Creative Writing Exercise #1

Free Writing Prompt - Use the following line as inspiration. Write for at least 20 minutes without editing.

"Tracing the outline of her face from a photograph..."

Tracing the outline of her face from a photograph, he let himself succumb to the numbness of his loneliness. He re-read the note she had left him on the stairs, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean for this to happen to us. This isn't how it was supposed to be. I never knew. I'm sorry." How could she do this? After all this time, just to wake up and leave him behind like this. She had to know that this would devastate him, break him completely.
He glanced out the window as the rain pelted against the black glass. He pounded his fist against the wall. He had only told her how he felt just yesterday but now it seemed like it had been a thousand years ago. He had loved her for as long as he had known her. He loved her when she dated all the wrong guys. He loved her when she told him that he was her best friend and she wanted him to be her best man in her wedding. He loved her when her fiancee left her at the altar.
"I was so stupid," he muttered to himself in his empty house, "I can't believe she's gone."
He could hear his dog's feet gently pad across the floor to him. He reached out and rubbed the dog's head and ears. He heard the light thump of the dog's tail hit the wooded floor.
"She's gone buddy," he repeated, "Just you and me now. Just the men again."
Buddy continued to wag his tail and lick his hand as Buddy sat down next to him.
He sat in the silence and then it hit him.
He was angry, furious, hurt. She knew. She had to have known. All that time. When he would bring her flowers at work, when he would linger in her arms after a hug, when he took her to the beach at night, when he watched her sleep on his couch, when he brought her breakfast. Why else would he have done those things? What was she thinking? What wasn't clear?
She had given him all the signs. She called him everyday. She worried about him when he went away to visit his family. Hell, he had even taken her with him last time he visited his family in Florida. She always kissed him when he left. It never felt like it was nothing. He knew she loved him. He knew it.
But she was gone now. He had to get her. Or forget her.
No, he had to get her. Now.