Page 207 of Two Marlboros

I thought back to what had happened between us that night. I had no words to describe it without it sounding trite, but in anycase, I knew it had been one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. The natural chemistry between us had made everything incredible.

I didn’t want to lose it. But there were few solutions, and none of them were viable. I could have followed him, for one thing, but the very idea made me feel like an intruder. The purpose of his departure was to clean up the mess in his head, to make it on his own, and if I had been with him, I was sure I would have only hindered him in his goal.

Alternatively, there was always the option of long-distance relationship, but how long would we have held out? Would it have been enough for us to see each other once in fifteen day or once a month? The truth was that even that option made me intrusive toward Nathan, because it was quite clear that where California was, there was no me. We were just two incompatible elements, and trying to force them together could only have made things worse.

I mulled over those options some more, until I concluded that he had the upper hand. It was necessary for him to leave and find himself if I was to have even a slight chance of being together. All I could do was wait and observe the situation.

I could give myself a deadline, after which I could give up the possibility of his return - perhaps the end of the year. I knew it would be a heartbreak, but I knew well the power of hope.

I looked at the clock radio again: it read 6:47. It had been almost an hour since I had woken up, the longest hour of my life. The alarm clock would go off in a few minutes; I knew I would not be able to sleep, but I could always hope.

In those thirteen minutes I had managed, I don’t know how, to take a nap. I jolted awake and turned off the alarm clock, while Nathan babbled something and hugged his pillow more, facing the window. He laid still for a while, turned his headtoward me and opened his eyes. He blinked a few times, gave a yawn, and laid supine, after which he stretched and turned to me again.

“Good morning,” he said, with a smile from side to side.

“Good morning.”

His smile barely narrowed. He came toward me, leaned down, and tried to give me a kiss. I barely moved just a moment before he placed his lips on mine. His smile disappeared completely. He stared at me, and his gaze hardened second by second, until his face took on a frown. I knew he would not take it well.

“Ah, so that’s it. Nothing happened for you yesterday. What a shitty awakening.”

He threw himself back on his side of the bed and took refuge under the blankets, his back to me. I tried to brush his shoulder, but he flinched abruptly; I withdrew my hand, not wanting to upset him even more.

“Nathan...”

“Fuck you.”

I didn’t quite know what to say, because I didn’t quite know what I was feeling at that moment. It had not been kind to respond so half-heartedly to his “Good morning” and it had been cruel to refuse his kiss, but I was afraid again, afraid of being swept away by that cyclone in front of me.

“It’s...it’s not true that nothing happened last night.”

He turned to me, his cheeks streaked with tears and the same hard look I had seen in him just before.

“Oh, no? Because it seems to me that you’re back to treating me the way you’ve always treated me, with that ‘I’d like to, but I can’t’ look. At this point you can directly pretend you don’t know me, maybe it’s easier.”

He freed himself from the blanket and gritted between his teeth a “How stupid,” then made to scramble out of bed, but I grabbed him by the arm and blocked him.

“Wait, come here. Come here.”

I realized I had squeezed a little too tightly and let go. Nathan rolled his eyes, but despite this he sat down with his arms folded and put on an impatient expression. I walked over to him and sat down next to him, and still tried to apologize, even though he had no intention of looking at me at all.

“I’m sorry, Nathan, alright? But we’d end up hurting each other if I acted the way I did yesterday.”

“It hurts me like this, too,” he replied dryly.

It hurt me, too. Being so far apart after being so close was frustrating, especially since what he had said was true: I was treating him as I had always done, with a wall between me and him to maintain that safe distance that kept me from any pain.

I watched his face illuminated by the early morning light filtering through the curtains, and that expression, more pissed off than angry, made me think that maybe we had lost everything. I blew with a hint of resignation.

“What’s been between us has been beautiful, Nathan. I’m just afraid to get used to it, that’s all.”

He responded with a grimace and barely flexing his eyebrows.

“I get it, but it doesn’t mean you have to become an asshole.”

“Sorry,” I whispered.

The more minutes passed, the more embarrassed I felt about how I had acted. Yes, I had been such an asshole, as he said, because I could have explained instead of making him feel rejected like that. I tried to put myself in his shoes and felt even more like crap, in both roles.

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