The setting sun was dancing across my fingers as they itched across the steering wheel; something that felt like love, might be lust, might be butterflies, nerves, the carrots I had at lunch threatened to explode outside of my body. I hadn't been to this part of the airport since I worked for the airlines. Humming in my brain were the directions I gave him to get to me from the train exit.
It was happening.
I can't tell you what I said to him when his brother gave me his phone number two years back. I'm sure it was along the lines of "Happy Birthday," or, "You can't hide from me, BITCH." There were deep discussions of where we'd been and what we'd experienced in the years that we'd lost. There was tension of every kind imaginable, apologies, revelations, pandemics... and then there was a familial loss and lifted travel restrictions. Plans made. Tickets purchased.
I wiped the sweat from my hands; palms down smoothing the black sweater dress I impulse purchased not even a month before. I instantly hated my hair, my aged face, my saggy baggy all the things. What were we doing? As Ron Burgundy would exclaim, "That escalated QUICKLY." And boy howdy, DID IT EVER. I could see him rounding the corner and my forever 17 year old inner voice squealed in my head. HE IS HERE HE IS HERE HE IS HERE!!
I had only just had a conversation with him about how I'd come to him in Montana, a woman on a mission, to figure out where we stood 15 years previous and that it was his turn. He revealed that he did come back for me; the first of many times he came back was the only time we made contact. He had walked up to my door while my then Husband was at work for the local fire department and I had been feeding my now oldest who was only 9 months old at the time. The tension then was more surreal. We both knew that in that moment we were saying goodbye, that my life had taken such a significant turn we couldn't go back. But he came back. He came back so many times for me, for another chance, but allowed me the opportunity to be happy in the life I had.
I know this is terribly Tarantino-ish, but lets take it back further to something that still haunts me. During the breakup to top all breakups, the only time I was ever THE belligerent crazy girlfriend... Between sobs and choking back tears I remember him holding me, I remember the feeling of being so drunk I couldn't tell if I was cold or hot or sick. I could feel my knuckles ache from the grip I had on his shirt. I told him I'd leave anyone for him, my husband, my partner... that I could never love another man the way I had loved him.
I wasn't necessarily wrong. But I don't know if that's because it KILLS me to be wrong and I'm too stubborn to make a liar out of myself or if I just couldn't love anyone that much because I knew how hard my heart hurt when he ended us. I couldn't hear his voice or see him without dying inside. I'd run down the driveway of my grandfather's house when his parents would come over the horizon, walking the neighborhood together hand in hand. I needed to know, was he happy? Was he eating enough? Where is he now? I never ever asked if he missed me. I never asked for his number. I never ever broke my vows. Every day I would have moments of feeling like I'd lost my keys, knowing full well it was the pang of knowing my high school sweetheart, my almost everything was out there and I needed to know he was ok.
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