Chapter 9 Your Person

“If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me.” W.H. Auden

That was, by far, the worst goodbye effort I had ever observed, or worse yet, been made to  participate in. That was the trouble with him. There was conversation, to be sure of that, the only moments spent in silence between us ever I swear were on my part, either not being clever enough to cultivate a witty retort or just deigning not to answer because I had nothing to say to him, as often happened. I like to fancy that the latter was some sort of genius incitement ploy, but the truth of it is probably more tied into and a combination of the former and my total both irritated and admiring awe. I was to leave the following morning back home and he had come to say goodbye.

He’d pulled up in what I can only imagine to be his parents convertible, sporting a terrible floppy hat that from a distance gave him the appearance of a homeless man. Unshaven, hadn’t changed clothing- a mess really. He parked at the ski lodge and made fun of me, asking about my coming  summer. Laughing at my child hands and the fact that I drew his attention to my faults -namely my ugly fingers and the line appearing on my nose when I have allergies. There was a nostalgic tangent by myself regarding one of my first pets- Kevin the rabbit and how my mothers quest to find him happiness ended in the ephemeral of this intention and my own postulation of his unceremonious death at the hands (talons?) of a raptor. Not a velociraptor. You wouldn't believe the confusion people have with that. Driving back to my house we continued to talk about nothing under the guise of what I was doing that summer and how he was trying to come to grips facing unemployment squarely in its unforgiving yet totally desirable face. Oh and his going away to Cuba, and trypanosome triapyasin, african sleeping sickness. I guess that’s a thing. He had to rewrite part of some scientific paper he had been working on in his lab or else it was going to be thoroughly rejected when it came in to be reviewed. He stopped his car outside my house, hardly a shadow of the gentleman I was expecting. The envelope I’d written earlier to give him to remember me by was filled with adorable quotes and fact was in my pocket and I tossed it onto the dash without saying a word. Neither of us could make eye contact for very long, neither of us knew what to say. He threw out a “maybe I’ll text you sometimes” trying to be blasé, per usual. I made the induced vomiting action, per usual. Three brief kisses. His lips were soft like usual, but it was rushed and both of us simultaneously wanted to be there but absolutely wanted to run away at the same time. It was the worse goodbye, the fault split equally between both parties. 

I know what I want. I’m not afraid of people saying no. I was a little afraid, but not as afraid as I could have been. The message I wrote him said:

“I know, at this moment, you are focused on important and arguably totally self inflicted issues. But what are you doing from 12:15 to 12:22 I’d like to not sit in your car, I’d like to not not hug you. I’d like to kiss you (subsequently running away) because I have nothing to say to you and because that is how I do things” 

Long story short: he accepted. 

I glanced at the clock in the kitchen. 12:07. I’d almost forgotten my own plans. I immediately jumped into my car. Cruising down the side road to the aqua centre which divided a long term care home abutting a residential area and the town’s football stadium. I met a mustang head on. I could see him through the dim light of the dash and I rode past and I acted unaffected though was alarmed at why he had chosen to leave. Surely I wasn't late that. I turned left at the corner, pulling briefly into the AC parking lot before realizing it was already. Circling around with a pang of fear he’d driven off, I followed his car as it lazily traipsed down the street and turned right into the parking lot for the football stadium. 

Our cars adjacent, I turned the key and sighed loudly, getting out of the car. He was already leaning over the mustang, wiry frame facing me, elbows on the roof. A sarcastic grin touching his lips, the soft light of far away street lamps caressing his jawline. The dimness also revealed or more betrayed a clean shaven face and well-attended hair. I crossed the space between our cars, jaunting, to meet him where he grabbed my hand. Brief conversation about my laughable angsty loneliness while we walked hand in hand across the football field, he was leading us to the announcer stadium. I took some abuse as I jumped over the fence regarding my athletic prowess. We climbed the stairs and he leaned easily against the door

“You’re not the only one with angsty spots”

I turned to look at the field in front of us and he wrapped his arms around the tops of my shoulders, kissing my cheek, leaning his chin near my neck- we laughed. We were always laughing. I turned briefly towards him and into an unsuspected kiss while dramatically spouting something unimportant, feigning offence I turned back around my back to him. He squeezed my shoulders and turned me to face him again, kissing me.

He pulled me into his embrace, fingers winding in through my coat to caress the small of my back. There were a million inside jokes to be shared from the last month we’d spent together. Neither of us wanted to think about the late night rendezvous drawing to a close. A duck sounded in the distance and we were both terrified for a moment. 

“Thats is the most terrified I’ve ever been of a duck”

“I totally thought it was a werewolf”

“You’re so weird”

“I know,”

Our conversation continued on about nothing, and everything, laughter our ever present companion, both saying I think whatever clever things came to our mind first. Deprecating, charming.

“Did you open that letter”

He began to lie but abruptly stopped himself and said “Yes.” “I was kind of hoping it was plans for a different way to say goodbye, but it was still romantic, by the way, who did you get to write those romantic things for you?”

“My ghost writer. I tried to get Hemingway, but in the end it just ended up being Shaw.” I truly wondered what he was thinking as he smiled down at me.

“Seeing as its my last night seeing you, you should snort for me again, its adorable.” I looked up at him a little horrified, and laughingly said no. “It’s like scared, curious, and nervous are all the same facial expression and it makes you so incredibly hard to read” He said it with humour, but with passion also and it was all very human a flavour of tangible frustration that I’d never tasted from him before. “I wonder…” he touched the skin on my lower back just under the light shirt.

