Four years. Sometimes it was hard to believe that 4 years had passed since I heard that, since the last time I saw her beautiful and perfect face; as distorted by cold, numb eyes as he had been that day. Four years since I was thrown into this incomplete existence. Four years since my insides had been ripped apart and shredded; a hole as wide as the Amazon River replacing what was once my heart, my lungs, and my soul.

"It will be as if it never existed."

What a stupid promise that had struck me those first few months after he left. As if she could ever forget that he existed. As if pushing himself away, as well as those few precious moments I'd collected from him, erased him from my heart and mind. Just because that was all it would take for him to forget me didn't mean it would be the same with me. Wherever I looked those first few months I saw it. At school, his absence from almost every class she had was a constant reminder of him. At work, the Camping section of the Town store was a constant reminder of his family's hunting charades. My car, my old battered red Chevy that he hated, reminded me of him every time I tried to push it over 55 mph. She had hated the slow pace of him. The forest would remind me of him. We spend a lot of our time there.

But worst of all had been my room, which for all intents and purposes should have been my sanctuary. The only place where he should have been able to run and hide and feel safe. All those months of torture and misery where I constantly felt like I had been repeatedly kicked in the stomach got worse once I entered my room. Because there was the greatest reminder of him. My little bed.

It's not that our relationship has ever reached that physical point. No, it never was. Despite all my attempts, we had never gotten past the chaste kisses and the occasional tight hug where he could feel my body pressing so close to his that he couldn't tell where mine ended and he began.

However, those were a few kisses ... his lips on mine with such tenderness, with such love, that as cold as they were, the heat they brought to me was similar to the most intense heatwave I have ever experienced. I got so close to him and whispered words of eternal love, singing my lullaby to me while I sank into peaceful oblivion in his arms; promising me that he would love me forever and making vows that he never wanted to keep.

He had told me that his physical limits to our relationship were meant to keep me safe from his incredible strength that he could have crushed my bones in an instant if he hadn't been constantly on guard when he held me. Safe from the poison that ran through all the veins of his body, that although it was not a tragedy in my eyes, he had the power to turn me into one of them, something he was vehemently opposed to. He had argued that it was for the good of my humanity.

Lying alone in my room those months after his departure, I concluded that physical limits had been proof of how little interest I had ever held for him. It had been a curiosity, a distraction for his endless days and nights, but not enough that he wanted to stay forever. So the physical limits had been just to make sure he never made a mistake, so I needed to stay.

These memories had been my worst torture in those months. I would cry myself quietly to sleep, not wanting to wake up or worry my father who was sleeping at the end of the hall. Of course, I was no stranger to the hell I was going through in my room. The nightmares and screams came in the middle of the night and inevitably woke him up.

While I was awake I tried to suffer in silence, because I didn't want to worry him more than I already was. I didn't call any friends at first, I didn't want them to try to get me out of my misery. I wasn't ready to let it go.

At some point a couple of years later, I found myself wondering, had it existed? Was it possible that he had ever experienced that kind of love and joy? Was there that all-encompassing kind of bliss? Or did my mind just conjure it up one day while reading one of my Jane Austen novels, replacing me as the heroine and creating my fictional hero? It couldn't have been real; it had been too perfect. My hero was indeed a vampire, which naturally made the whole fairy tale ending a bit more difficult to imagine. But the incredible joy I'd felt during those months we were together had to have been too good to be true. And then I should have imagined him, he couldn't have existed, because in real life, outside of Victorian-era England, that kind of love couldn't exist.

Then there was the matter of his beauty. The staggering, angelic beauty of him couldn't have been of this world. His locks were a rare mix that had never been seen before and had never been seen, not brown or red, but something in between. Bronze. His eyes alternated between beautiful deep amber, which somehow matched his hair perfectly, to the deepest black imaginable, depending on his thirst.

His lips were so perfectly shaped that I could only stare at them like a deer in a car headlight every time he spoke to me, wondering what good deed he had ever done to deserve that those perfect lips touched mine with such tenderness every day. . And his marble body ...

True, he had never seen much more than any other Joe Schmoe walking down the street could have seen, but he had felt it. I felt it when his body pressed against mine during one of our hugs, and I could feel every line of him at that moment, as my hands carefully traced his broad shoulders, his muscular arms and came to an impressive bashful stop on his flawless abs, strong and hard.

No, it couldn't have been real, I thought that day. Such a perfect specimen of a man was not destined to roam among mere mortals and was not destined to fool around with one of his less interesting units, so the answer had been no, I should have made it up.

But then I thought ... Had it been that perfect?

Yes of course! My memory of his physique had screamed. Well, then how about the inside? Had her outer beauty of him been matched by the inner beauty? Were her heart and his soul

because she still believed without a doubt that he had had a soul

as pure and beautiful as his external features? My heart wanted to scream Yes! I could remember every time he had saved me even from his own family. Surely someone capable of that had to be pure and charming on the inside as well. If my imagination were capable of inventing such a perfect fictional hero on the outside, wouldn't it have transcended inside him as well?

It was then that my mind returned those dreaded words to me.

"I don't want you to come with me"

"I'm not human and I'm tired of pretending I am"

"You are not good for me"

"It will be as if it never existed"

Oh. It wasn't perfect. So why did my mind make up such an irresolute fictional hero?