She was beautiful, standing there against the cold. I was in a sort of awe, but it wasn't love. Not quite. Love would have been lending her my coat, or settling her into the car, something. But then the beauty would have been gone.
I knew her. She’d tell me that I knew her. And then she’d smile at something behind the window that I couldn't see, and I’d pretend that I saw it too. We’d wink at each other, and step inside. Sure enough, there was never anything behind the glass.
I would’ve liked to say she'd never know, because I'd never tell her. And I wouldn't. But somebody would, one day. And then she'd tell me that somebody found her beautiful today, and I'd smile and play along with her. And she'd know that somebody finds her beautiful. But it wouldn't be me.
I can still see the amber in her eyes...always burning, and churning... the dragonfly within too enamoured to set itself free.
She was beautiful, in the cold. And she'll never know.
She always said she knew.
...and I never once questioned her. She’d sit quietly gazing out of the passenger window at the passing skyline, raindrops like diamonds glancing off of the windshield.
Often she reached down to turn up the radio as her lilac scent drifted into my head once again.
She always made me smile, even when she wasn't, and when she looked at me, I’d smile all over again despite myself. I'd ask her sometimes, what I meant to her, and she’d always give me the same response - tracing that figure around her chest, and then pulling my hand to hers.
It's been said that all young lovers know why dreams blind their mind's eye. We'd sit, and cry, by morning our tears having dried on yesterday. But then again, thinking back, everything always looks darkest when it's behind you. Every good night kiss delivered between the glint of a dagger secreted away in some inner pocket I'd never noticed.
We never think we're ready to be alone, standing, watching from the bar as everybody wants her.
We'd always understood each other.
I believe what I'm told, in my dreams, and here.
Even after it was over, she’d still look at me that way, sometimes, when she thought I wasn’t looking. And I’d sometimes think about yesterday, when I thought she wasn't looking either.
I don't think we ever understood the mystery in a relationship, but there she’d go again, tracing on my chest, those dreams we'd built on tomorrow.
She laughed when I told her, though everything in the way she moved told me it was only for my benefit.
The moon would rise as we both knew it would, and still neither one of us could identify it from the row of copper-hued streetlights humming back at us from the street outside. It was the kind of night so clear, so absolutely black across the horizon that I found myself staring endlessly into the winking starscreen of our lonely suburban skyline. I might have fooled myself into thinking she was asleep, until two of the stars materialized into reflections of her own eyes gazing back at me through the window pane. I held her closer, wrapping my arm around her chest and pulling her into my own, kissing the nape of her neck so softly I thought I might have missed at first, until her cheek tightened just enough for me to feel her smile.
She forgot that she didn't care about love.
I once idly gave her one wish, but she passed, crying to me that she already had everything she'd ever needed.
I tried to take her wish for my own, and rid her memory of every question I had ever asked her that didn't either begin or end with "Before I die." But I don’t think wishes work like that.
Sometimes I can still hear her sleeping... alone, wandering somewhere between now and eternity...
I want to go look for her, but I can't draw myself to stop looking at her through the darkness as the moonlight irradiates her dreams.
I’d asked her a thousand questions (if only silently, in my own head) about what she could have possibly still seen in me after all those years, and she responded in turn by ignoring them completely.
I’d cancel our dinner plans again the following night, like I always did, and she’d sigh absently and strangle the handset like I couldn’t hear her doing it. I’d come home late, like I always did, and hang my clothes on the chair by the dresser and crawl into bed beside her, my pillow plush and empty save the faint impression of a palm print suspiciously reminiscent of her own. I’d proceed to toss and turn until she coughed, letting me know she was awake, and after a series of grossly fabricated lies about my night at work, she’d roll back onto her side pulling my arm up across her waist, and then disappear with the morning sun.
We deserved each other, as sure as I deserved what was coming to me. But I was never able to convince myself that her end was as justified as they had tried to convince me it was.
I’d like to tell you whether or not I ever told her I loved her, but then you might go and fool yourself into thinking my sentiments are anything other than prattle for your late-night curiosities.
I’ve lived my life as a footnote to the grander writ of lives not my own, and though I’ve left it up to the likes of you to source it, she’s the only one that will ever have gotten to the heart of me, whether I’d loved her or not.
Don’t go looking for her. Or do, and know that everything I’ve told you is a fabrication to at least one of us.
I was never very good at counting sheep, even having pulled the wool down.
...Half an ocean away, and love becomes an idea. A thing barely remembered, rarely spoken, and scarcely felt. Sometimes a kiss is just a kiss. And sometimes, it's hard to tell just what you deserve.
Night had set in well over an hour ago, which meant her day would have barely begun. I picked up the phone and dialed her number, waiting for the long distance lag to kick in. One, then two, and finally on the third second the dialtone stirred. It was in that split second of infinity that everything came crashing to a halt in the quiet hotel room. I had left her little more than a month ago, and without so much as a letter in between, I actually began to tremble at the prospect of hearing her voice again.
One ring.
Why had she not written? Why had I not written? I had promised her I'd call as soon as I had touched down in Rome. At the latest, as soon as I had caught my bus into Florence.
It didn't take as long as four hours across the Atlantic for me to forget she even existed. Another seven hours, two in-flight moves, and a dozen black coffees later and she was to become little more than a faded dream.
Two rings
The truth is that I DID miss her. It might have been love, I can't be sure anymore. We cried at the terminal gate, though I suspected my tears came from a different depth than hers. If I ever fell out of love with her, I hadn't strayed very far, regardless. What few encounters I had managed in my time here were brief, albeit pleasant. Little more than an hour of cafe banter followed by cocktails in my hotel lobby would prove prelude enough for an evening's affections. Romance was not only dead in a place like this, it was absolutely stillborn.
The truth is that I missed her. I still miss her, like leaves miss the wind.
Bitter bedfellows while they're still on the tree, but come the fall, the wind is all that keeps them alive and traveling.
Three rings.
I hadn't the faintest idea of what I would tell her, of what she would have wanted to hear. Nerves clawing their way up through my throat threatened to choke me out before I even had cause to speak. I had fortified myself with enough wine and tobacco smoke to sound suspect enough at five in the morning to a woman in the throes of REM sleep.
Did I even want to hear her voice? Was I ready to confront whatever semblance of memory I had left in her? I drew a breath at the threat of my heart pounding itself through my chest as I begged fate for her answering service to pick up. I would leave her a short but soft message, let her hear a faint bounce in my voice asking her to return the call when she got the message.
"Hello?" came the grumbled, baritone voice far too deep and gritty to belong to Cynthia. "Hello, who is this?" he asked again, curtly.
I dropped the handset onto the cradle and sat in silence for just a moment, before slipping on my jacket and making my way to the front door of the suite.
I looked at my hands, smiling at my index finger for the misdial.
It was only natural that I should forget her number after this long.
He sounded older, a hint of a southern accent.
She had always wanted to go down to Georgia for a summer.
Maybe I'll try again, tomorrow.
Tomorrow night, at the latest.
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