We sat face to face across an intimate table in the bookstore cafe, over wilted brunch plates that neither of us were touching. I shouldn't have let him come to visit this last time, but a combination of a work trip to the NIH plus the urgency that had crept into his voice over the past two months made the conversation we were about to have inevitable for me, desperately avoidable for him.
"I don't think this is working out," I said simply, with a sigh.
"I had a feeling this was coming," he quietly replied, the frown lines forming at the corners of his brown eyes as he scrunched back the tears.
"I swear, it's not you. It's me. A long-distance relationship is just too difficult right now." Wait a second, I thought, did I just actually say "It's not you, it's me?"
He started shifting side to side in his chair, jockeying out of harm's way. "But with the summer coming, I'll have much more free time to fly out. I can do my research here just as easily as I can do it back home."
I shook my head. "Brian, listen, I love you very much. I do. But I'm not in love with you." Oh shit, did I honestly just say that? A smile crept across my face as I realized how much easier it is to lie through cliches than your own words. But he knew it too.
Suddenly I was on the defensive from myself. Instead of just being cold, as usual, I became mean and vindictive. I remember yelling as fast and as hard as I could, there, in that crowded dining room. I was rebuilding my fortifications at a furious pace, because how could I possibly care about someone who didn't really know me? Who could never understand me?
We didn't talk again after that weekend.
The last I heard from him was a postcard on my birthday, which read, among other pleasantries, "My life continues to be thrilling." I returned the same phrase on his birthday a month later. A year later, when I moved, a friend told me that he had asked for my new address, but he never wrote.
For a very long time I felt guilty for my hot-and-cold affections--for, according to all accounts, pretty much screwing up his life the next several years. But I can't be held responsible for the blinders he put on, the pink-petaled glasses through which he chose to view me. Because, really, in the end it wasn't me he was in love with, it was the fraud buried in all of those rosy-hued letters.
I think he was in love with how you made him feel. Now where did I hear that cliche?
ReplyDeletehe was in love with the way i felt him up? well, that's no big surprise. boys are pretty easy that way.
ReplyDeleteI realized how much easier it is to lie through cliches than your own words.
ReplyDeleteToo right!
i bet this is why abigail hates them so.
ReplyDeleteI once fell in love with the fraud of someone's words. That fucking sucked. I only write letters in my journal now, so that the only fraud I fall in love with is myself.
ReplyDeletedude, falling in love sucks. period.
ReplyDeleteditto to the suckage that is love.
ReplyDeletethat said, sometimes someone is a little 'rosier' than they'll let themselves accept; it's not all pink correctional goggles. back to the cliche: love yourself to be loved... or something.
god, i need more sleep.
You and your rosy-hued letters, always destroying people with their rosy hue. You should be more careful with how you color your cliches.
ReplyDeletematt - a better cliche is love bites. or is that a song? i never can tell.
ReplyDeletesir - "always" is far too strong an accusation. "once, maybe" is probably far more accurate.
Love, schmove... gimme a shot of Lagavulin 16 anyday. Or y'know, just a glass of wine. Or beer. Whatever you've got is fine.
ReplyDeleteoh, but i'm off the sauce, dearie.
ReplyDeletewell, i'm not really, but i need to be.
I've always wonder if I'm actually in love, or in love with the idea of being in love, or loved for that matter. I have a great fear that it's the latter.
ReplyDelete