(Repost from August 23, 2013)
He was tall, dark, and handsome with the right amount of awkward. Too smart for his own good with pain emanating from his eyes. His name rolling off the tongue like it could be read off a marquee. It was exciting, riveting, and enchanting to sit across the table from him in a bar themed after a library, which at the heart, stood for the very essence of who we both were. Literary alcoholics.
It was the type of night that could have been easy to get swept up in. The kind where you let yourself have one more, and orgasms happen in the mind. He was a well mannered gentleman from small town Virginia, and I was that free spirit city girl who had the world at her feet. We inched closer with every sip of poison– giggling, relaxing in fear. Allowing fun to creep in and leaving insecurity at the bottom of each empty glass.
He was the kind of guy who still borrowed books from the public library and relied on the subway in a city where everyone isolates themselves in cars. He taught philosophy and literature at a nearby private university and strummed his guitar shyly but intricately. I’d known those kind of guys before, but he was less intense and with age I became a better sparring partner in crime. He was too hipster for his own good, but I could easily fall in love. Effervescently, we flowed from obscure cinema to ancient philosophies and nonfiction pop culture works of nonsense.
It was the kind of bar that becomes claustrophobic so that you find yourselves dancing in the streets, linked armed in arm through the downtown twinkling lights. Moving on for one more in an ambient place, where a hand slowly brushes a thigh and you lower your guard for one eternal gaze in the pupil to link souls. Pressing pause on the moment and logging it into reasons to live. Feeling free and alive.
I found myself in trouble. The good kind where you fall in love in a minuet moment. I saw flashes of premonitions if we dared to travel down that road– Our fingers intertwined in dark indie cinema houses, playing our own folk songs in dark open mic cafes, and my head resting in his lap as he leaned against a tree in a park as we read our books. The cheesy movie montage– cut to: They’re in love.
It was the kind of kiss that surges through your body and sends pangs deep into your gut and weakens the knees. And with each article of clothing there was a tango of yes and no in my mind. That pesky little thing called intuition. His fingers traveling like they knew my body from the nape of my neck to the inside of my thighs. Where every kiss we fell deeper in love– passion and intensity. All things wrong, but oh so right.
And with each peeling layer, it was easier to let go and get lost. That’s when intuition hits. And everything stops. The fear creeps in and decisions need to be made. One step over the edge. Standing on a tight rope, waiting to free fall, but knowing there is no safety net.
I decided not to leap.
It was the kind of romance that ends at happily ever after. Where there are no more pages to turn. Where you don’t ask questions that you already know the answers to. Where the love is so real that you could die happy in that moment. Where the love was so real that it was better to have experienced it than to never have felt it in the first place.
It was one wild night, perfect for the memory vault. The kind with no regrets, no grit, no questions. I waited for his call.
Imprinted forever in a scar.