It had been three years, seven
months and a week since the last time I was in love with him. We hadn’t spoken
since. We didn’t meet all that often, so it wasn’t absolutely awkward even
though he’d known about my feelings if not right away then at least eventually,
and he smiled at me often, and I believed it was that little piece of truth
that he knew that was so amusing to him. The story of me and him was a story
that never happened but that had all sorts of scenarios, twists and turns, and
possible outcomes. In my head only, of course.
He wasn’t a nice guy or at least
my friends and all the others didn’t say he was. So that thing, my thing, my
crush… it wasn’t ever going to work anyway.
It was funny, though, how we
never talked, not even when we had to. We exchanged many glances, even now, so
long after, and didn’t need to say a thing. And I don’t think love or affection
of any sort was the reason for that – this mutual understanding was, as a
matter of fact, the reason for the affection to begin with.
But I still found it funny how
we never spoke.
He got a girlfriend a while
after my crush was over and somewhere in the middle of our glances. And they
loved each other, I guess, as people had been seeing them around, together, for
quite a bit of time, and even though it didn’t hurt or sting or got to me in
any way, I couldn’t help it sometimes but to imagine it was me in her place. I
wasn’t jealous, let’s get that clear. I was just wondering, imagining.
But I left. And I left him, and
her, behind.
And if it weren’t for my best
friend, I wouldn’t have been there that night at all. She invited me posing the
argument that I was away for so long that we needed to spend as much time together
as possible, and she won, and we got dressed up, and we put make up on, and
wore our heels, and she left me alone for a guy almost immediately after we
went to the party, and I suddenly turned into the awkward wallflower in the
corner that nobody noticed but everybody disliked. And it wasn’t my idea of
having fun, but I loved my friend, and she was having fun, and I forced myself
to stay, so when one day she told just the next drunken story, I would at least
be mentioned as present. I hated not being in her stories.
And there were many people there
and not surprisingly so was he, and I had drunk enough of courage to stop him
tell him to follow me.
I wasn’t surprised that he did
because we read each other’s looks and he read mine and knew better than to
disobey. I led him to the balcony and imagined we were in an old Hollywood
movie, and I was a princess at a beautiful ball and he was the prince asking me
to dance. But he didn’t, as we didn’t talk but just stood there, not facing
each other, smiling at the little park in front.
“You know, don’t you?” I asked
and he smiled ever further.
“Everybody knew.”
“Does she know?” I asked.
“No.”
I wanted to tell him how we
didn’t need to be that way, how we could talk and we could laugh together, and
how we didn’t need our glances because that was something couples had and he
didn’t have it with his girlfriend and I thought it was unfair to her. I wanted
to ask him about the time we’d been apart and the time I’d been away and to
listen to his terrible jokes that were never funny. And I was still smiling,
feeling his smile in the air, and wanted to ask him why he was so amused with me.
Or I just wanted him to break the awkward silence with something stupid even
though I knew he wouldn’t because there was nothing awkward in our silence.
“What happened?” I asked in the
end hushing the volcano of thoughts that had erupted in my head.
He looked at me and I couldn’t
bear that look. It was the smile I knew so well, a smile I never knew I’d
missed to that day, and as he said “Nothing” we both glared away laughing
quietly at the childishness of those days.
We’d had enough at that point –
memories and glances and smiles - and I wanted to leave, but he followed me and
the sweetness I had imagined this moment would be filled with was nonexistent,
and I wished to push him away, but there was no way I was going to do that
because I had been in love with him and he followed me into the darkness and
chillness of the night in the park in front. And for a very, very, long while
we walked in silence at a safe distance between us, but I was shivering and he
put his jacket around my shoulder and we cut the distance separating us by an
inch or so. I couldn’t take it, the jacket, of course, but I did anyway. And I
was unable to stop thinking of his girlfriend who was probably looking for him
by now, as it had been more than a quarter of an hour since I first stole him
away.
“You should go back to her,” I
said and involuntarily put a firmer grasp around the soft leather of his
jacket.
He took out his phone. He wrote
a short message quickly and pressed send.
And I hated that he didn’t go because what was happening couldn’t happen because
it had never happened, and it wasn’t fair to happen just now, and he had to go
back to his girlfriend and make love to her and forget about me the same way I
had to forget about him… just the same way we always forgot about each other
when the other wasn’t around.
“It’s late, it’s dark, and it’s
dangerous. I’ll walk you home.” He stated and cut further the distance between
us.
If I were to reach for his arm
now, I could have reached it. The cool air allowed me to think more clearly and
let me say things that I surprisingly meant like “How’s life been lately?” and
“You’re such a sweet couple.” We both tensed at that last one but laughed it
off as a joke a bad comedian would crack in front of an unsatisfied audience,
and he said that he loved her, and I believed him, and we just moved on talking
about the effects of the colours in contemporary art.
It was not a date. He walked me
home and didn’t ask for his jacket. He said we should have done it, that, the thing,
the dating bit, long ago, but it was not the time and he had to go back. And I understood
it completely and didn’t ask for his number because I wasn’t going to call, but
opened the door of the entrance to the tall block of flats and shouted, “Want
to come upstairs?” He was not supposed to say okay. But he did it anyway, and I
felt terrible about his girlfriend, but we weren’t doing anything wrong, and,
as we climbed up on the roof, we were not about to. It was just one of those
places I’d always imagined I would share with him, but I never did because he’d
never walked me home before because we hadn’t done it, that, the thing, the
dating bit before, but it was a pity not to show him the beauty of the city at
night when even the moon was sleeping and only our voices woke the sky.
And it wasn’t awkward. We had
started talking and chatting about the randomest of things, and we wouldn’t
touch or even look at each other, so it wasn’t as wrong as she might think, but
I guess it wasn’t fine either.
It was an early spring night and
temperatures at night could drop low, and while I was well-off in his jacket,
at about eleven past three in the morning he began shivering. I didn’t want to
leave him alone on the roof, as like with all beautiful things he was a bit
broken and I was afraid he might as well
jumped off, but I didn’t want him to get pneumonia should he live, so I went
down to my apartment to bring a blanket and something to drink. The stars were
beautiful when lying underneath them, and we lay four inches apart while slowly
taking in the warm bitterness of the gin. It wasn’t before the bottle was one
third way down that we started talking about love and kisses. We didn’t kiss
and we didn’t touch, but we talked about it and it was almost as good. We decided
it wasn’t going to be fair to anybody, him and me included, if we kissed that
night, as it was to be a kiss past its expiration time and it was going to be
bitter and bad and sour. Nobody likes anything past its expiration date, love
included. And then we discussed that red date that was so long past and wondered
who put it there and whether we could change it. It wasn’t going to be fair but
at least it might be sweet.
We made a plan going ten years
ahead and we fell asleep under the dark sky still keeping the good four inches between
us. We both suspected that we might get cold during the night and the heath of
our bodies might pull us closer to a surviving touching point, but that was for
our unconsciousness to do and we were not to interfere with it.
The first drops of rain came
upon our faces at twelve to seven when the sky was beginning to turn light. They
weren’t harsh or cold – just caressing softness against our skin. The heavy rain
came soon after and awoke us from our dream, and we’d both believed the
previous night had been a dream but were glad it was over. The morning shower
freshened our thoughts and washed the gin and ‘the moment’ away. It was a new
day. And we were not together again.
