"So, who was he?"

The words seems to drag across the cavernous space between them. Slowing in the air already thick with unanswered questions. What else could he take from her? She gave him every bit of her, gave him her life yet he still took his own and stole her sanity with him. Like a snagged thread his memory unravels her as that rock of a ghost plummets through the stormy air. Now he comes for her time, her sense of everything. Time is experiences and all those that mattered were in her past, how could the present make sense if she's never really there? She drifted in that sea of reflection a moment too long it seems as evidenced by the strangers gaze from across the table. This stranger Valentine.

"Why does it have to be about a guy?" She asked in a low voice.

"Doesn't have to be, I just figured. Wearing a men's shirt and mumbling his name as we walked over here, you know." He took a long sip from his coffee as he eyed her, his left hand sliding a glass of lemonade toward her.

"Hunger and dehydration do that to ya. Hallucinations and disorientation and all that."

She scoffs. "So now I'm hallucinating?"

"Well...... You see me don't you?" The faintest edge of a smile peers from around the cup lingering at his lips. Katherine's eyes widen as his words cut into her, she jerks her head to the side. Scanning the diner for anything solid to hold onto. The other diners, did they notice him? The waitress, did she say anything? Katherine's time encompasses her like fear, it was her fear, losing trust in everything. She shut her eyes tightly and turned back slowly but still too afraid to face whatever truth was there when she opened her eyes.

"You ok hun? Y'all need a refill or some food?" The waitress says and it takes everything In Katherine not to scream "of course not!" But the stranger replies. " Let's try some hashbrowns and toast, my friend and I had a rough night. Some carbs might help us a bit, I'll have the same."

Katherine opens her eyes and they dart between him and the waitress as she jots down the order and saunters off to the kitchen. Open mouthed astonishment is all she gives as the stranger Valentine continues to smile. Perfect porcelain teeth contrasting his dark smooth skin. Disbelief dissolves to anger as she realizes and swings her fist at him.

"You fucking asshole!" Loud enough to turn a few heads but not loud enough to bring alarm. "You really wanna fuck with me like that?!"

"Alright alright" he chuckles as he guards against her fist with his arms. "Might have been in poor taste but it got a reaction and a smile. Haven't gotten anything that lively out of you since I've known you"

"Oh and how long is that now?" She asked

"Cosmically forever, realistically hm, a few

hours. It was a long walk"

"Why did we walk all the way over here anyway? This diner something special to you? What's up with that cosmically thing?"

"Maybe I just like to bring all my crazy dates here."

"I'm not crazy!" She snaps at him. This isn't a date, stays left said only in her head. The air swells in silence until their food arrives. It had been so long since Katherine had eaten that anything put in front of her became her new religion. She devoured everything she could without a word while the stranger slowly ate and did the same.

" Cosmically just has a nice ring to it, reminds me that there was a beginning to everything. Something before we made our own world and filled it with trinkets of time." She raises her head and looks at him curiously.

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"Ya know, that question I couldn't answer before you let us all know you aren't crazy."

He drinks another slow sip of coffee before he continues. "So who was he?" He parrots again after Katherine has stripped her plate clean. " Boyfriend, husband maybe? Brother?"

"Fiance" she says softly while wiping her mouth just to stare at the plate some more. Anything other than his eyes.

" He leave you or did he cheat?"

"He left..... everyone. I guess that makes it better sometimes, it wasn't just me." Under the table she fiddled with the sleeve of the jacket he had put over her shoulders, his jacket, picking at the button. Chewing on her lip and the thought of what it all meant.

"I still feel cheated though." Being in this diner, sharing a meal with this stranger. Finally talking about him. "He just needed to get away so bad he couldn't wait, had to jump off the fucking boat." The last words accented with her rough throat, catching in her pain. "He had to leave me in such a rush, no explanation, no reason just....gone." Her tears plinking on the ceramic plate.

"I'm sorry." The stranger grumbles in his deep voice.

"It's ok. You didn't know him, you're just a stranger. Why did you stop for me?"

"Stop? We were going the same way. You were just a little ahead of me, really you were in my way" The stranger says and Katherine returns his look with one of confusion. He had appeared seemingly out of nowhere and offered her his jacket.

