Grazing the crescent with outstretched fingertips.

[[Final chapter. Sorry it took so long have been v.busy. Thanks everyone for reading.]]

The next day Gray left before I woke up. A strange emptiness pooled in my stomach, but I pushed it aside, told myself I needed to toughen up. Who cares if he didn't stay for breakfast? Who cares if he took my virginity and possibly ran out on me never to return again? I sighed to myself. Of course, I did. I sat and drank black coffee and stared at the TV in my underwear. I had no friends, no hobbies. I'd realised over the brief two days I'd been spending time with Gray that my life had been a dull and bland affair. I would go to work each weekday and monotonously go about my routine. I would do my job, stare out the window and frown, go to buy coffee, come back and do my job, stare out the window and frown. At the end of each day I would go home, eat a little food that tasted terrible or that I hated, and watch television. The idiot box, flashing up images and sounds for me to become lost in was how I spent my weekend. I knew now that I had been waiting. Waiting in a limbo for something to happen and shake things up. Suddenly doors were opened, this wasn't all that was available to me, it was sunday night, I could go out to a restaraunt, I could take Gray with me, I could buy him whatever he wanted. We could go for a walk, we could look at the christmas lights. I could be around him, like a love sick puppy, glued to his side. Of course, that was until he disappeared on said sunday morning before breakfast without even so much as a note. Now I was back to almost my usual self, but instead of brooding about me me me, I was brooding about Gray. I found myself abandoning my beloved idiot box to go upstairs, to open the wardrobe and take out one of my most coveted items. My mother's wedding dress. As a designer dress it was worth a lot, but it wasn't the money, it was the sentimental value. I kept it in one of those weird giant cellophane pockets for suits and dresses of importance, and somehow it still held the smell of her perfume. It was silky soft and extravagant. I sat, ran my fingers over the fabric and embroidered shimmering stones, and sighed.

The dress gave me confidence when I spent that time holding it. I put it away and I left to find Gray, but when I found him, I didn't like what I saw.

He was where I expected him to be. Standing alone, playing his guitar, it was already dark. I came closer, he didn't notice me, I stood to the side and watched him play. Somehow I knew this was the last song he was planning to play today. I noticed with some dismay his guitar case looked much emptier than usual, it seemed that christmas cheer or not, people's pockets were growing evermore emptier. As he strummed the last note, he heaved a sigh and knelt down to scoop up the money, I saw his face. His beautiful face, half swollen and purple and yellow, ugly dark shades marring his skin, his gorgeous lips split, I felt something build up inside me and spoke without even thinking about it.
'Gray...' he looked up, frightened.
'Caleb...' He responded, his voice was terse, different somehow. He was shovelling the money into his pockets.
'What the Hell happened to your face?' more questions swam around my mind, but this was the most important subject to me.
'I fell.' Gray answered flatly. I felt my stomach churn, not in the pleasant, exciting way but in the nauseous and fearful way. I steeled myself quickly. I was being proved right, and luckily a small part of me managed to hold onto that, though I didn't know exactly how right I was then.
'Right... And why did you leave this morning without saying bye?' my voice was growing angrier, and his cold facade was weakening, he looked miserable I noticed but I was miserable, too.
'I just couldn't stay, alright? Look... Just back off. I can't hang out with you tonight and you should just leave me alone and stay away from me!' a hard, painful lump swelled as he spoke. I almost couldn't believe what I was hearing and for a moment I was silent. I stayed silent. I didn't say a word, I just turned around and trudged home through the crunching snow. My mind was flip flopping. Why? Why? WHY? I didn't understand at all. It made no sense. We'd been getting along so well. We'd... Fucked, I realised. Not "made love" as I had so foolishly termed it in my mind. We'd fucked. He'd fucked me and fucked me off in the space of less than twenty-four hours. Self defensive thought is a wonderful thing and I was especially pleased to have been practicing it for so long otherwise I might have gone mad. Gently, I coaxed myself into believing I had expected this. I had been ready. I knew never to trust anybody and luckily I hadn't, Gray hadn't done anything life shattering to me, and I was lucky for that.

I arrived home in a daze and drank. Drank and drank wine until I fell asleep on the couch, not without setting an alarm for work on my phone, of course. I slumbered fitfully, woke up tired and was in a daze at work, also. But I noticed one important factor. Gray wasn't there. Gray didn't turn up all day. Which wasn't so unusual as there were days where he didn't turn up, but this was different of course. I knew why he hadn't turned up today. Despite myself, I worried. Worried for his seemingly ever hungry tummy, his cold feet in their crappy shoes, his bruised face. I worried until I had to go vomit up my toast in the toilet, probably partial effects of the wine too, but the worry certainly didn't help. I was so surly that my manager put me in the backroom labelling books for the sale and didn't lose me out all day apart from lunch, which I didn't bother to leave for anyway. The end of the day came and I didn't want to go home. But I did. I walked. Slowly. It wasn't until I walked up the steps that I knew there was something wrong. That the door was wide open, the snow blizzarded inside. I stepped in and it all seemed like a bad dream.

