***
Ty was speechless. He stared at Tanesha, feeling his chest tighten. Tanesha loved him. The feeling was surreal. Fuck. “Tan, I will look for you, I promise.” Ty’s breath snagged. The lump inside his throat felt so huge it was difficult to talk. “Rem…” He cleared his throat and tried again. “Remember when I said if anything happened to you I’d die?” He asked and waited till Tanesha nodded. “I meant that with all my heart. Now, if you don’t want me to die, wait here for the soldiers.”
“No. I’m coming with you.” Tanesha looked determined and Ty was getting desperate.
“Baby, please do that for me if you really love me as you say.” Ty knew it was mean to use Tanesha’s declaration of love against her but he needed her safe.
“Oh my God, don’t do this Skull.” Tanesha couldn’t believe what Skull was asking of her.
“I will find you.”
“Promise?” Tanesha’s cheeks were wet with tears.
“I promise,” Ty said, kissing Tanesha lightly and quickly on the lips.
“Oh, God…Skull…I don’t know what I’ll do if I never see you again.” She whispered with such a heart-wrenchingly sad look on her face Skull crushed her to him with a growl. “Be safe. Please.”
“You will see me again. I have to go now. Don’t move.” And with a final kiss to her forehead, Ty was sprinting off in the direction of where Ghost had limped off to. He heard Tanesha’s desperate sobs but he didn’t turn around. He knew he wouldn’t be able to leave her if he did.
Ty spotted Ghost hiding behind a boulder and almost laughed. How the mighty are fallen, he thought amused despite his heavy heart. He caught a quick signal from a grinning Jackson, one of his crazy colleagues, and ducked just as a grenade flew over his head into the midst of a group of Ghost’s men. The Arrowheads were in their element, Ty thought as he shook his head in amusement.
***
“Ma’am, you have to come with us.” Tanesha heard a man in a military uniform say beside her just as a super loud blast went off where Skull had disappeared mere seconds earlier.
Tanesha screamed. “Oh my God. Please save him. That explosion…oh please he just went that way…” She charged towards the blast but one of the soldiers grabbed her hand. “Please help him,” Tanesha screamed till her throat was raw.
“We have to go Miss.” One of the soldiers picked Tanesha up as if she weighed nothing, ignoring her screams.
Tanesha cried until her eyes felt raw and she had nothing left. And when she heard gunshots and screams as she was being handed over to another soldier in a helicopter, she broke down again. What if Skull was amongst the men who were screaming? She had to tell them that he was innocent.
“Plea…please you ha…have to list…listen to me.” Tanesha grabbed one of the soldiers. “Ghost is the one you wa…want. Skull is innocent. Please you ha…have to listen to me. Please…” Tanesha was getting hysterical. She didn’t see the nod that one of the soldiers gave the one she was talking to. Neither did she see the hand that moved towards the back of her neck. One moment she was hysterically trying to explain herself, the next, she was dead to the world.
Ty watched the military chopper with Tanesha lift into the sky and screamed into his hands. He was missing her already. Though everything turned out just fine, his heart was still pounding at how close he’d come to losing her. Immediately the sound of the chopper disappeared, Ty went directly to where Ghost sat and gave him a hard punch on the nose. But even the sound of breaking bones and the criminal’s agonized scream didn’t erase the pain and emptiness within his heart. Fuck!
***
‘Even if you were a million miles away
I can still feel you in my bed
Near me, touch me, feel me
And even at the bottom of the sea
I could still hear inside my head
Telling me, touch me, feel me
And all the time, you were telling me lies
So tonight, I’m gonna find a way to make it without you
Tonight, I’m gonna find a way to make it without you
I’m gonna hold on to the times that we had
Tonight, I’m gonna find a way to make it without you’
Tanesha wept bitterly into her pillow as Alicia Keys’ beautiful voice belted out the lyrics of ‘Try Sleeping With A Broken Heart.’
“Oh, God…” She sobbed as an image of Skull’s face filled her mind. Though she hadn’t known him for long, she felt so lost without him.
I’ll find you, he’d said. And that was a month ago. A whole month of not seeing or hearing from Skull. Tanesha thought the pain in her heart would lessen with time but on the contrary, it kept getting worse. She still couldn’t stop crying. The accuracy of the words of the song brought so much sadness into her heart. She could feel Skull as though she’d seen him just that morning.
But she also recalled that blast, all the gunshots, and screams of men. Tanesha didn’t know whether Skull was alive or dead. He’d said he was going to find her…which was very easy to do knowing who she was. But Skull had still not come after four weeks. The only explanation she could deduce from his no-show act was that he was dead. Why else wouldn’t Skull come to her as promised?
But much as Tanesha was devastated by the possibility of Skull’s death, she couldn’t help but feel like she’d been lied to by Skull. He’d promised. He’d promised to come to her, promised that if she left, he wouldn’t die, promised to find her. And he’d broken his promises and died. She didn’t even have anything of his to remember him by except the memories she had of their time together.
Tanesha had actually started using strawberry flavoured shampoo because she knew how Skull had loved that fragrance on her. The emotions she felt towards Skull never ceased to amaze her due to their complex nature. She would feel miserable one moment and then be very angry the next.
Therapy hadn’t helped Tanesha at all.