when i was lonely

08

He got in the car. I looked at him briefly before concentrating on the road. It was dark, predictably, because it was still 3 AM and I remembered to put on my glasses. As I drove I felt his hand on my leg—a bittersweet distraction. “Hey Pa,” he said. I didn’t say anything. Not because I didn’t know what to say, or was too nervous to say it—I didn’t know how to say everything at once. It was impossible, realistically, but then I felt his hand rub my leg again.
“Hey Lindo.”  
“Just drive around here… we can’t go to my house today. My mom’s still tripping. So drive around there… turn there… keep going. Okay, now. Park.”
I parked, turned off the lights. It was dark.
He looked at me and smiled. He looked at me patiently and leaned over for a kiss. I kissed him, harder and more intense than I expected to allow myself.
“How’ve you been?” I asked.
“Good.”
His hand was still on my leg. I adjusted my seat so it could recline more and stared at the roof. I grabbed the hand on my knee and held it.
“We have to talk.” I looked at him. He was still smiling, looking at me in the eye and smiling in a way that made me frightened.
“Oh, yeah, yeah. What do you wanna talk about?”
It was hard to concentrate on anything other than his face when I looked at him and processed his scent, so rough, so feral and characteristically his. He noticed my expression. He wasn’t smiling anymore.
“It’s been a while since I last saw you…” I started.
He reached over and kissed my neck.
“It has,” he breathed.
“We’ve been too caught up to talk…” I lied. I wasn’t. At any point I would have dropped whatever I was doing if only he would’ve texted, if only he would’ve asked.

“I’ve been thinking,” I felt my mind starting to clear, distracted by his lips. I shrugged him off.

“Maybe you were right the last time. You said you knew in your heart I wasn’t the one for you and I didn’t say anything. But these past two weeks I’ve been thinking about you; I’ve always thought about you ever since the first time we met up. Actually, I’m always thinking about you. Even when I’m with another guy, I think of you. Or when I’m in the gas station I think I see you before you go in. When I see you I don’t talk a lot. I don’t say anything really. I always think that at any moment you’ll disappear because I only see you at night, like a dream I made up to comfort myself. I’m still young. I’m figuring out what I want—“ I kissed the space between his neckline and jaw, “I don’t know what’s good for me but I know I want you. And I know that I deserve what I want. But I complicate your life.”

My voice was quiet. All the chaos, the crying fits, the daytime sadness that plagued me every time I didn’t hear from him calmed down, like my mind was a television show—now muted, the tempests and volcano eruptions lost the music that made them so dynamic, so fascinating. In their silent wake was a soft spectacle, like the first flakes of snow.

“It’s okay if you don’t want me, “ I thought I lied but in that moment it didn’t seem like it, “if you don’t want to complicate your life by having a younger guy like you so much. I know you’re in pain. I could tell since the day we first met… and that didn’t matter to me. It still doesn’t. But I don’t want to chase after you anymore. I don’t like feeling like I have to pressure you into seeing me.” I felt a slight pressure on my eyes. I stopped talking until I steeled myself. “It wasn’t me you were talking about the last time. It was you. I’m not right in your heart and I didn’t want to accept it. So this is the last time I should see you… it’s not because I want to but because I think you want to.” I closed my eyes and felt the heat of his neck, inhaled the sweat and tangy beer that seeped from his pours.

I was crying. Not sobbing like I usually did, but quietly, like I’ve always thought a man should cry. Then I felt his hands. His wonderful, soft hands in mine, like a little miracle, when I noticed my grip. For a while we stood like that. All I heard were our breaths. And he all the while he didn’t say anything. So I kissed him.

His neck, his ear, his cheek and nose. The hand in my hand, the hand on his chest; his collarbone and shoulder, his arm until I reached his hand again and kissed his finger. Before I knew it I grabbed his hand and manipulated it so he was touching me, probably for the last time, in the same place that got me in trouble the first time. I told him to move to my back seat and he didn’t protest but did as I said. And for the first time I did what I’ve always wanted to do—made his body complete and entirely mine, didn’t allow him to be lost in my mouth. I never looked at him in the face. When I was done I sat next to him and asked him for a cigarette. He handed me one and the flame produced by the light showed me that he was moments away from a breakdown. Smoke curled in the air like a grey snake before a strike. 

I looked at his face finally. His eyes were vague, hard to see in the darkness, when I put his head in my lap and started to cry hysterically, finally.