“Get your mind out of the gutter.”

“We’re all in the gutter, some of us are looking at the stars, wow, look at the stars”

“Yes, just outcast from the clouds”

“Speaking of that, you know I had a plan for this evening, star-gazing in the field we share behind our houses, but it was cloudy…

“The aqua centre was perfect” I interrupted him.

He wonders aloud, perhaps, if I were to light up the entire aqua centre saying “Just kidding I still hate you,” in the fashion of our relationship

…and I’m terrible at goodbyes.”

His right hand moved from my back to my face, fingers touching my cheeks, nonchalantly sweeping my long grown out bangs away from my eyes. He kissed my forehead.

“Yes you are.”

“You can’t blame that solely on me, you're just as bad as I am”

“Guilty”

“We’re just a pair”

“Hey! I said that we could meet for coffee tomorrow and just have neither of us show up, and speaking of coffee”

He told me he hadn't been upset in the coffee shop,

“It just became about everyone else; but, it was really just you and I.” He joked about all the reason that we shouldn't be together, I’d have to learn to fight basketball girls, he'd have to get over an affinity for red heads. 

“I’d want our kids to play basketball, and well, you'd be their mother. Plus you’d be a doctor and I wouldn't so there would always be that underlying tension” 

“I had to briefly lose two friends,, and Oliver- but you didn't have to lose anything.” Oliver has heard that I was seeing someone and hasn’t spoken to me in weeks. 

“I’m gonna lose you”

“No sir, you can’t lose something that was never truly yours”

“Thats true, but still, you leave. I still lose.”

“All these reasons why we shouldn't be together, what about the ones we should?”

“Well, they didn't seem to stop this, here we are.”

“You know when you asked me if this was different?”

“Yes,”

“Well, I’ve never been with someone before where there wasn’t something inside me just saying no”

“Someone? Or just boys? You don't just hang out with your girl friends and something in side you is saying no…” And I kissed him just to shut him up.

“Yes, just boys. And I don’t know what you wanted to hear from me when you asked that, but that is all I have for you”

“Thats good enough for me”

“Ridiculous”

“Whats ridiculous”

“We’re ridiculous”

“Why?”

“Because this should never have worked, you and I.”

With that he grabbed my hand and twirled me around, we began down the iron stairs, both pausing a couple steps before the top and jumping to the last. He took my hand at the bottom again, our arms swinging back and forth like children’s. We took the long way around the field. Talking about him being emotionally unavailable and my questionable lack of emotions. We were both Aquarius' of course. We came upon the bleachers, dark squarish blocks, riddled through the with moonlight, sliced by the very wood holding it together. He was careful that I didn't bump in to them, speaking to his knowledge of my clumsy disposition. I stopped in between them, an idea surfacing.

“Will you do something for me?” He tilted his head, expression quizzical- and then seeming to decide against his better judgement, acquiesced. I drug him under one of the bleachers, his height the only reluctant faction in his body, and I kissed him. Mentally crossed off making out under the bleachers off of my bucket list. We began back to the cars, toying with the idea of me kissing him and sprinting to me car, probably unfortunately dropping my keys in the meantime. Neither of us were any good at goodbyes. 

He leaned up against my car. Always with the leaning. I stood there hugging him. My situation of life slowly pulling at my shoes, drawing me further from him. He held me fast, and I lay my head on his chest, directly under his collarbone, like it had been made to rest there. 

“I never know what to say to you.”

“I never know how to say anything worthwhile to you.”

He began, then, to speak- almost breathlessly- in a vulnerable way in which I had never heard. Very fast, nervous. 

“All I know is that you are gorgeous, and so smart, and so weird. But different, just so not like anyone else, and I want to figure it out, and I’m just so disappointed that I don’t have the time.”

“Well I don’t have a goofy speech prepared, but obviously you’re deeply attractive. And you're just you, whether its your façade or the real thing. You are so unapologetically yourself. You don’t see that very often. Uncompromising, or perhaps totally compromising.” He chucked. “And more than that… I think you could be my person.” “Like who goes to a coffee shop and reads together, just reads” 

“No you're right, I’ve never done that”  He stopped and looked down at me, the silence unusually heavy: “I would be your person”

I looked up at him, his face wasn’t as far as usual.

“If not for?”

“Look at the odds stacking up against us”

“I wish you might try”

And I imagined that his breath caught. He spoke quickly, too fast again.

“I want to, I’m going to see you again”

He kissed me. Released me and grabbed the collar of my jacket and kissed me again. This played out a couple of times before he kissed the top of my head at last and breathed a sigh. Again, neither of us wanted to say goodbye. I stepped back and sighed likewise. “I guess thats that,” I expected it to spring awkwardly from my lips, but it didn’t. I smiled a sad smile, which in the darkness he returned. He slid over to my car door and opened it. I walked towards it, standing in the open crevice between drivers seat and door, staring at him, barely a foot away. Moving forward he grabbed my face and spent one last sweet kiss upon my lips.

“My favourite colour is blue, I know, so generic; and I’ve never painted a thing in my life” He turned away and strode back to his car with a casual wave. 

“I hate you,” I said softly under my breath, the only way I ever knew how to tell him that I loved him. I drove away.