The Ultimatum (Strong, Black & Hot)...OVERRULED

I loved you. So much. But I can’t love you anymore. Not like this. Not when I feel like I don’t even know you anymore.
My heart’s been war ravaged. My faith in love and what it means to love, lost. And in its place, in its place a hole. A hole so deep and so dark and so beyond filling that I wonder, what is left of my humanity? Has this war left me a ghost among the living? An animal among the civilized? What is left that I can place my hope in?
A scrap book of memories. That is what I will carry along with me. Hard bound, hard pressed and hard won. Constantly clutched at but seldom opened. A reminder of what love can be, a marker with which I can pin point and not pass up a chance to have it again...

She offered me an ultimatum. I had to choose. She was not going to share me. She had done that once before, had thought that it could work but it didn’t. In the end, he still had to choose. He didn’t choose her. And so this time she was not going to put herself through something fierce when there was a way to avoid it.
We were having coffee. Me, having my customary iced mocha; her having her habitual strong, black and hot.
“I get it,” she said taking a sip from her steaming cup. “You loved her. And maybe a part of you still does. But the truth is Lloyd, it’s over. It has been for a long time. And although I’m not going to assume to tell you what to do, the fact is, you need to let her go. Move on. Because the only thing holding on to her is doing is blinding you from seeing what’s right in front of you.”
In spite of myself, I couldn’t help but smile, albeit a small one. I didn’t want her thinking that I was mocking her with the curve of my lips.
She meant her, of course. The thing that was right in front of me. The thing that I couldn’t see. Or maybe subconsciously, simply chose not to see. What she didn’t know, though, was that I did see her. I saw everything about her. And when I saw her, I saw my future. Stretched out before me like a glistening ocean, rolling over the edge of the earth, extending beyond the horizon. And boy, what a future. I mean, the possibilities were…the possibilities were limitless…
Then what’s the problem, Lloyd? Why are you still holding on? What good is it doing you?
Look at her Lloyd. And not just with your eyes; really look at her.
I did.
You have an amazing woman who loves you. Who wants to be with you. Why let a memory, a ghost, a wraith jeopardize all of that…?
I swallowed.
Why indeed? It didn’t really make any sense. But then again, when did matters of the heart ever?
Reaching across the table I placed my hand on top of one of hers. She was right. I was grasping onto something that wasn’t real. Maybe never really was. And because of that I was sabotaging every chance I had at happiness. But not anymore. I saw her. Really saw her.
I took her hand in mine. Squeezed it. Looked her dead her in the eye. I needed her to believe me when I said,
“And I choose you.”