Like Communism

Sometimes at night I used to drive by the house Miguel Morales bought for us to live in.

I really shouldn't have. It was creepy and stalkerish of me, but I did it anyway. I'd be driving home from somewhere, maybe even a date, and I'd find myself cutting a quick right into the residential neighborhood.

Miguel had lived at home until his mid-twenties, and decided it was time to move out because he had saved more money than was necessary. I don't really know how. He had never been to college, but his intoxicating charisma combined with his bilingual skillz to secure him job after job and raise after raise up the ladder. Up, up, up. His parents actually got a lot of his bloated salary. They had sold a restaurant twelve years before I ever met him and were getting by all right despite the loss. Alcohol also tended to get a good chunk of Miguel's salary. His car, an unreasonably stylish SUV, took another chunk. I might have even taken a sliver unintentionally.

I had known Miguel since high school. He had been insanely popular. We didn't really socialize in the same circles until I was 21 and at the salsa club near my parents house. I walked right up to him and asked him if he was who I thought he was.

"Oh, hey! You were in orchestra with me!" he said. Immediately my mind's eye went back to an image of him murdering the style in which a violin should be played. He had held the instrument right in front of his chin and rested his elbow nearly in his lap. He looked like he was trying to eat the thing.
"Yeah!" I didn't flinch, though. I'd had an intense crush on him my sophomore year. I couldn't remember why, or when it had faded into apathy.
"Hey, give me your number. I'll hit you up sometime. We should hang out and catch up!" I always thought it was funny when people said that even though they had never really known you to begin with. Catch up on what? Didn't they mean get to know you? Most likely because you were hotter than they had remembered?

His entire family was gorgeous. They all knew it. The entire family was personable and outgoing in a way that reminded me of the exclusivity they enjoyed in high school. He had two twin cousins named Alice and Alicia. Yes. Alice Morales.

"Hey, take a picture of us! Oh my god, this is gonna be so hot!" Alice handed me the camera and turned to Joanna.
"Okay, lets make this really sexified so we can get Damon all hot and bothered." They giggled and then dug into each other, literally. I was taken aback by the ease with which they did it and I kept my perma-grin on an awkward high trying not to look like I felt. I hurriedly pressed the shutter button. Miguel reached around me and shoved them.
"Damn, girls! You can't be doin that! I'm tryin to make a good impression here!" But he already had. His silver tie on his black dress shirt. The shoes, the hair, everything screamed I-am-young-and-gorgeous-and-you-must-look-at-my-awesomeness. I did. I looked at it all night. He ate it up. His impression of me was insanely good. I had no idea why.

"Would you run away with me right now if I asked you to?" We were eating at a Mexican restaurant. He knew the owner. He knew everybody.
"Run away where?" I looked at him grinning at me across the table, and seriously considered his offer.
"To... I don't know. Don't they do like Vegas weddings in Gatlinburg? We could go to Gatlinburg and get hitched. Come back. Nobody would even know but us. It'd be a secret and then we could do it for real. When everybody knew what we know." Oh my god.
"What do we know?"
"That we're in love. That this love is forever. That we belonged to each other the minute we met. Again, that is."
I laugh for no reason and look at the table suddenly feeling shy.
"Come on, Miguel, you were drunk when we met."
"But I knew what you were when I met you. You're a catch. And I've caught you."
"Oh you have, have you?"
"Yes," he reached for my hand. "I have."
"How do you know I haven't caught you?" I counter.
"Oh!" He laughed. "Maybe you have. We've caught each other."
I watched his fingers moving over mine.
"You know what? We could buy a little house together. We'd have beautiful children, you know. They'd be green eyed. They'd look just like us." I felt all the breath leave me. "There are some houses I've actually been looking at." He straightened, and let go of my hand. "For myself, at least. Or for business."

The latter, of course, were the reasons he bought the house. Because we didn't run away. I went back to college for the fall term. We saw each other several times a week. But like I've said several times here, college was like the Black Plague for me. Its like I could never figure out what was making me sick, but I died a thousand deaths.

Miguel and I broke up one day in the parking lot of his office building. We'd known it was coming. About the only thing we did together then that made us happy was drink and spend money. I admired him so so much. He still thought I was beautiful. But there's this tiny thing inside relationships that seem perfect sometimes. It starts out small and it grows and grows and you notice it that much more. And one day you wake up and it's all you see.

I think I was immature. It was my fault we broke up, really. I was a brat. And I don't think it would ever work again. I tried too hard to resurrect it for about a year and a half after it was over. I'd end up crying. He'd end up mad at me. It was stupid, really. I should have just let it lie.

"Say something. Say something in Spanish."

I don't know if the whole culture thing started then or if it had been long before. But Miguel was the best kind of cultured. He was born and raised here, but he was bilingual and his parents had instilled all the values I loved. The passion, the compassion, the loyalty, the openness, the faith, the honesty; they were all there.

Did I love him? I thought I did. I thought I would take that ring we'd talked about buying and run away with him. But it didn't work out like that. Whatever we had wasn't enough to keep us from saying the things that were said and doing the things that were done. I really don't think it was love at all. It was an idea that couldn't be in reality.

Like Communism.
But anyway, I don't drive by that house anymore. I don't really need to know about it anymore.