Pie-squared

She parked the car haphazardly, breaking and clumsily sliding into the curb and snow packed bank, cursing aloud as her coffee sloshed from its mug where it teetered precariously in the cup holder and proceeded to sneak its way down into the crevices of the gear-shifter and grooves of the floor mats. She really needed to invest in a travel mug, as normal person would do, and stop littering her car with actual coffee mug casualties from her kitchen. Who did that? She glanced at the diner and nibbled on her lower lip, thinking, considering, contemplating. To go in, or not to go in.

He was definitely in there by now, punctuality was important to him. He was probably at their table in the far corner, near the pie case, perhaps on his second piece of pie by now, mashing his fork onto the plate to capture any last flakey bits of crust and taking a leisurely sip of coffee every now and then. He didn't even really like coffee, which under normal circumstances would have been practically sacrilegious for her, but they had both agreed that pie had to be accompanied by coffee. One thing they did agree on. His sweet tooth was insatiable and had made him more human to her since some days he was so seemingly perfect in all aspects of his life she wanted to stick him a box and ship him off to a research facility. 'Here', she would offer him up to lab assistants in crisp white coats, 'study him, the closest thing to perfection.'

She fussed with her scarf, loosening it from around her neck where it suddenly felt hot and scratchy. She wondered if the act was subconcious and meant to help her feel less constricted. A soft knit noose. She was certain that he would be in there reading the paper and on his laptop simultaneously, his brain in a permanent manic pattern, and every so often he would absentmindedly twirl the fork between his thumb and forefinger like a tiny baton. She used to really suck at baton-twirling. One of many short-lived stints in her childhood. He would have been a great baton-twirler. He was great at everything he did. Well, almost everything.

'I need to do this, to get this out of me,' she reminded herself silently as she dug around blindly in her shoulder bag for some cherry chapstick. She needed some damn cherry chapstick. Her fingers finally closed around the tube cloistered away in the very bottom of the cavernous bag. It had flecks of nicotine stuck to it from the random cigarette floating around aimlessly somewhere in the bag as well, her other crutch just in case she was a train wreck after this clandestine meeting she was about to trigger. Pulling the rearview mirror towards her, she applied several rounds of the chapstick to her lips, the last two laps totally unnecessary and borderline compulsive, and then dabbed some on her fingertip, running it along her eyebrows to smooth them. She proceeded to pop a lone mint she found into her mouth and tucked a strand of hair under her tam. She had her grandmother's brooch pinned to the cashmere hat and the eggplant color complimented her pale complexion that was so fair in the dead of winter she seemed to give off a phosphorescent glow. She could give a jellyfish a run for it's money. She closed her eyes and fought the disgust bubbling in her brain when she realized these small gestures, this need to primp and polish her appearance was still for him. She needed to end this. "He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named," was inside the cozy little diner and had likely just housed a second piece of pecan pie and was engrossed in the Times, without a care in the world, yet here she was applying and dabbing and making efforts. If she could have conjured a curling iron and different shirt through sheer visualization, she probably would have.

"You are sick, girlfriend," she murmured to the reflection in the mirror where ger eyes easily gave away the fight-or-flight mode she was perpetually in as of late.

The only way she knew how to fix this was to have someone to take this need from her in its entirety, not bits and pieces, but the whole thing, like a greedy overeater. What better person than him? It was consuming her, making her itch and she kept waiting for it to get better, tapping her fingers, rolling her eyes, bouncing her foot, blowing bubbles. Telling funny stories. Shopping, cooking, running. She was doing everything she could and it wasn't getting any f*****g better. She waited for that hollowness to subside, that pinching to cease, the anxiousness to mellow. Each day was supposed to make it easier, at least that's how it had worked in the past, but it wasn't working this time. She was tough. She was resilient. She always, without fail, bounced back. This was not her staring back from the mirror and she had to do something about it.

"Everywhere I go, I see you," she rehearsed into the steering wheel. "Some days I hate you for it. I just want to tell you off. I see your face in my goddamned Cheerios," she practiced keeping her voice even. "And, we both know how much I like my Cheerios, preferably without your visage floating in the milk," she added and groaned at her constant, irritating need to sprinkle humor on everything. It screamed defense mechanism and made her cringe.

She picked some lint off her coat and thought of monkeys when they sit and pick lice or ticks or whatever it was they picked at, out of each others hair, or lampreys when they attach themselves to whales and sharks. Apparently, he wasn't her monkey and she was no lamprey.

