TBT #11: A relationship

I don’t know what to write about, because everything feels so fake. It rained so much today, and I still went for ice cream. This week: a vague and mostly made-up collection of incomplete dialogue and undeveloped imagery. It’s told too quickly, like life is.

These are the Best Things Ever for October 8, 2004.

One.

Couldn’t get all the lint out of my sweater, but it was too cold to go without. Dinner with friends at a cheap all-night place. She sat three spots down from me, and I watched her stare into her coffee and play with her hair. On the walk back, I asked her if she was okay. She glanced and me and started to cry.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Everything,” she said. “I feel so alone.”

“You’re not alone,” I promised. “You have me.”

She hugged me beneath street lights. I don’t think she noticed the lint on my sweater.

Two.

We walked down library steps in whispering snow. The shadows from tree branches looked like fingers snaking across the ground.

“It’s so cold,” she said, shivering into her coat.

“So why are we here?” I asked as we turned onto the sidewalk.

“I like it here.”

The cold breeze gripped my face, and I turned to the side and started walking in a quick shuffle, struggling to be warm. She looked at me and laughed.

“What are you doing?” she asked through giggles.

“Keeping warm,” I told her. “And being a crab person.”

She laughed again. “A crab person?”

“A mysterious crab person.”

Three.

“You hold back something.”

“Yes,” I agreed.

“What is it?”

“I’d rather sing than tell you.”

“What song?”

“I don’t know. Something by Meatloaf.”

“I love Meatloaf.”

“Everyone loves Meatloaf.”

The rock we were sitting on felt cold beneath me. I watched the lights from the city across the ocean.

“You already know what it is.”

“I don’t,” she said quickly. “I really don’t.”

“Okay,” I said, giving up. “But I think you know. You have to know.”

I didn’t look at her.

“It’s just that I love you,” I told her. “In a very pure way.”

She didn’t even hesitate. “That’s really nice,” she said flatly, to the lights across the water.

Four.

Eight months pass like a crashing wave, and we found ourselves on a swing set in a park.

“You fucking jerk!” she yelled through tears.

“Okay,” I said somberly.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this.”

“I’m just telling you how I feel.”

“I don’t understand.”

“What’s to understand?”

“Wasn’t I a good friend?”

“It’s more complicated than that. It’s just — I’m not even sure you ever were a friend.”

The swingset creaked as we swung softly, completely out of sync.

Five.

“I don’t know where to start,” she told me as we met on the corner at night.

“There’s no obvious place,” I agreed.

We walked a bit in silence, passing by a drunk couple humming Lady in Red in something resembling unison.

“Do you hate me?” she asked later on.

“No,” I answered, too quickly.

Downtown, a man on the corner was playing guitar. Terrible renditions of clichéd songs. We walked past, and I could tell she was trying not to cry again.

“I still don’t understand.”

“It’s complicated,” I explain without explanation.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Everything,” I told her.

“I don’t get you at all,” she said. And then she did cry.

We got closer to the ocean, and I noticed how we reflect so nicely in lit storefront windows. A ghostly image, gloriously unfocused and without detail, like I’d love for us to be. It was a fuzzy apparition of people with soft edges. We didn’t walk fast, so the image stayed with us for a while.

The thought made me happy. But quickly it was gone.