A Novel Approach – Intervention the Novel, FIRST DRAFT, please feel free to give me feedback!

It wasn’t right to say Richard had been in love before, he was still in love but now he had been cleaved from her.  Richard despaired that he knew what absolute love was for he had lived it and lost it.  In moments of pristine clarity he both rejoiced in and mourned that he had been so abjectly and completely in love.  He was not foolish; this was not puppy or teen love, but true devoted connection on a completely cellular level.  Being lost to it was more agonizing in that he had been doomed by it.  

A part of him imagined he should have known his love was condemned from the beginning and another part of him knew it that somehow it might not have been necessary for it to fail.  Richard would, until his last breath, feel that even in the face of the logical, even likely outcome; the almost certain lack of chance that his love stood with her; he believed it could have worked if he had been different, better, more able to adapt to loving her as she needed.  No other failure or success in his life would be as profound.  

In the depths of the night, Richard believed it was all his fault.  Ironically, he knew she loved him in that same enraptured way that he loved her, but her soul needed a “mated for life” type of love less than Richard’s did.  She had been painfully clear and resolute; she had needed to follow her path and destiny.  She was an impossibly strong woman who gave him up to follow that path and his heart was ground to dust along her road to actualization.

Her walking firmly away seemed, for her, to be more easeful than the shattering that had befallen Richard.  It is, he supposed how things are for the one choosing to abandon another.  That she could leave at all was something he didn’t, wouldn’t and couldn’t ever understand.  How could one give up on a love so profound?  He had experienced it when she looked at him, touched him with a lingering finger, kissed him. He had felt the extra-celestial bond between them; a connection beyond time, sense and space.  As best as she could explain, she felt that love would endure into the cosmos and they might reunite after life.  For her that seemed sufficient.  For him her belief created a dark abyss of waiting for something he couldn’t generate faith or true hope for in his heart.

The vision of her would never leave his mind.  She was tall, almost Amazonian, striking, dark haired with dark eyes and a smile that enraptured him.  For Richard, it wasn’t being blinded as much as it was being entranced by her smile.  It was a flashing beacon that had first gathered his affection.  Later in his arms, in those blissful months together, before she was gone, she told him that she wasn’t looking for him any more than he had been looking for her, they simply, suddenly “were” as if commanded by fate to be together.  

They were opposites in many ways, not polar opposites as over done in romance stories, but more as if she was North on the compass and he was West/Southwest.  He easily admitted that she was far more beautiful than he was handsome.  Her hair was long, to the middle of her back, and straight without the limp nature of most waveless locks.  Her version of straight suggested it wasn’t just hanging there, but it meant fully with great intention to be exactly that way.  Women with even the most lively or supple curls envied and hated her hair from near and far.  

Her eyes were deep set, piercing with a powerful gaze that with a simple glance would bring potent men to jelly knees; ready to drop at a word and prostrate themselves under their gaze.  The form of her face was unusual to the point of startling beauty. Her chin was firm and unremarkable in that it seemed have the responsibility to simply point to and draw attention to her mouth.  Her lips were full and perfectly proportioned to her smile.  Her lips that seemed to know they could kiss a man to death and he would go with a smile on his face, happy to expire knowing no other kiss would ever measure up and for the rest of a man’s life; what use was there in even trying to kiss another woman.  

Some women are blessed with a face that distracted men from frumpy or in-artfully designed bodies.  She didn’t suffer that affliction.  Like her face, her body was in almost no way statuesque or usual.  Again, God had built a unique model.  She had long legs, almost impossibly long.  Her arms were lithe and strong but not remotely manly.  Her breasts were neither large nor bountiful, but for her body they were perfect and served to remind D cup obsessed men and women that beauty is in contour not size.  Her stomach was firm in a womanly way, leading to hips that were full but not discordant with her tall frame.  

No one would ever mistake her for any other woman. In every way, she was a mold breaker, as if God could only stand to have one of her on the planet.  

Richard took all of this in on a subconscious level, because his eyes were so focused on her smile that he couldn’t have picked her body out of a lineup with out seeing that smile. It was, for him the essence of her attraction and he would do anything to get to see it everyday for the rest of his life.  His obsession above her neck would of course be irreversibly changed the first time she offered herself fully to him as she was standing backlit in his bedroom.  No words could come to his mind to describe seeing the beauty of her naked glory for the first time and he would never forget that vision.  It was a mental blessing and a curse to view female perfection being given to him with such a wanton willing smile.  

Surprisingly, their first meeting had been by the least likely chance.  They had been reaching for the same book in the bookstore, not really noticing each other in the cloistered feeling that can be occasionally found in bookstores.  Their hands bumped.  Richard glanced down first at the long fingers that incidentally entangled with his.  It was an impossible, outcome for their first touch, accidentally holding hands over a book, whose title was now lost to the past.  

Quickly they unlocked their fingers and she laughed, a genuine, full expression of joy that spoke of a woman who saw the possibility of life, not the offense of it.  Her laugh was quickly followed by her smile and Richard’s own smile leapt forward to rescue him from being stricken mute.  Apparently she had seen in that one moment, something in him that resonated with her as well.  They haltingly separated; she locked eyes with him for a moment and turned away.  She walked a few steps leaving Richard in a state of semi-shock and wishing he knew what to say to hold her attention for even a moment more.  As she strolled away, Richard scanned her from head to toe, making a mental image of her just so he didn’t ever forget this chance meeting.  As his eyes absorbed her form he had gotten to her hips and nearly gawked at the sway to her jeans pockets when he registered that she had looked over her shoulder.  

She tilted her head down just a touch, graced him one more time with the smile that made him forget her body and she said, “Well, we have held hands, you can’t take your eyes off my ass and still you let me walk away?”

Richard succumbed to embarrassment and couldn’t even manage a stammer.

Her smile continued to lighten his spirit and she said, “Well you could at least buy a girl a tea if you are going to go all “head porn” on her ass.”

Richard gathered his breath and moved towards her, “Actually, it was your smile that got me, I promise.”

She gazed deeply in his eyes, nodded and said, “You know, I think you are telling the truth.  Let’s go see if you can make me smile again.”  He did.

Their love started hard and fast, on their second date they kissed.  They were standing close, drawn into one another, without intention on the part of either, their lips met and time ceased to be.  The universe exploded and imploded simultaneously, they became one energy and he was lost in her when her knee bent and her lower leg wrapped around his.  Reality melted.

When the kiss finally broke her looked pierced into him and she said, “Lets go someplace where we can do this right.”  

They were right all night and into the next day, when in a tussle of her hair and his arm, he looked into her eyes and whispered, “I love you.”  

Her smile responded, then morphed into another kiss and as he was forming inside her, she said, “I love you too.”

He knew he was lost in her boundlessly and forever even as a small dark place in him prepared for her to eviscerate him.