It’s 1:01 AM. I have my first clinical rotation tomorrow morning, and I can’t sleep because I need to tell someone that can’t see my face. I need to confess at the top of my lungs, to the empty air, in a secluded place, that I am in love, and I can’t stand it.
Look, I never meant to fall for him in the first place. It started out simple – all we did was just sort of hang out and mack a little. But I went away, and he tried with his ex, and we just weren’t getting it. We were all the other could think about. He begged me to come home. He started drinking cream and sugar in his coffee again, because that’s how I drank mine. For a time, we were inseparable, and I had never experienced anything like that before.
He told me that he loved me, really, really soon. And I told him I loved him back, because I did. I’d never been able to tell anyone to their face that I loved them before. I was always so terrified that I’d scare them away – mostly because, until him, I always did.
His ex, she’s the mother of his child. They’ve been off-again, off-again for two years now. And when I say off-again, off-again, I mean in the time I’ve known them, they’ve had almost no good days. Everything’s a fight. But they keep trying, and they keep failing. Now he’s trying again, but he can’t. Again.
Our friend today was talking about his attempt again. Now, she’s forty. She’s been around the block. She knows what she’s talking about. She said, them together? That wasn’t love. They’d never been in love, with each other, or anyone else.
When you’re in love, she said, there’s that spark, that chemistry, that need to be around each other. Those two never had that.
But he and I had that. We still do.
He missed me, yesterday. He’d never say it, because he’s tried to push those feelings down. But he lives with her, that friend of ours. He told her that he hadn’t seen me, like it had been weeks.
It had only been two days since I’d last seen him.
We had s** again last night. We’re not together anymore, but he stopped me before I could light my cigarette, and kissed me, and held me, and looked into my eyes with those awful, wonderful stormcloud eyes he gets when every inch of his body is begging me to kiss him again. He sighed, he gasped, he whimpered, in a way that always feels like more than just s**.
Afterwards, he just rested his head on my chest and held me for a time. He looked into my eyes, and his smile almost looked the way it did when we were together. I never see him smile like that with anyone else. It’s a look so kind and soft that I never want it to stop, and so tender that I can’t help but look away for fear of wanting it too much. He just held me, and kissed me, and held me some more.
He keeps saying that we really should stop this, but he’s always the one to start it.
No, it never stops.
I found a picture of him today that I keep forgetting I have. It was from when we were together, back when he told me that he had never smiled so much, or been so happy, as he was when he was with me. Back when he was excited, because his mother loved me. When he wanted me to move in with him. When every inch between us was a mile, and every minute apart was a year. In this picture, his eyes are soft and gentle. His smile is almost dreamlike. He looks so calm, so peaceful. I look at pictures of him now, and they’re not the same. His eyes look dried up and washed out. His smile looks too tightly-strung, like a sharp tic that he uses to look like he’s doing alright. He doesn’t laugh anymore. He doesn’t smile as much as he should.
One time, he told me that I was like an addiction because I made him feel good. I don’t want him to kick this habit. I just want him to be happy.
And I know he was happy with me.