"Why were you out there?" Katherine asks

"What was he like? Your fiance." He asks her, unphased by her questions he pushes on. "Was he good to you?"

"He saved me and I couldn't do the same for him" The words rolled out like she had rehearsed them everytime after her nightmares. Practicing them in the mirror to say at the court hearing for her soul. "He saw through me, really saw me. No matter who else I was at any time." No matter the years that passed deep down she was still the scared little choir girl. Dutiful and repentant, hoping to stay quiet in the loudest ways. Praying to avoid brimstone and hell just to live in a world of fresh scented demons. Oh glory, work the centerfold, show them your worth in perfect symmetry. Praise jesus, dont forget to smile. Never forget to smile. "I couldn't show him the world he showed me." She scofffed and fiddled with the button on his jacket sleeve again, the highlights of their life together playing through her head. The years spent breaking away at the shells of who she built and called katherine. Here she was left bare and on her own in a diner with a man trying to chisel just a bit more away. But why?

"Who did you want to be?" He asked

"What do you mean?" Taken aback having been asked a question without any answers of her own.

"You said 'no matter who else you were at anytime'. Seems like you wanted to be someone else."

"Me. Whoever that was, still not too sure I'm all me. Doesnt feel quite genuine yet. How do you really know yourself? I mean arent you just what people see you as?" Thinking back on her career choices, the modeling agency, the websites, the social media accounts and parties. "Like how you react to them and the things you say determine who you are. The thoughts they have of you can always be different but who you are with them is who you are." Highlights of them together, the things he would tell her and the way he would love her and the way she acted like she believed it. The way she did beleive it. Just never the words, it was always the feeling for her. The love and comfort that brought her out of herself, the one she made. The times she noticed her lies she called her interests, her happiness. Each frame of memory flashing by, the reel runs, the movie plays out to time and now. The recurring memory that never lasts until you look back.

"Then who are you when you're alone?" He interrupts with a quick retort and another sip of his coffee.

A deep breathe and a sigh. "Cosmically anything, physically the same but everything on the inside. The things that make me feel like me, it's like I'm still a child just trying to build a person I would be proud of. I'm someone new everytime I look in the mirror and that has scared me for the longest time." Before she realizes it she's met his gaze, staring into his eyes as she speaks. Before she can catch herself she's letting herself feel that same thing with this stranger Valentine and falling into that dangerous allure of comfort. Wondering why she is telling him so much, why she can't look away from him and who he is to be making her feel this way. "Who are you?" Escapes her lips as she maintains their stare.

"What would make you proud to see? The child you." He asks ignoring her question again.

"Completeness. Who are you?" She fires back a rapid answer and asks her question, stubborn in her conviction and tense in the anger building from within her throat. She leans forward on the table shortening the space between them.

" What makes you complete?" He smiles, rigid and unmoved by her assertive stance and the bite in her tone.

"Honesty, brutal fucking honesty without judgement. Tell me who the fuck you are!" She yells out in a firm voice a deep painful treble underlying it that holds more than just her conviction. She leans even closer, her body rising from her seat as the chair screeches on the floor pushed back by her legs. Heads turn just like before, silence for everyone except the two who hear nothing but the blood in their ears.

"You know me. Thats what bothers you so much. Searching for reason in insanity makes you insane. there was never a time I didn't love you, I just couldn't be enough."

Slamming her palm against the table and losing herself in the words he said. "You asshole! Your were more than enough you were everything to me!" A shriek more than a yell, a strike more than words, aimed at her happiest source of pain. Pain enough to transcend the walls of her fragile reality. Lost enough in her grief and anger not to question a single thing. Real enough she stopped caring where sanity stayed and this began. Hurt enough to lunge at him and pull at his shirt. To cry and yell, to scratch and hit, to let loose the pain that comes of haunting your own life.

"I was never enough for myself." He tells her through the clammer, through the hands swimming through the turbulent sea of chaos. Hers to strike him, the hands of the cook pulling her away and his own still holding his now empty coffee cup. Accepting everything with the distant look of someone defeated. "Never enough." He echoed into his coffee. Enough