Once again, Galahad White found himself gazing up forlornly at the moon. His reason was because on that very day he discovered that the woman he loved most, Tara, had betrayed him by sleeping with his brother. Without the slightest bit of remorse his brother, Nicholas, announced that the affair had been going on for three years without his notice. Furthermore, now that his knowledge of Tara’s true source of affection was made clear, the two announced that they were to be wed.
“Oh, and by the way,” added Nicolas with an innocent smile, “I want you to be my best man. Would you like that?”
Naturally, Galahad did not accept that; in point of fact, he was completely against the whole arrangement. But before he even had a chance to make his voice heard, Tara intervened by explaining, “We would like it if you did so that the family knows without a doubt that there are no hard feelings between you two. Please say yes…for me?”
He did not answer her plea. How could he? Tara, the woman whose name he used to utter so sweetly, was now capitalizing on his affections to an ends that should have been improbable. Torn by his denied yearning for her affection and the ghosts of his memory, he wished with all his heart that he could wake up from the nightmare and discover that the images laid out before him were nothing more than illusions bred from anxiety. But they were not. They were horribly tangible events playing out a twisted play in which he was obviously made the fool. What was worse was that the actors involved decided to present him his portion of the script without a proper audition. His tongue paralyzed, he gave the treacherous couple one last stare before exiting the house as fast as his legs could carry him.
Did they cry out his name? Were they at the least bit concerned for his well being? The answers to these questions mattered little to him; all he knew was that the ones he held closest to him had betrayed him and that now that he was truly, utterly alone. Madly grinning, he thought of the irony of his predicament. It seemed as though everyone he ever dared let that close to his heart ended up ripping him apart in the end. The first perpetrator being his best friend of fifteen years, who suddenly decided that Galahad was not good enough for him and transformed into his worst tormentor. The second and third, respectively, were his own parents, who both deduced that he would never live up to the expectations of their family’s doctoring lineage, resulting with them cutting off all ties with him. Perhaps it was destiny for his own brother, the one who acted more like his father than his real one and who supported him throughout all of his trials, to ultimately end up doing the same. Perhaps it was also destiny for his honest affections to be denied; after all, who would want to love a pathetic reject like him anyway?
Hours after the sun had set, Galahad suddenly found himself at an overpass sitting above the lake his brother and himself used to play in so often as children. This same overpass served as a sanctuary for him when he was feeling down. In those moments, he found it pleasing to just stare at the moon for it served to cleanse his head.
True to its promise, the moon eventually radiated its lithium effects over his mind as he stood back and let whatever tear fall from his eyes do so unopposed. After the flow of tears died down to a trickle, he asked absently, “You must wonder why I do this, don’t you?” Giving a pause to take in the silence of the night, the world seemed to hold still while it waited for his confession.