"I have told myself you don't think about me; I would be fooling myself to think that you do. I tell myself you have someone new, perhaps you did some time ago. She's better than me, in so many ways, taller, more adventurous, from the right zip code, and all is balanced in the universe again," her voice came out deceptively strong and clear. 'Good, good job,' the boisterous coach inside her brain piped in. 'Very convincing.' She would never remember all of this; it would all fade as soon as she had to look at that face. What a glorious face.

S**t.

"We weren't meant to last, I tell myself this and it calms me," she sucked in a breath. It still hurt just to say it. "Fleeting was good and I need to be satisfied with it. I'm not a stupid, silly girl, I know this thing can end as quickly as it starts. I've seen it happen before, I've been stuck in that closet with the door jammed and no way to get out. No amount of screaming helps. It happens. I knew it could happen," she recalled one of her favorite songs and smiled. Music always soothed if for no other reason than it reminded us that we aren't alone in the tumults of life. Everyone cried over unrequited love and usually, they survived. More than once they endured and kept going back for more......

"Baby I've been here before, I've seen this room and I've walked this floor……" (Hallelujah, Jeff Buckley version).

Conversations in her head tried dilgently to convince her that he wasn't so great, he had faults and vices and she was better off. Big ego, biting words and name-calling. She still argued with them though, sounding like a petulant teenager every time, while brushing her teeth or standing obliviously in the grocery aisle somewhere between the avocado and green peppers. No place was sacred from these musings. She would find herself in an internal heated debate with the annoying rational thought rummaging around in her head like a relative wearing out their welcome. She much preferred the irrational side these days. 'No,' she would counter, 'he was wonderful. He talked to me. He took a chance on me. He looked at me like that, that way I used to see other people look at each other and I would wonder if they were going to unzip themselves from their skin and I would see them for the aliens they really were.' Sadly, the voice would always prevail, expert that it was, and reminded her that he let her go without batting one beautifully indifferent eyelash. Not even a Merry Christmas. Feliz Navidad. Nada. Not one teeny little flicker of an eyelid. It whispered coldly to her that he… Did. Not. Miss. Her.

Maybe the timing wasn't right, maybe who they were to one another wasn't right, maybe the distance was unrealistic. She didn't know. She had thought it was right. It had seemed more than right, almost effortless. Her normally very consistent skepticism had been politely placed on a very high, unreachable shelf, to collect much dust, set there by this dangerous hope that had suddenly sprouted one day in her belly. A hope born of chemistry that was pure and unique. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. How exhausting that word could be, how it could deplete her of all energy just thinking about it. The ever present m...a....y....b....e....

She swore she saw dark circles under her eyes that weren't there a moment ago. She had to do this and get it over with. Turning off the engine, she hesitated with her hand on the ignition and clutched her keys, toying with the image of her hand being frozen to the spot, adhereing to the steering wheel thereby preventing her from going in. It would truly be out of her hands (no pun intended) if she were to accidentally be glued to her car. 'So sorry, my hand suddenly melted into the ignition, yeah, terribly tragic, I know,' she imagined telling him. Yep, they would just have to meet some other time, prefereably after her fingers had grown back again. Real bummer, those melting hands.

She scolded herself for her gross reverie and the grosser habit of daydreaming again and joking her way through this situation. "Jesus, grow a pair," she berated herself and finally yanked the keys out and tossed them into her purse. With her hand on the door, she started to pull on it to release the lock and open it when her stomach rumbled and she felt nauseous. Her body was protesting this newfound gumption. She needed to do this before she woke up with an ulcer. People with ulcers had to drink aloe vera juice. She didn't want to drink aloe vera juice. She was already an anxious person and this was not helping. The conversations with friends and family were not helping either. Yesterday.

"Have you heard from him," her friend prodded. "Anything at all?" Everyone kept asking her this. Had she heard from him. She really wanted to drop-kick them when they asked. She wanted to push their heads into a snow bank. She had to fight the incredible desire to snap at them. "Yes," she wanted to retort, "Why yes, actually, he showed up at my door with violin players, a puppy, a lifetime supply of dark chocolate, and he proclaimed that he actually loved my small breasts and then begged me to be his for eternity." Alas, she had never said this to anyone and only shrugged nonchalantly when they asked, or muttered a soft, vague "Nope."

