wife".

His heart started trying to jump out of the chest and his arm started aching, for he had forgotten to knock at that door, forgotten to lower his arm too, may be even forgotten to breath. From the helpless little girl who just needed his protection, from their paper marriage and her disappearing right after that, from loving her to hating and getting tired of hating her to loving her again, many cycles had passed. He had lost all his appearance in the mechanic life he was living and the dust of time had erased any possibility of she recognizing the stranger she met one day and married, but even the curve of her eyebrows, the slight tilt of her nose, and the dry rough texture of her lips was fresh in his mind. Years had failed to give her even the slightest change. He recognized her in an instant when she passed by him in the hotel yesterday and it didn't take him long to find out where she was and what she was doing, for he was a resourceful man. He didn't know why he had come here or what he was going to say to her, for all he knew, she wouldn't even look at him with the expression of any familiarity. With a sinking heart he lowered his arm that was frozen with pain now, and took a step back.