Julianne stared at the man in front of her with puzzlement.  His skin was wrinkled and worn, his nose large, and his mustache colored a stormy gray-white that resembled the color of volcano ash.  It reminded her of the color of the A/C vent next to her.  Dark, static, yet at the same time had hints of beige- she didn’t know how to describe it.  It was as if it had once been filled to the brim with life and color, but was now tattered with something else.  

She tried to focus more on his other features.  She could tell that he was saying something, considering the fact that his mouth was moving, but she could not bring herself to focus on more than one thing at once.  

His lips seemed cracked and dry, and his hair rested like a curly mop on his head-she remembered the time she had been a child at school and she used to watch how the janitor would swing his mop across the floor when she was bored and his eyes- there was something so familiar about his eyes.  His eyes were dark brown, like pools of honey, the kind that her grandfather used to harvest when she was a little girl, yet they seemed so, so-so sad.  Broken.  She would remember feeling joy as a child eating raw honey from the jar, hiding it from her mother who would scold her, yet this man, whose eyes were filled to the very brim with the nostalgic and sweet color of it, did not seem happy in the slightest.  Rather, he seemed disdained.  

She planned to ask him what was wrong, but found that she could not move her hands to comfort him.  She was not entirely sure as to why, but she wanted to comfort him.  She wanted to comfort him more than anything- she wanted him to never feel a smidge of pain for the rest of his life.  Her mind began to wander, analyzing various memories of her own pain, finding some way to relate to him or search for a way to comfort him.  A way to find out why exactly he was feeling this way.  

She remembered the time her father yelled at her for coming home too late.  She remembered the time her brother tore her favorite poster.  She remembered the time when her parents forgot her 17th birthday.

No, this pain in this man’s eyes seemed deeper.  She needed to think more.

She remembered the time her brother broke his leg.  She had been so concerned for him, crying in the hospital.  The doctors told her countless times that he would be fine, but she was still so emotional.  She remembered the time she found her father cheating on her mother.  She thought that she would never face pain like that ever again.  She was wrong.  She recounted more and more memories, each more painful than the last, and found that the later they were, the more difficult it was to fully remember. 

They began getting more and more blurry, more and more painful, and she found herself beginning to tear up, thinking of them.  As she recollected where she was, her surroundings, she looked up in surprise.  Why was she in a bed?  It was sunny out, most likely mid-afternoon.  She moved her eyes to the right to find flowers on the nightstand.  She couldn’t remember if she enjoyed flowers or not- they did seem quite pretty though.  The golden chrysanthemums reminded her of the man’s eyes.  She began to look back toward the man, planning to continue recounting her most recent memories.  How did she even get here?  Perhaps she could ask him.  As she glanced back at him, she frowned.  She analyzed his stature and saw a ring on his left hand.  It was her favorite kind of metal- palladium- painted rose gold.  She remembered that, but she could not remember how.  Why did she know that?

She looked at his face again and found a tear falling towards his left cheek.  She could feel herself start to cry even harder.  Why was he crying?  He was not allowed to cry, they had both vowed to each other that they never wanted to ever see each other cry- when did she tell him that?

She glanced her eyes down, in an estranged attempt to hide her tears from this man, but found something catching her eye on her hand.

Palladium-painted rose gold.  

She glanced back at him, smiling softly.  Maurice, that was his name.

She remembered the time that she had fallen in love.