"Time is going so fast." I said it half to myself and half to him, both of us staring at the stars from the porch of the mountain side cabin that we had made our home for the weekend. Where I live you sacrifice the stars for an ocean view. The thick sea water air falling over my town like a blanket attempting to comfort us from the reality that we are small against the infinite universe...
"I know." He agreed, never breaking his skyward gaze and only vaguely understanding what I meant. And all I wanted to do was touch him. Reach out and put my hand to his arm to remind me of the warmth and to bring me back to earth. But I didn't. Couldn't. All of the months and days, hours and moments that lead me to this one, where it was more than O.K for my skin to touch his, counted for nothing in this one aching evening. Each day, each second spent with him was independent of the next. Each one an introduction to a person I thought I knew.
We are strangers...
The week before we went out for sushi with Yoda. It was after a particularly sad Wednesday that I didn't really want to talk about so we drank instead. I found the one straight bartender, ordered a rum and coke and told him to keep them coming.
And he did, until the drink glass became a water glass so he could make it stronger and not have to come back to our corner of the bar as often. Flipper decided to beat his own sake drinking record while Yoda sat between us, shaking his head and eating the food that we were supposedly there for...
An hour or so later we were drunk and wobbling back to his place which was thankfully located right around the corner from the bar... Yoda went inside and we followed. In my earlier grief I had made about twelve dozen cookies and brought them to the boys. When Im sad I bake...He grabbed a fist full and sat on the couch, Flipper grabbed his cigarettes and nodded at the door in a silent understanding that I was to follow him out to the patio...
You see, there is a small window with this boy where he is just drunk enough to hear me when I speak and too drunk to remember the details in the morning...I crawled through it in that moment while smoke curled around us in the dark... I told him I was tired of being invisible and he assured me that I wasn't. He told me I was loved and pulled the necklace I bought him for Christmas out from his shirt, held it up like evidence he was telling the truth.
And between sips of whiskey and cloudy attempts at star gazing, I apologized for falling in love with him and ruining the friendship we could have had if the lines were not blurred and my intentions were pure... When your heart is at stake, it is hard to see clear to what is best for the other person. Its even harder to admit that it may not be you. That the cosmic alignment you've believe in completely may be nothing more than hormones and a poets heart wanting what was never meant to be... He hugged me and pulled me inside to look for my phone which had disappeared somewhere between here and there... I told him to call me and in his dramatic, prove a point way, with the cocky smile I both love and hate, showed me I was listed as a "favorite" before hitting send exposing my phones hiding place between the couch cushions...
And I stood there next to him, unsure of what to do next as driving home in my condition was not an option... He looked up from his phone and asked me if I had to work the next day.
I said 'yes' and he replied..'Good. Me too. Lets get out of here.' I thought I had misunderstood so I asked what he meant. He said he wanted to sleep under the stars, to drive till we got where we were going and simply be somewhere else for the night. He got more and more excited as he spoke, gathering sweatshirts and blankets, buzzing around the apartment while Yoda passed out in his room... I started to protest, listing the reasons we should stay home, including the fact that in a mere ten days we would be tucked in a cabin in the mountains a good three hours from home...
He stopped me,and said.."Please. Just say yes." The tone was laced with anticipatory disappointment, almost prepared for me to try and talk him out of it...
"Yes."
And nothing more was said. He smiled, handed me blankets and we left. I thought for a moment about Yoda who would wake up the next morning, see my car patiently waiting out front and no me on the couch, mentioned it to Flipper who dismissed it and took my hand as we drove up the freeway to who knows where...
Still drunk, I sent a text to work telling them I wasn't well, and to a friend trying to explain what we were doing, confusing east with west and getting the response of "you know if you drive west from here you will end up at the bottom of the ocean..." I'm from the east coast, so to me, the ocean is on the wrong side out here....
We drove for over an hour, until freeway became twisting mountain road, the stars were our street lights and cell service a memory. We pulled into a camp ground-ish place that was questionable at best but it made him happy and I could tell so I kept quiet... He set up the tent, quietly sharing stories of the many adventures he and the tent had experienced together...
And I listened, taking in every detail he was willing to share with me, trying not to show my hunger for his history...
We sat at an old picnic table, sipping whiskey, listening to water trickling somewhere in the darkness, allowing the moment to be what it was... and I savored it. Before long he said we should go to sleep. The combination of late night and too much alcohol made laying down sound amazing and we nestled under blankets in the cool night air...
Side by side, tucked in to each other for warmth, I couldn't sleep. I wanted to stay awake. I wanted time to stand still while I was the person he chose to runaway with, while he was laying next to me...
So I did. I laid there, listening to the water and the sound of his breath, to the sounds of the animals that make their way in the world at night... I moved only when he did, allowed myself to be pulled in and pushed away as this man that I love in spite of myself, tried to make himself comfortable. At one point I found myself with my forehead to his chest, his sweet whiskey breath breathing down on me...
I watched the moon through the roof of the tent and marked time by the changing sounds as bullfrogs became birds chirping and I knew the sun rise was not far behind... I was the only witness.
Eventually it was over...
The night took the magic with it when it left and the face that had looked me in the eye with the silent understanding of all we shared, of all we knew the night before, was replaced with face of a man who wanted to be close to no one, known to no one but himself...
I expressed my understanding by saying nothing. By packing our things into his car and taking in the details of that place in the daylight, by finding the stream fed lake whose flow had kept me company through the night while he slept and I kept watch...
We drove away, down the mountain and into the city as I willed myself to stay awake till I was back in my house and my bed...
We hugged goodbye and went our separate ways, knowing that he would let me know him again soon enough when we made our way to a cabin to watch the stars...
But that's a story for another day...
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