Fola

And even ten years later, she was still the most gorgeous woman I'd ever seen.

I knew I shouldn’t be watching.
Shouldn’t be smiling as I watched.
But damn, if I wasn’t going to capture this moment.

Even though we were no longer gangly teenagers, and she’d filled out in places I never knew she could, (much to my dismay, as I’d always lovely her boyish frame), I still loved her.
It was invigorating yet frightening the effect she still had on me even after so long.

I was hyper sensitive to every move she made.
From the careless flip of her hair every twenty seconds to the twitch of her eyebrow as she peered at the box in front of her.

I leaned ever so slightly to the window, and watched the smile that for the last fifteen years, had been my strength and my weakness, sweep her face.

God, Fola was beautiful.

The kind of beauty that made you imagine God sending all the angels away, and locking Himself in solitude, so He could spend months on end sculpting what was to be His most stunning creation.
Fola was the sun and the moon rolled into one.
The perfection that can only be captured in the exact moment the sun kisses the ocean.

She opened the box, and I let out a little gasp just as she did.
And smiled just as she did.
The blinding diamond ring rivalled her beauty in no way, but it was befitting for royalty like her.
She gushed and preened at it, and I couldn’t help the warmth that spread through my chest.

Any moment now.

As she spoke excitedly to whoever was on the other end of the phone, she picked up the single cupcake she’d had delivered to her, and took a generous bite.
I smiled even wider. Even then she’d never been one for dainty eating.

I knew the moment things had started to go wrong, and pressed my head nearly painfully to the window. The chill winter air from my mouth fogged up the window, and I impatiently wiped it off. I couldn’t miss what was about to happen for anything.

When Fola clutched her throat, I thought about how suffocated I’d felt for the last ten years.
How I’d constantly felt like crawling out of my own skin, and setting it ablaze
How I’d desperately wished to die in my sleep.
All because she’d left me.

He was smart, funny, wealthy, and everything I was not.
But he didn’t love her like I did. No one did.
So, I waited for karma. For retribution of some kind. For his chain of nepotism-bestowed businesses to fail, and for her to see that it had always been me, and come back.

But she never come back. And his businesses multiplied hundred fold.

I knew the exact moment she realized what had happened.
From her sharp intake of breaths as she glared at the cupcake, to the unnatural bulge of her eyes as she finally deigned to look at the window, and saw that the delivery man was still standing there.

And that the delivery man she had barely spared a glance at... Was me.

I watched her face turn from a sick brown to purple and finally grey, and even as her eyes rolled back, and her mouth released white, foamy matter. Even as she laid in a crumpled heap with a finger pointing at the window where I still stood, my heart could not help but swell with pride.

Even in death, Fola was still the most gorgeous woman I’d ever seen.

Jhymi🖤

Inspired by The Freewriter's Daily Prompt: Swell.

_{Image by Gemini AI.}