He is sitting across the table from me wearing a black dress shirt and gray slacks. He's come to visit me for lunch in the caffeteria below my office building. His willingness, and even insistence, on doing this is new to me. He's assertive, and can even be forceful, but sensitive to my every need. Even now, as I sip steaming soup from the cup in front of me, he responds to my burnt tongue before I even have time to grimace.
"Be careful with that."
I swallow quickly and dab the tip of my tongue to my upper lip.
"Yup. Its burned. Man, I really thought I'd waited long enough!"
"You're an impatient little angel, aren't you," he smiles wryly and stands up, straigtening his striped tie. "I'll go get some ice."
I resist the urge to slurp more scalding soup and look up to find him holding a piece of ice out in front of me, one side pinched firmly inside a napkin between his thumb and forefinger. He smirks at me.
"Alright, open up."
"I'm not sticking my tongue out for you in the middle of the cafeteria."
"You didn't mind it in the middle of the parking garage."
I flash a sarcastic smile, "That was different. No one could even see my tongue."
"Or mine, huh?" He grins back, a faint glint in his eye.
I glance around the room to see if I'm causing a gushy scene yet. I always hate those people who use too much PDA at inappropriate times. I can almost hear our high school speech coach in the back of my mind yelling 'Hand check!' toward the back of the bus. Luckily no one seems to notice us. Though I wonder if the older woman wearing the oversized sweater is really reading.
"Come on, now." Lorne reaches across with his other hand and gently cups the side of my face. The gesture is so soft, and so much like a kiss, that I relax instantly. He's looking at me with this sweet intensity.
"Now open your mouth." He leans in, and places the melting piece of ice onto my tongue. He puts the napkin down. I close my mouth around the cold, slippery shard. But his hand is still cupping the side of my face. He hasn't broken his gaze into my eyes. My stomach is in a twisted knot of fluttering butterflies, and a beat passes before the left corner of his mouth twitches up in quiet amusement and he drops his hand to the table again.
"How do you do that?"
"Do what?" He looks down at his hands, crumpling the napkin into a tiny ball.
"Oh, never mind." Make my heart stop. Make my breath catch. Make me make you the center of my universe.
I've got it bad, and I know it. When he looks at me sometimes it's like I'm falling down a deep dark tunnel and the only thing I can see at the very bottom is him.
I can't have him know that, though. I have to maintain control. 'Making a hot guy your bitch is the ultimate unthinkable impossible,' my friend Treva always says. I look at Lorne. He's not just a hot guy. I could never even pretend to want to 'make him my bitch.' Treva cracks me up, but she has no idea what this feels like.
He's so attentive. Its almost like he can read my mind. Or maybe I've just been reading too many Twilight books. Besides, Lorne is not a vampire.
"What's wrong? Youre so quiet."
I spit my ice into the soup cup and it puddles away into nothingness.
"I'm just amazed I guess. Youre..." What is he?
"Perfect? Sexy? Impeccably dressed?"
"Wow, confident much?" I laugh. "Just-- I'm glad you came."
He throws the paper wad at me and it bounces off my shoulder next to the soup. "I'm glad I came too."
Lorne's teeth are large and white and perfect. Like movie star teeth. When he smiles at me, they glint out from behind his full lips. His nose cuts a straight line down the middle of his face and his eyes are deep set and very dark. He has claimed to me that they are black, but I've seen them in the light. They're dark brown. Sometimes when he's concentrating on something Lorne will furrow his brow and set his jaw in a way that makes a muscle stand out right along the bone. I love that muscle. It comes out when he's anxious or uncomfortable.
"Why would you say that? Do you not want me here?"
I had told him he didn't have to come eat with me. He was staring intently at me outside near the fountain in front of my eleven story office building. Cab drivers kept eyeing us from the roundabout at the hotel next door. I turned my attention to a crack in the sidewalk.
"Of course I want you here. Its just that I..." I sighed and ran a hand through my hair.
"Leigh." He tipped my face up and looked right into my eyes.
Mesmerized by his touch and the intensity of his gaze, I stared back.
"Leigh, you don't have to change for me. You don't have to pretend, or try to be funny, or cute." He smiled when he said it. "I want you exactly the way you are. Don't do or say what you think I want to hear. Be you. Be the person I'm falling in love with."
My breath caught and I inhaled quickly, flushing warmth down the length of my body. Geez, I didn't even have to touch him!
"You're falling in love with me?" I looked away for an instant.
"Yes." I looked back. He was painfully beautiful. "And nothing else matters to me. Every day of our lives until now has gone away. I don't care about it. We have found each other now, and we can begin to live."
"Oh." I breathed. I needed to breathe. "I want you to be real."
"I am real."
"I want this to be real." I inched closer to him. "I've been so disappointed and so hurt."
"I would never." He reached out and wrapped his arms around me. I stood there in his embrace, pressing my cheek to his tie, smelling his cologne, feeling like I wanted to cry. "I'm sorry it took you so long to find me. I'm so sorry for all that pain."
"You weren't there. Its okay. It was my fault."
"Its gone now," he whispered. "Be happy with me."
"I am."
We stood there like the world couldn't touch us. Like all the badness couldn't creep in. He touched my hair and kissed the top of my head. And I believed him. I really believed every word of it.
Why can't it be true? Are we not programmed like emperor pengiuns to mate for life? Like wolves? Like swans? Like the beavers or even the termites? Genetically, we crave that validation. One plus one is two. It is as involuntary as breathing to seek our other halves. But we exist in a world where all the sweetness is gone, all the softness. The romance of life is dead. Logic has won over and broken us apart, ripped and teared at our innocence. Still, because we are like lost children, we ache for that which our minds have robbed us. We are emotions, and we don't know where to put ourselves. We sink in the quicksand of missed connections until we accept the assumption that we will die, slowly filling our lungs with bitterness.
Is it not beautiful to fight? To take your weight and climb with everything you have, knowing that each fall will be harder than the last.
"Its okay," he said. "I'm here. You're safe now."
No comments:
Post a Comment