Page 11 of Organized Chaos
I swallowed several times as the words rang true in my ears.
"We don't have to talk about this if you don’t want to." Maya frowned, concern etched on her face.
"This conversation is just a little heavy.” God, could we talk about anything else? Give me some motherfucking reprieve from these thoughts, please.
She picked up on the cue. "How about I lighten the mood with a joke?” I smiled at her effort. “What's the difference between a pregnant woman and a lightbulb?"
"What?"
"You can unscrew a lightbulb."
I almost spat out my drink. “Alright. No more talking about our families and no more bad jokes for the rest of our time together.”
“It wasn’t a bad joke. That was a classic.”
“Classically bad.”
She threw her head back to laugh—pure, unadulterated, and without restraint. I didn’t have a camera, but I must have captured infinite mental pictures of her beaming face at that moment.
Suddenly, I felt grateful sex was off the table with her. With my history, this encounter would’ve turned sour, and I didn’t want to be haunted by the ghosts of more people I hurt.
If we were to have the perfect sexless night and parted ways on good terms, I’d succeed in preserving the image of a picture-perfect girl in my mind. I’d safeguard it inside my brain forever, and on the gloomiest of days, I’d pull out this stolen moment for respite.
With the resolution to be “just friends,” I attempted to keep my distance throughout the night, though Maya turned the modest task into the undertaking of the century.
“This scar is from track.” She pushed up her dress to give me a peek of the silky skin on her upper thigh. The flesh taunted me, and I had to pinch my thigh to refrain from the urge to lunge at her. I hadn’t taken her body into account during my earlier verdict that Maya was an ordinary beauty. Nor had I inspected her flawless skin or accidentally inhaled whiffs of her perfume.
“Did you fall?” I managed to rasp out with excessive difficulty.
“Yup. Right on the concrete. To make it worse, the girls behind me ran into me.”
“Shit, they could have trampled you,” I tsked in a displeased tone.
“I’m tougher than I look.”
For the better half of the last hour, we had been trading scar origin stories, alternating between endless conversations on the couch and raiding the mini-fridge. The wine bottle was empty now, and the coffee table was filled with wrappers from our last snack ransack.
This evening wasn’t what I envisioned.
It was better.
Though Maya sported slightly unconventional mannerisms, a trait dominant in those with less social experience, we established an unexpected bond. And despite the murky waters we treaded, it was clear that Maya was an optimist.
Maya entertained heaviness without letting it affect her idealism. She believed in science, though it didn’t dissuade her faith in God—she wasn’t a religious fanatic but held her convictions to profound esteem. The endearing dreamer side of her starkly contrasted with her otherwise controlled personality.
As the hours trudged along, I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to experience the world through her mind—cognizant of the gloomy world we lived in yet refusing to allow the melancholy to take hold of your personality.
By the time it was dawn, there were no more pretenses left. I couldn’t have survived the worst evening of my life without this tantalizing vision in front of me. She had successfully kept my mind off depressing shit throughout all hours of the night.
“Will you be around later today?” I asked out of the blue.
"Unfortunately, no. It was our last night here. I'm flying back to Paris," she regretfully informed.
“Oh.” I barely knew her, and she meant nothing to me... so, why did I feel so fucked to hear that she was leaving?
“What areyourplans?” She tucked a few stray hairs behind her ears.
It was hard to remain engaged after the bomb she had dropped. “I might drive to my dad’s cottage in Italy,” I ultimately professed, distracted by the thought of never seeing her again. “It’s in this remote village, a few hours from here. We used to vacation there when I was young.”