She kept having this only slightly unpleasant dream, and every time someone inquired about him, had she heard from him, had he called, emailed, sent a text, written her name in the sky, sent her a singing telegram, it reminded her of the dream. In it she was wandering around on a frozen pond. Not a regular pond, but a cartoon pond with a childlike landscape of snowey pine trees and undulating hills. It was early morning and her breath fogged around her in smoky puffs, her nose hairs sticking together when she inhaled. It was frigidly cold, everything around her chalky shades of pastels, the sky a swirl of sherbert orange and pink, the pond sugary blues and purples. She seemed to be dressed appropriately too, which was not surprising. Even in her dreams she was practical. Scarf, gloves, heavy wool coat. She would be admiring her furry boots, laced snuggly around her feet when suddenly, she plunged furry boots and all through the crunchy cartoon ice and water immediately filled her lungs like cement, seeped into her coat, and froze her eyelids open so that she saw it all, no more cozy cartoon, but real water thick and overpowering around her, the surface just out of reach. She was stationary under the ice, trapted yet only curious; she fought no urges to swim her way to the top. This was nice, her new wet home. She looked at her hands, now free from her gloves and jerked as her fingernails cracked into fissures and exploded in delicate shards that hovered around her in the water like liquid diamonds. Her heart slowed, became sluggish, as if glue ran through her arteries now instead of blood. She couldn't move anything, but it was always strangely relaxing in the dream. She wanted to giggle, but her face was a mask of marble by now. Then, everything would become warmer and she would think of hypothermia cases and that feeling heat is never a good sign. It means sleep is on its way.

Without warning, someone would lift her out and drag her to shore, putting their lips to hers, hard and periwinkle blue as they must have been. A burst of delicious warm breath shot into her mouth and veins. Prickling sensations in her extremities. She felt very much the damsel in this part of the dream, very out-of-character for her, and if she didn't have remnants of water in her lungs, she might have started singing "Someday My Prince Will Come," or whatever little ditty Snow White belted out while frolicking around barefoot in the forest alongside her ensemble of animal companions. In the dream, however; all she could muster was a hoarse "thank you," before she woke up.

Her hand was still on the door handle of the car. She shook her head as a plow truck roared past her, the scraping of the metal as it hit dry patches of road through the snowy drifts causing her to flinch. She tightened the grip on her purse and gave a final out of the car. It was stark white all around her, the ground, the sky, all devoid of any color as if Mother Nature had awoke in a dismal mood and the only thing to make her feel better was a randy old whitewash on the planet. Emaciated trees were nothing but crispy sillouettes against the bleak backdrop, looking more like they had just survived a forest fire rather than winter. She tasted something tangy and realized she had succeeded in gnawing her lower lip into a bloody mess that no amount of chapstick would help. Awesome. Same nervous tendencies that made some wonder if she had a meth habit she was trying to kick. She sighed and crossed the street, her boots squeaking like magic markers on a whiteboard as she made her way towards the diner. Even the stubborn cold couldn't bully her into moving any faster towards the entrance. She paused just outside the door and watched as a family and then a few teenagers rushed inside. A burst of warm air kept popping out the door and shaking its finger at her, silly girl she was, for standing out in the cold when heat, coffee and the best burgers, fries and pies in town, were only two boot steps away. She contemplated tucking tail and running back towards her car.

She leaned against the brick wall and collected herself one last time. She had had the scary epiphany recently that she had fought for everything she had, it was who she was, and she simply did not know how to curl up into defeat. She had fought for her health, her career, her home, her relationships, her family. She was a fighter and the fact that it was not by her own choice no longer mattered. It was the only way she knew. She knew how to survive, but sometimes she wished that she didn't. Not in a throw in the proverbial towel and jump off a bridge way, far less dramatic than that. She just wished she could allow herself to be distraught, confused, hurt. Perhaps she was the one that should be shipped off for research. She knew she would make it on her own without him, and it frightened her. He would fade. Life would keep moving and ticking. If she could have thrown a tantrum in the middle of the street, she would have. This was not about basic needs and nourishment necessary to live. This was about wants, earthly wants. She didn't wear this realization well, this affinity for climbing and scratching her way out of any dark hole. Instead, she hid it, under layers of sweaters and jackets and scarves, wrapping it up and stuffing it down into pockets until she was barely recognizable in all her puffy finery.

"Please know," she said aloud, practicing the words aloud one more time, and ignoring the odd looks an elderly couple gave to her as they entered the diner, "I will continue to laugh and search and reach, even without you by my side, but I won't like it. I'll stalk happiness, I'll wake up and stretch and smile and care what happens to me every single day. Some days I won't wake up alone. I will notice it all. I'll become even better. I will forget about you for the most part, but I will never forget how disposable I was. I will do this, go and find my way, but I wish I could have done so with you in my view."

She squeezed her eyes and silenty begged any part of her body that would listen for the courage to speak to this person after so long. Stomping her feet against the cold settling into her toes, she ceased chewing her lip, removed her hands from her pocket and stood a little straighter. A subtle heat began to fill her body and, taking it for what it was worth, she turned and opened the diner's door.

It was time for that piece of pie.