Everything was gone. Everything. Every piece of furniture, even the photographs from the wall, the bookcase my grandfather and grandmother gave me, all the books, everything was just gone. All that remained was the carpet. Even the drapes had been taken down. I walked slower still, into the living room, the same story. In the kitchen, my bedroom, even the bathroom. My Mother's dress was gone. All that had been left was a mattress. A mattress with a small note resting ontop of it folded up almost too tiny to find. I sat down heavily on the mattress and unfolded the note.

'Caleb. I had your key cut whilst you slept. I'm sorry. Gray.' rage swelled up inside me, anger at myself and my own stupidity, anger at him, anger at the world. I found myself punching and punching the hardwood floor, my knuckles were raw by the time I'd stopped and I was sobbing. My own blood coated the wood and I sat still, rigid, crunched up as I tried to keep these self pitying noises and tears inside, which only made them all the more hysterical. Everything was gone. Everything. The apartment was insured, but things like my dead mother's beautiful dress was gone forever. Sold for pittance by a filthy little con-man. I held my phone in my hand and wondered if I should call the police. What was the point? Everything was ruined anyway. Even if they did catch him and get back my mother's dress... Would it change the fact that my heart felt irreperable? No. It would provide no comfort. I stripped down and lay on the bare mattress and stared at the ceiling and knew exactly what I had to do.

-Fin-

-Epilogue-

Gray sighed to himself, his fingers interlaced and his head bowed as he sat in the passenger seat of the van. He pulled his hat down over his face, his brother completely ignored him, they hadn't been speaking since the beating. The beating because Gray dared to express displeasure at this venture. Any other time, Gray would have happily ripped off the rich and self righteous asshole who had become their target, but this one had been too spontaneous, he had realised too late. Gray had come to the realisation that Caleb hadn't been a project, but a genuine interest. Now, though, as the van rumbled and groaned with the weight of the contents of his flat, it was too late. Guilt was a pretty new emotion for Gray, and he struggled to deal with it. His mind wandered back, back to the morning when he'd slipped out of bed and rummaged silently and frantically through jeans and jackets and drawers until he found the key, tested which worked in the door, and ran ito town slipping and sliding in the snow to the key cutters.

It was all so calculated. So shamefully calculated. When Gray returned to find Caleb, his arm still stretched out across the side of the bed which Gray had been sleeping on, he felt his heart twinge. He regretted ever mentioning Caleb to his brother, or even considering him as a potential target. Gray's soul wanted to reach out and touch for one last time, to stay for a few final fleeting moments of bliss, but Gray's mind knew it wouldn't be able to take it and so he ran. Left the house and Caleb behind and hoped against all hopes that he would never see the other man again.

Gray and his brother settled in their new town, not so far from the last one, as always. They stayed in a small and grungy bed and breakfast and sold off the posessions quickly and efficiently. Gray knew somewhere in his heart that eventually they'd be caught, despite his brother's conviction that they were untouchable. Memories of Caleb faded until he, by chance, decided to flip through the local newspaper and read the tragic tale of a twenty year old man found in a flat with nothing but a mattress hanging from the beams above by his scarf. A slow and terrifying death, it was described in the newspaper as, injuries on his body showed he had struggled but the police believed it to be suicide. The man's name? Caleb, the manager of the bookstore Division said, Caleb McKline. Described as a hard working but solitary young man. Somehow, Gray knew. Even before he read the street name, as soon as he saw the headline SUICIDE TRAGEDY, he knew. Tears escaped unbid as the newspaper crumpled in his clenched fingers. It was a tragedy, a step by step high-speed progression to doom. The newspaper was plucked from Gray's hands by his inanely grinning brother and a cup of tea placed inbetween his palms instead. Gray's brother rambled about the money, how close their plan was to completion, to steal and con enough from people to fly from the country and never work again. Just as how Gray's brother failed to see Gray's tears, Gray failed to hear his babble. It went through one ear and out the other.

Gray remembered how they had met. The quote in the snow. He decided, with disdain, that he had not simply failed to see the flower, but instead plucked it from the ground and ripped each petal off, leaving it bare and broken. Of course, Gray's guilt did not run so deep that he was willing to follow suit in a Romeo & Juliet-esque manner. But it left a real bad taste in his mouth and made him think, think until he remembered his favourite motto, what's done is done. The words sounded weak and mocking and cruel in this case, but Gray hung to them, let them sink in slowly and wipe his newly found concious clean before erasing it completely. What's done is done.